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Simon Crosby, CTO of the Citrix VMD Division, did an interview with Brian Ducharme of Virtual Strategy Magazine
during VMWorld to review the Citrix announcements during the event.
Here are the Citrix press releases from the event -
Citrix Unveils Cloud Computing Strategy and Product Line
Citrix and Marathon Partner to Bring World Class High Availability and Fault Tolerance to Citrix XenServer
XenServer 5 Changes the Game in Server Virtualization with Unprecedented Reliability, Openness and Ease-of-Use
(click the link to play - there is a current issue with embedding videos)
Simon Crosby, the Chief Technology Officer of the Virtualization and Management Division of Citrix, participates in a recurring podcast with Virtual Strategy Magazine called "10 Minutes to Xen".
Here is a list of the topics discussed in the most recent edition -
VSM speaks with Simon Crosby, Chief Technology Officer, Citrix XenServer, about Citrix XenServer development and release of XenServer 4.1
Podcast Summary:
Length: 11:18
- Introduction
- Simon Crosby, Chief Technology Officer, Citrix XenServer (:10)
- New announcements and news about the release of XenServer 4.1 (:18)
- Citrix XenServer partnership with Netapp (2:13)
- XenServer 4.1 shipping now and available for download (5:35)
- Management of physical & virtual server environment from one location (6:30)
- Where XenServer stands now in the marketplace (8:03)
- Upcoming release of Microsoft hypervisor & how XenServer is working with Microsoft (9:20)
- For more information on Citrix XenServer (10:30)
- Close
You can listen the full podcast here.
An interview/conversation with Derek Slayton Product manager for Citrix Workflow Studio. Derek just came down to Ft Lauderdale and we couldn't pass the opportunity to learn more about WFS and share with our friends and visitors.
regards,
Gus Pinto - Technology Evangelist
Microsoft MVP | Gus.Pinto@citrix.com
http://www.frameworkx.com
Simon Crosby , the CTO of the Citrix Virtualization and Management Division, was interviewed recently at VMWorld Europe by Tarry Singh of Virtualization for Everyone .
Here is how Tarry describes the interview on his blog -
Talking to Simon is always a pleasure. A gentleman with deep understanding of the dynamics of the enterprise. With XenServer, XenDesktop (soon to be GA) and XenApp, Citrix has a rock solid foundation within your data center.
Tarry has many more VMWorld Europe interviews on his blog of Virtualization for Everyone and at Virtualization.com .
Ian Pratt, one of the founders of the Xen Project, recently gave an inteview at FOSDEM.org about his recent talk at the FOSDEM 2008 conference. FOSDEM is the Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting.
Here are a few snippets from the interview.
Last time, XenSource was not yet acquired by Citrix. What were the reasons to consider this sale?
I think we were doing pretty well as XenSource, but one of the challenges we faced is that it takes time to build a 'sales channel' to distribute software. Citrix already have a great sales channel, so the acquisition provided a great opportunity to take Xen to the mass-market.
What kind of open-source commitment do you expect from Citrix?
Citrix have been great in supporting the open source side of things, funding folk to work full-time on open source Xen, and also funding a full time Xen programme manager. The management understand the importance of a strong Xen community and the need for the project's independence from Citrix's own Xen products.
The change was always going to make some members of the community nervous (just like when we originally formed XenSource), but it's the same group of people and we intend to carry on just as before. One difference is that we now have 'xen.org' to provide a clear independent identity for the Xen project, and also the Xen Advisory Board to help govern the project.
How does Xen's future look on Windows platforms?
Lots of people use Xen to run Windows VMs -- after all, Windows arguably needs virtualization more than Unix OSes. I reckon that something like over 80% of the VMs running on XenServer are Windows.
You can read the entire interview at the FOSDEM.org site
. In the past FOSDEM events, videos of the talks have been posted. None of the 2008 talks are posted yet, but soon you should be able to download the video of the entire talk by Ian Pratt at the FOSDEM video site. UPDATE: You can now download a pdf of Ian's presentation at FOSDEM.org here.
