VMware partners line up for vSphere launch

IDG News Service - The speaker list for the launch of VMware Inc.'s vSphere "cloud operating system" on Tuesday shows how important the company's virtualization software has become to the world of IT. Michael Dell, Cisco's John Chambers, EMC's Joe Tucci and Intel's Pat Gelsinger are all expected to attend the event at VMware's headquarters, along with VMware President and CEO Paul Maritz.

Cisco Systems Inc. was among the first partners to support VMware's efforts to expand its role in the data center, with its Nexus 1000V "virtual switch." Intel Corp. has long been a core VMware partner, and Dell Inc. hopes to position its industry-standard servers as core building blocks for virtualized environments. All of the visiting executives are CEOs except for Gelsinger, who is senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group.

Some of the partners, including EMC, Unisys and Hewlett-Packard, will have some actual news on Tuesday.

EMC, which owns part of VMware, will introduce PowerPath/VE, the first version of its path management system that integrates with a virtualized environment.

PowerPath, which has been available for more than 10 years, finds the best I/O path for bits traveling between an application and the storage resource it is using, according to the company. It can shift the stream of bits from one path to another if any component fails, or balance the load of several alternate paths for the best overall performance. PowerPath/VE can do that for virtual machines as well as for physical servers, identifying the best virtual path within a data center where computing and storage are distributed across many hardware systems.

PowerPath/VE can monitor conditions all along a path, from the application on the virtual machine to the storage system, said Colin Bailey, director of platforms marketing. Because it has more advanced load-balancing algorithms and other features, PowerPath/VE delivers higher performance than native path management systems and other competing products, he said. A given system can achieve as much as 25% more IOPS (I/O operations per second) with the product, according to EMC.

The new product is fully integrated and qualified with vSphere, Bailey said. With VMware, if a virtual machine is moved from one physical server to another, PowerPath/VE will be able to find the optimal path for it and establish the new path. The selection and setup of new paths happens automatically, allowing administrators to "set it and forget it," he said.

The same PowerPath/VE software can be used for path management on nonvirtualized parts of a company's data center, with one console to manage it all, according to EMC. At the same time, PowerPath/VE also supports Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization system, Bailey said. PowerPath/VE will be available in June. Tiered pricing will begin at $2,100 for one server and unlimited virtual machines on that server.