The xVM Roadshow

We had so much fun at the xVM launch and at VMworld that we're taking it on the road.  We're hitting several cities in the next several weeks to meet with customers and get people more in-depth information on the full xVM portfolio.  Look below for a list of cities and dates.  Then click on the register link for detailed timing and location.  I'll be at the Santa Clara meeting next week, so come out and say hi!

Posted at 10:51AM Oct 02, 2008 by Stephen Wilson in Virtualization  |  Comments[5]

xVM Ops Center 2 UI

Here's a link to a cool blog entry over on xVM Central about the xVM Ops Center 2 user interface.  Lots of cool screen shots.  Worth a look.  Click here to check it out.

Posted at 05:00AM Sep 30, 2008 by Stephen Wilson in Virtualization  | 

VMworld Wrap Up

We finished up VMworld yesterday.  It exceeded my expectations in every way.  The conference was well executed, and the party was even really fun (these kinds of things are often lame!).  Of course, the important part was that xVM made a big splash.  We had a steady mob of people coming through the booth the whole week to see what was going on.  People couldn't believe Sun was showing off all this powerful software (Hypervisors, Management Tools and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure!).  We're going to have a lot of follow up to do after the show.

We had two sessions at the show as well.  Our VDI session by Chris Kawalek was packed (so packed in fact that I didn't get any video).  There were 400+ people at that session and people kept coming to the booth afterwards referencing it!  I did however get some good video from our panel session on the xVM portfolio.  Below are some short bits from Achim, Bob and Mike discussing various pieces of the technology.

Thank to all the great Sun folks who came out to the show and worked at the booth.  It was a huge effort, but it was a great way for us to complete our launch week for the new products and to let people know more about our existing ones.

Posted at 04:54PM Sep 19, 2008 by Stephen Wilson in Virtualization  | 

VMworld Day 0

The VMworld conference opened last night with the show floor pavilion (aka the Solutions Exchange -- terrible name!) opening at 5:30 at running until 7:30.  This was our first chance to show the public xVM Server and Ops Center 2 live and in person.  We were also showing off the newly released xVM VirtualBox 2.0, as well as VDI and SunRay.  It was a ton of fun and the reaction from people attending the show was really cool.

I think people weren't surprised to see Sun at the show (Dell, IBM and HP were there), but I think people were shocked that there was almost no hardware in the booth (we did have one table set up to show Sun's newest servers).  This is a Software event for Sun, and I think we surprised a lot of people with the breadth of what we had to offer in the virtualization space.  Here's a quick picture from last night showing Scott Lehman (our OpenxVM community manager) signing up people for our open source community.  The interest and traffic at the booth was inspiring with people lined up 10 or 20 deep the whole time to see what we were up to. 

Stop on by today if you can.  Booth 1108!

Posted at 09:04AM Sep 16, 2008 by Stephen Wilson in Virtualization  |  Comments[1]

Lab on a Laptop

The last demo we showed at the xVM launch was a demo of xVM VirtualBox 2.0.  Markus, who assembled the demo, put together a really nice blog entry on how it all works.  Check it out!  You can watch me giving the demo in the movie player below.

Posted at 05:00AM Sep 13, 2008 by Stephen Wilson in Virtualization  |  Comments[3]

Join the xVM Team at VMWorld

We're plowing full steam ahead on last minute prep for VMworld which starts next week.  At the show we'll be demo'ing xVM Server and xVM Ops Center 2.0 for the first time.  Also, we'll have really exciting demonstrations of our VDI solution and you can meet the rock stars behind xVM VirtualBox.  We're at booth 1108.  Also, we have two technical sessions at the conference. 

Session: The Sun xVM Portfolio
Track: Planning and Operations in the Datacenter
Time/Place: Thursday, Septenber 18th @ 9am in Titan Room #2305
Presenters: Achim Hasenmueller, Bob Gianni, Mike Wookey, Vijay Sarathy

Session: Providing a High Quality VDI Desktop Experience Over The Network
Track: Virtualizing the Desktop
Time/Place: Wednesday, September 17th @ 10AM in Marcello Room #4502
Presenter: Chris Kawalek

Please join us for either or both of these.  Hope to see you there!