Simon Crosby, the Chief Technology Officer of the Virtualization and Management Division of Citrix, recently did a podcast with Virtual Strategy Magazine called "10 Minutes to Xen". Here is a list of the topics discussed -
Podcast Summary:
- Introduction
- Simon Crosby, Founder and CTO, XenSource (:05)
- Busy integrating XenSource into Citrix (:13)
- Virtualization Management Division delivering entire solutions (:37)
- XenServer optimized to run Presentation Server (1:00)
- XenServer OEM component of Citrix XenDesktop - VDI Broker (1:15)
- XenServer and Provisioning Server (1:37)
- How Microsoft's partnership with Citrix will affect XenSource when Viridian hypervisor is released (4:15)
- How VDI will affect server virtualization side of XenSource (6:44)
- Sales activity since acquisition by Citrix (7:58)
- What's Next: Citrix Summit08 coming soon and Citrix XenServer in beta (9:42)
- Close
For those of you running Citrix Presentation Server, Simon mentions in this podcast that the plan for the next release of Citrix XenServer is to included some CPS specific optimizations. I am gathering more background info on this topic, and will post on more on these CPS optimizations later.
http://www.virtual-strategy.com/article/articleview/2439/1/73/
This week, Simon also did an interview with Information Week entitled "Virtualization's Crusader". Here are a few excerpts -
Enter Simon Crosby. Once a tenured professor at Cambridge University, he's traded the ethereal heights of academia for the cutthroat arena of high tech, driven by the belief that "virtualization has got to be everywhere," he says.
As former CTO of XenSource and now CTO of Citrix Systems' virtualization and management division, Crosby has raised the profile of the open source Xen hypervisor as a viable competitor to market leader VMware, while advocating for the hypervisor-any hypervisor-to replace the OS as the key interface between applications and hardware.
...
IW:With Citrix's acquisition of XenSource earlier this year, XenSource has the resources of Citrix behind it. How relevant is the Xen project open source hypervisor being developed by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory?
Crosby:It's more relevant that before. Xen was about a core thesis of a business model-if the hypervisor is ubiquitous, there's a huge opportunity for the software industry to deliver value-added software for the dynamism and manageability of enterprise IT. Multiple vendors can take Xen and bring it to market. So the strategic nature has turned it into open source as reference standard for implementation.
IW:In a recent blog post you said that at the time XenSource was acquired, your foremost concern was that Citrix would respect the Xen community and strengthen the project. How do you keep Citrix from having undue influence on the Xen project?
Crosby: We've moved the Xen project into a separate .org. It has an oversight committee composed of all the major contributors.
IW: Who's on the committee?
Crosby:The key vendors there are IP, HP, Intel, Red Hat, Novel, Sun and ourselves. It's those who are delivering the hypervisor to the market and who are interested in a careful description of what is and is not Xen. Those companies establish policies and procedures and oversight of the code base by fiat.
Read more here
Simon also did a recent interview with DataMation
Here are a few excepts -
Q: The XenSource applications are based on open source. In terms of the virtualization market, what are the pluses or minuses of an open source approach?
Open source is an extremely valuable tool for innovation. One of the key things about the Xen code base is that it can be delivered to market by multiple vendors, and will be.
... So the day that the first Intel VT CPU ships, we have the support. The day the hardware virtualization [launches] we have the support. So we've become the industry's first and best support for an enhanced hardware experience.
And at the same time, we've been very anxious to make sure that Xen as an engine was open sourced, but that multiple different vendors could have economic business models built around that. So we commoditize the "engine" - it's the code base that everyone agrees should be commoditized - and then it has much broader applicability.
So, for example, Xen runs on [certain] PDAs, and Samsung is doing work with those as a product prototype. But it also runs on supercomputers from SGI. That way, we don't have just one 'car' - there's everything from Porches to Minis. So you don't limit its applicability.
For further background on the Xen open source hypervisor and the industry wide participation in that project, see my earlier posts here and here .
*Q: What about the relationship between the Xen hypervisor and Microsoft's Viridian? How will that work?*
Microsoft implements the Viridian hypervisor as an add-in operating system component. The architecture of Viridian is very similar to Xen, but it is Microsoft-built - entirely.
And so the way to think about Viridian with Windows Server 2008 is pretty much like Red Hat does with Xen, or Novell does with Xen, or now Sun is doing with Xen with Solaris 10. So it's a hypervisor included with the OS, which is basically the Xen architecture, but written by Microsoft. We have a partnership with Microsoft to make sure that Viridian interoperates with the world.
In fact, the partnership with Microsoft is extremely strong, and getting stronger. They're important in the context of Citrix, and very important in the context of the integrated hypervisor, the embedded hypervisor, which will be shipped by Dell as of the beginning of next year...
