Late last week Steve Wilson blogged about our upcoming xVM Server EA and posted a bunch of information including many screen shots. Today, Coté from RedMonk posted a video of a live xVM Server demo Steve did for him. Very cool! Check out interview with Steve and the xVM Server demo.
Interview
xVM Server Demo
It is truly exciting to see the product and all our plans come together as we rapidly approach launch time.
The question about Sun's support of our own middleware offerings within virtualized environments comes up from time to time. The good news is we now have a stake in the ground with respect to this support. Christopher Kampmeier's blog entry nicely details our current position complete with a mini-faq. For your convenience a pointer to the the support statement is here or if you'd like a pdf - click on the image below.
The uptake of xVM VirtualBox has been nothing short of amazing! Then again is it really a that much of a surprise? I mean this is truly a fully featured, highly performant hypervisor with support for all major Operating Systems packaged into one incredibly small 17Mb footprint...and to top it all off.. its open and free!! 5M downloads is certainly a nice milestone but I think we're just getting started here. We have so many more who are just finding out about xVM VirtualBox. If you are one of them and haven't had a chance to take a tour of VirtualBox or haven't figured out how it fits into the whole Sun story...allow me :-) Check out the clips below including a demo from my interview with Mr. Coté from Redmonk at JavaOne.
It has been a while since I made an entry. I'll spare you the excuses. While I have been dormant on the blog front we continue to furiously work towards delivering key pieces of the xVM platform such as xVM Server and the next rev of xVM Ops Center this summer. Meanwhile, we recently put out version 1.6 of xVM VirtualBox - the high performance, small footprint, host-based hypervisor with support for Mac OS, Windows, Linux and Solaris. It has been getting some rave reviews. Jason Perlow's review on zdnet was especially cool. Check out whats new in xVM VirtualBox 1.6 here and download a copy for yourself here.
Speaking of dormant...have you checked out the economy lately? In addition to all the talk about recession, the news has been rife with coverage about rising gas prices and dropping SUV sales. Oil rose above $130 and consequently truck and SUV sales dropped about 17%. Cause and effect. I see the effects on the road myself. The Prius parade in the diamond lane is getting longer. I see a lot of small cars like the Toyota Yaris and the Honda Fit on the roads here in the Bay Area now.
On a related topic, I've been on the lookout for data that directly ties the recession and rising energy costs to recent datacenter spending trends. The anecdotal evidence is there but I'd like to see some current data that ties the two. I'm sure we'll see some soon. Meanwhile, I'll leave you some interesting data from an article worth reading from the Business Week a couple months ago titled - "It's Too Darn Hot -The huge cost of powering—and cooling—data centers has the tech industry scrambling for energy efficiency" :
I am not a big fan of being away from home over weekends for business but made the exception this time around :-) so that I could be at VMworld 2008 in Cannes after my press and analyst meetings in Vienna and London last week. I've been mostly spending the time quietly - catching up on work, ruminating and taking small excursions nearby. It would have been a lot more fun with company. I was hoping to meet up with my cousin who was to train in from Italy but that got canceled at the last minute.
I've been to France a few times before but mostly in and around Paris. I like France. Actually, I understand and speak some French (very little) as a result of having spent some four years studying it at the Alliance Française for fun a few years ago. This time in France was a different experience for me though. For one thing I had to deal with driving here. This was the first time I have driven outside the US. I am a big fan of public transportation while in Europe. So the first day here was quite an experience as I had no idea where I was going after renting my car at the airport in Nice. Nice is the nearest major airport to Cannes. My hotel is between Nice and Cannes about 15 miles from the airport. The traffic circles, narrow streets and the crazy parking situation all make for an interesting driving experience. It hasn't been too bad after I figured it out. I actually drove to Monaco on Saturday. The drive was simply spectacular. It was sort of cloudy and gray. I can only imagine how drop-dead beautiful this place must be on a nice sunny summer day. Monaco was beautiful but the drive from Nice through the little town of Eze Bord de Mer was the highlight for me.
Today, i.e Sunday I mostly spent time in my hotel and around the beach near my hotel. It started out gray but turned out to be a gorgeous day. I worked on my mail a bit and then ate lunch by the beach. In the afternoon, I took a drive to Cannes to check out the convention center in preparation for tomorrow. The drive was supposed to be about 20 minutes but the traffic was just crazy and ended up taking twice that time. The road by the beach front in Cannes was just packed. I guess everyone was out enjoying the nice day.
Today's highlight was the Crêpe au Chocolat avec Chantilly which I throughly enjoyed. I thought it was just a snack. Stuffed me up. No dinner tonight. That was pretty much the excitement for today.
My wife and I picked up a very pretty looking vegetable at the farmers market over the weekend.
It is apparently a type of Broccoflower (see wikipedia entry) called the Romanesco Broccoli or Fractal Broccoli. I have never seen one of these before and was totally captivated by it. The fractal arrangement of the buds is simply mesmerizing. I've posted a couple of pictures I took on flickr. I think I am just going to end up admiring this vegetable rather than eating it.