Virtualization

Thu, March 05, 2009 - As the virtualization wave washes over datacenter after datacenter, it almost seems that small businesses have been left high and dry. And with licenses for enterprise-grade server virtualization solutions costing tens of thousands of dollars, who could fault a business with only five or six servers for taking a pass?

Thu, February 05, 2009 - When Amazon's Elastic Cloud was in its infancy, the only management tools available were a set of Java-based command-line applications. As capable as the tools were, however, they were out of pace with the very Web-based world that they served. Alternatives have emerged.

Wed, December 17, 2008 - For those who need (or want) to run Windows (or other operating systems) on their Intel-powered Macs, the leading products in the segment are Parallels Desktop for Mac and VMware Fusion (plus, there's also Sun Microsystems' VirtualBox). A year ago, VMware Fusion was the new kid on the block, with version 1.0 earning four mice in its initial review. Now, VMware Fusion 2.0 is available, offering both bug fixes and many features designed to make running alternative operating systems on your Mac as easy as possible.

Wed, December 17, 2008 - People who need (or want) to run Windows or other operating systems on their Intel-powered Macs have three solutions to choose from: VMware Fusion, Sun Microsystems' VirtualBox, and Parallels Desktop for Mac. While VirtualBox is the new kid on the block, Parallels is the old-timer, having arrived back in June 2006. Parallels recently released Parallels 4, which promises better performance and Windows/OS X integration than that of its predecessors; the company describes Parallels as the "easy, fast, and powerful way to run Windows on a Mac." While the product delivers on these promises to some degree, this release of Parallels isn't without problems.

Tue, September 02, 2008 - Hyper-V's bright spot is a set of drivers that help it support Linux VMs

Mon, June 30, 2008 - Hands-on test shows that RTM version of Microsoft's hypervisor is faster than the RC0 and RC1 versions, and far faster than Microsoft's other virtualization products.

Thu, June 26, 2008 - Management tools are still catching up, but taken on its own, Hyper-V appears to accomplish the job users need it to do.

Mon, February 04, 2008 - The recent upgrade to ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 should ease the maintenance burden for enterprise IT groups caring for virtualized environments. Addressing some important pain points, VMware has added patch management, live migration of VM disks, and a capacity planning wizard.