I have received a lot of questions about the relationship between Microsoft, XenSource, and Viridian. The two companies announced several agreement well before the Citrix acquisition of XenSource. Here are some excepts from the Microsoft press release from July of 2006-
Microsoft Corp. and XenSource Inc. today announced they will cooperate on the development of technology to provide interoperability between Xen™-enabled Linux and the new Microsoft® Windows® hypervisor technology-based Windows Server® virtualization. With the resulting technology, the next version of Windows Server, code-named "Longhorn," will provide customers with a flexible and powerful virtualization solution across their hardware infrastructure and operating system environments for cost-saving consolidation of Windows, Linux and Xen-enabled Linux distributions.
"Microsoft's commitment to customers is to build bridges across the industry with solutions that are interoperable by design," said Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. "Our work with XenSource, a recognized leader in open source virtualization technology, reflects that commitment and Microsoft's ongoing efforts to bring virtualization solutions to the mainstream and help customers progress toward self-managing dynamic systems."
"We are pleased to collaborate with Microsoft as a development partner and to deliver interoperable virtualization solutions," said Peter Levine, president and CEO of XenSource. "Xen-enabled guests will run seamlessly on XenEnterprise now, and, as a result of this agreement, Xen-enabled Linux guests will also run on Windows Server virtualization. XenSource will also deliver additional products based on the collaboratively developed technology, further expanding the value of the relationship."
Here is a bit from the original XenSource published FAQ on the Microsoft agreement from July 2006 -
Microsoft and XenSource to Develop Interoperability for Windows Server Longhorn Virtualization
What exactly is being done between Microsoft and XenSource?
Microsoft and XenSource have signed an agreement to collaboratively develop and deliver virtualization
technology enabling interoperability between Xen-enabled systems and Windows Server "Longhorn"
virtualization. Specifically, select Xen-enabled guest operating systems, including Linux, will be able to run
virtualized on Windows Server "Longhorn" Virtualization and will be supported by Microsoft.
Does XenSource have additional plans based on the developed code?
XenSource intends to build and sell additional future products based on the collaboratively developed code.
XenSource will deliver additional value-added products that apply equally well to virtualized Linux or Windows
operating systems hosted on both Windows Server virtualization and XenEnterprise. Additionally, XenSource
will ensure interoperability of Windows Server guests running on XenEnterprise.
*Q: If there's a hypothetical IT buyer out there who's considering both VMware and XenSource, what would you say to direct them?*
...
I think VMware has fantastic products, they have their reputation, but there's no reason to be paying through your nose to do virtualization. We have fantastic products, and they will be delivered in a much cheaper, much more useful form factor when they're just included with every server.
It would be reasonable to say that we as XenSource, as a small company, have the enterprise cred, and the legs to stand on. We're a very strategic company. We now have 24/7 worldwide support, we have all of the scale, all of the resources, all of the partnerships, and all of the features that VMware has. So there's no reason not to consider us as a platform of choice.
The Xen open source hypervisor project is a vibrant growing community with a new Advisory Board with wide industry participation. Citrix XenServer benefits from the creativity and innovation of this effort.
The Microsoft Hyper-V release is built on a structure very similar to that of the Xen hypervisor. This architecture gives Microsoft a strong architectural standing for the future, and gives Citrix the opportunity to take all the lessons we have learned from supporting that architecture and apply those lessons to building valuable management products on top of Hyper-V. This is very similar to the current relation Citrix has with Microsoft in respect to Terminal Services and Citrix Presentation Server. Citrix can draw upon our many years of experience of building value on top of a Microsoft platform and working closely with Microsoft to do it.
After my earlier blog post on the Best of VMWorld solution for high availability offered by Marathon Technologies, I have received numerous questions about the solution offered by Marathon Technologies specifically for XenServer. Jerry Melnick, the CTO of Marathon, graciously agreed to provide some background info on Marathon Technologies and answer a few other questions.
Barry Flanagan: Many Citrix customers may not be familiar with Marathon Technologies. Can you give us a brief history?
Jerry Melnick: Marathon was founded in 1993 by engineers responsible for developing Digital VAX FT fault tolerant systems. The team used this experience to develop the first software and networking technology that allowed multiple Wintel servers to operate as a single fault tolerant system. In 2003 the company migrated its technology to a software-only product that works with standard off-the-shelf Intel/AMD servers, unmodified Windows and standard, unmodified Windows applications.