And, just for fun, here's a new video that gives you a great overview of the whole xVM Porfolio.

Posted at 11:09AM Sep 12, 2008 by Stephen Wilson in Virtualization  |  Comments[1]

Please Welcome Ben Kirk to the Blogosphere

Ben Kirk is one of the super stars on the xVM team.  I hear from the team that set up the demonstrations for our launch yesterday that Ben played a big role in making sure everything went so smoothly.  Well, I just noticed that Ben just started a blog.  Here's a quick entry from Ben's new blog on getting ready for VMWorld next week.  Pretty screen shots. :-)

Thanks for all the good work Ben!

Posted at 11:58AM Sep 11, 2008 by Stephen Wilson in Virtualization  | 

xVM Server Launch Demo

Well, I survived launch day.  Although I've made a resolution to never again sign up to do four live demos in a single event, everything turned out great.  My sincere thanks go out to Leon, Joost, Mark, Markus and Angel for their help setting up the demos.  Outstanding job guys.

For anyone who didn't tune into the web cast, here's a replay of the first demo of the day: xVM Server.

My only serious regret after watching that clip? I really should'a gotten a fresh haircut this weekend. :-) I'll post the rest of the demo videos here over the next few days. Thanks everyone who tuned it to the live webcast. I heard we had over 500 people on the live webchat and everyone had a great time!

Posted at 05:00AM Sep 11, 2008 by Stephen Wilson in Virtualization  |  Comments[6]

Introducing the xVM Portfolio

Today is a big day.  We're having our marketing launch for xVM Server 1.0 and xVM Ops Center 2.0 today -- prior to next week's VMworld conference where we'll be demo'ing these two products live for the first time.  With these two products, we will have a portfolio of uniquely capable technology that span desktop to data center.

I've seen a huge amount of interest in xVM Server since I first discussed the start of our early access program here, and people have asked a lot of questions.  Here are some quick answers.

Q1: What's the pricing?
A1: xVM Server will be available under an open source license and there will be a no-strings-attached binary build that users can download and run in production for as long as they wish.  There will be a commercial "software subscription" available that includes support, patches, and some additional training materials that customers may purchase from Sun.  That is priced at $500 / year per physical machine (up to four CPU sockets). 

Q2: What's the licensing?
A2: xVM Server is comprised of several open source components, and some have different source licenses, but the bulk of the code specific to xVM Server (including the all-new management UI) is being distributed through xvmserver.org under GPL v3.

Q3: What's the timeline?
A3: We started early access testing with a limited number of customers last month.  As of today we're increasing the number in the EA program and selected several additional customers already from those who have registered.  For those who've registered for the early access (hundreds so far) you should expect to recieve a note from me in the next few days with more details on the program.  We're aiming for a generally available binary EA release from xvmserver.org in about 30 days and a release candidate (for final testing by the community) within 60 days.

I may blog more here this afternoon if I survive the launch webcast.  Tune in at 9am pacific to watch how we do! It's going to be a busy day.  Wish me luck, I need to drive four live demos on stage in front of a studio audience!

Posted at 07:44AM Sep 10, 2008 by Stephen Wilson in Virtualization  |  Comments[7]

xVM Ops Center 2 on iPhone

A few weeks back I posted a fuzzy pic of a demo of xVM Ops Center 1.1 running on a iPhone.  Just for fun, one of the engineers sent me some spiffy new pics of the forthcoming Ops Center 2 running on the iPhone.  I don't know if anyone will want to really manage their data center this way, but it goes a long way towards proving the point that the choice to develop our management client for the browser (instead of building a fat client) gives us the flexibility to manage from anywhere.

Posted at 05:00AM Sep 03, 2008 by Stephen Wilson in Virtualization  |  Comments[1]