My father recently underwent a stress test to determine how his heart performed under load.  The result was that he needed a pacemaker.  Tripwire’s performance analysis team recently put vWire through a series of stress tests to determine how it would perform under load.

I was especially curious to find out how vWire’s embedded database, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express would perform.  We expected it to work fine for small to moderately large environments, and expected that large environments would need to use commercial SQL Server versions.  Without boring you with all of the details, we found that:

• SQL Server 2005 Express’ 4 GB size limitation isn’t a constraint for environments with fewer than 12,000 VMs.
• Express’ performance was on par with the commercial versions of SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 for up to 2,000 VMs.
• As the number of VMs increased beyond 2,000, the commercial versions gained a performance edge.  At about 12,000 VMs the edge was noticable - more than 25%.
• Using the Express version, vWire’s overall performance was more than acceptable up to about 12,000 VMs.  Beyond that, customers should use the commercial version.  Of course, your mileage may vary.

In summary, vWire doesn’t need a pacemaker.  It is great to work with our performance team and their huge environment that can test vWire with hundreds of hosts and thousands of VMs.

Earlier this week, I convened our product advisory team to get their input on terminology used in our upcoming product and on general usability.  Their feedback was very valuable, which reconfirmed my belief that continual user feedback is essential.  I was surprised to hear one member say that they are still using alpha software that we provided in late February.  The product has evolved so much since then that I now consider the alpha software to be pretty limited.  However, this one member says his team uses it consistently and it has cut some of their tasks down from hour to minutes.

I can’t wait to be able to blog about the final product.

Within the past few weeks I have received two sales calls from vendors.  This in itself isn’t too unusual because when I attend industry conferences I often sign up to get additional information.  I never indicate that I have BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, or Timing) so my requests always go to the bottom of the follow-up list.  Thankfully, I am rarely called by a sales person so I don’t have to explain that I am in product management and will never purchase one of their products. Read the rest of this entry »

The March 2, 2009 issue of Fortune magazine got me thinking about the various types of cloud computing.  Prior to reading it, I thought of the Cloud much as VMware describes it; an on-demand computing resource that can be transparently used when needed.  However, Forture defined the Cloud as “centralized computing services that are delivered over the internet.”  I have always thought of this model as Software as a Service (SaaS), and I am not sure I agree with the “centralized” part.  Fortune mentioned salesforce.com as an example of a company leveraging cloud computing.  Another article in the same issue described how Kenworth trucks “took advantage of cloud computing” because they rented time on a supercomputer thousands of mile away.  Finally, a sidebar article implied that cloud computing is “applications housed remotely and delivered via the net.

When I first read the articles I thought, “Fortune doesn’t get it.  That isn’t cloud computing.”  Upon further reflection I wondered if maybe my definition is too restrictive.  Maybe cloud computing is a category that includes multiple types of computing, including SaaS.  I wonder if it is time for someone to define a cloud computing taxonomy.

Visioncore just announced their Virtualization EcoShell Initiative at VMworld Europe 2009.  The first public beta is expected to be released at the end of next month.  It looks like it is a community aimed at helping virtualization professionals use PowerShell scripts to manage their VI. Read the rest of this entry »

In conversations with VMware professionals about the problems they face, I often hear about configuration problems. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Tripwire’s vWire team launched our second free utility,OpsCheck, for VMware professionals.  OpsCheck helps you ensure that your hosts and VMs are configured so VMotion will work. Read the rest of this entry »

Next week is a big week for Tripwire’s vWire team!  We officially launch another new free VMware utility, and we launch our new community that focuses on virtualization issues. Read the rest of this entry »

 Last November, I wrote a post entitled “The Free Willies”.  In it I confessed my reservations about diverting scarce R&D resources to develop free utilities. Read the rest of this entry »

I have heard numerous war stories about the difficulty of diagnosing vMotion problems. Read the rest of this entry »