Barry Flanagan: Your website describes everRun as Availability Software. What are the three things people show know about how your software solves the problem of unplanned downtime?
Jerry Melnick: First, we don say lightly. Our everRun software keeps critical applications available in industries where downtime equals big bucks, including process manufacturing, gaming, media and broadcasting, financial services and federal markets. We have over 1500 global customers including five of the top ten pharmaceutical manufacturers, four of the top five television networks in the US and over 1000 mid-market companies.
Second, we developed what we call our ComputeThru technology that keeps essential applications running through both network and disk I/O failures. That means they rarely, if ever, experience lost data, lost revenue, or lost productivity due to common system or network failures. And now we working closely with the Citrix to bring our proven availability software to virtual machines. Unlike existing availability solutions that add cost and complexity to the virtual environment, everRun VM is simple and reliable.
Third, everRun provides a much more simplified approach to server availability, whether they physical servers or virtual servers. It completely automates setup, configuration, fault detection and policy management. Automated setup and configuration eliminates the manual configuration other availability solutions require.
Barry Flanagan: Do you have any real world examples of companies who use your solutions?
Jerry Melnick: The world largest commodities exchange uses our software to ensure their pricing board information and order confirmation messages are always available, Wellcome Trust, the organization responsible for the sequencing of one-third of the human genome, uses everRun to guarantee high-availability of genomic data for its research users. And MAN AG, one of the Europe biggest and best truck manufacturers, uses everRun software to make sure all their employees in offices around Germany have continuous access to key applications and data. The division we work with is also a big Citrix customer. You can read about how they use everRun and Citrix software on our site.
Barry Flanagan: Do you have any numbers on the cost of downtime for specific industries?
Jerry Melnick: Here are some industry figures for key applications. Your mileage may vary.
Application Downtime Cost Per Hour
ERP 780,000
Supply Chain Management 660,000
E-Commerce 600,000
Internet Banking 420,000
Customer Service Center 220,000
Electronic Funds Transfer 210,000
Messaging/Email 60,000
Hospital Information System (avg. three hospital IDN with 1400 beds) 60,000
Hospital Information System (avg. single hospital with 500 beds) 15,840
We have an ROI calculator on our web site that can help you determine what downtime on your physical servers is costing your organization
Barry Flanagan: The November 28th webinar listed on your site talks about the Best of VMWorld approach to protecting virtual machines. How did Marathon win a Best of VMWorld award when the product is designed exclusively for Citrix XenServer?
Jerry Melnick: At VMworld, Mendel Rosenblum, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at VMware, highlighted hardware fault tolerance as one of the company three key technology initiatives. But according to Mendel, their solution is still in early development and won be out in the foreseeable future. On the other hand, we demonstrated everRun VM at the show, and we ship the industry first fault tolerant-class virtual machine software in Q1 of next year.
Barry Flanagan: What is different about this webinar? Why should someone working with virtualization technologies attend?
Jerry Melnick: Well, if you didn see the everRun VM showcase at VMworld or iForum, I be explaining how it works. IDC virtualization guru, John Humphreys, will share some real world numbers on virtualization savings based on customer surveys they conducted. And it a great opportunity to hear Simon Crosby (CTO of the Virtualization and Management Division of Citrix) talk about the new economics of server virtualization.
Barry Flanagan: What will an attendee learn from attending this webinar? Are there any takeaways?
Jerry Melnick: John will give you good guidance on how to evaluate and structure your virtualization business case for your management. We be providing attendees with a first chance to use a brand new virtualization and availability ROI calculator that will help make your case. And of course Simon will be thought-provoking as always.
UPDATE: I received pricing info back from Jerry and his team. The final pricing is not yet determined, but here is the TENTATIVE pricing info.
Marathon everRun VM integrated bundle (Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition v4 + everRun VM)
Dual socket: $4500 Quad socket: $9000
Marathon everRun VM only (for upgrading existing XenServer installations)
Dual socket: $2000 Quad socket: $4000
As stated above, this pricing is not yet written in stone.
Thanks to Jerry Melnick for answering our Seven Questions. There will be an opportunity to ask Jerry, John Humpreys and Simon Crosby more questions at the end of the webinar.