Applications Blog

VMware @ WES (Blackberry User Conference)

schambers — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:59:38 GMT

VMware is exhibiting at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES), RIM’s big user conference, for the first time this year. If you’re attending come by our booth, no. 603 – we’ll have demos and technical papers available with information about virtualizing enterprise messaging apps (specifically Exchange and BlackBerry Enterprise Server). Also on hand will be two of the VMware IT team responsible for administering VMware’s own virtualized BES environment - so bring your questions about virtualizing BES and see if you can stump them.

We also have a demo session on Wednesday, May 6th at 3:00 p.m. in the Demo Theater. We’re planning two demos: Exchange on VMware, and the new VMware Fault Tolerance feature being used to ensure email availability for a BlackBerry that belongs to a Very Important Person.

WES is happening in Orlando FL from May 5-7. You can learn more about WES and register for it here: http://www.attendwes.com/

New VMware ISV Center

schambers — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:19:50 GMT

The new VMware ISV Center helps application ISVs maximize their partnership with VMware to lower the TCO of their applications, greatly improve service levels, and revolutionize their customers’ experience. Use the ISV Center to :

Explore how to deliver better solutions to your customers by running your applications on the VMware platform. Read about all the features that your applications automatically inherit when they run on a VMware-managed virtual machine

Support your applications on the VMware platform to make sure they will run with the highest availability and performance. Submit an official support statement, read about best practices for testing your applications on our platform, and learn about training and support options we make available to our partners.

Deliver and deploy applications more efficiently, securely, and cost-effectively on the VMware platform. Learn about Virtual Appliances and ThinApp, two different approaches you may use to encapsulate your applications and deliver them ready to plug into your customer’s environment.

The ISV Center also provides timely and valuable information such as how to adjust licensing models for virtual environments, and customer success stories regarding deployments of business and enterprise applications on the VMware platform.

If you are an ISV Customer, see the Business Critical Applications section.

Visit the ISV Center today!

You get more clustering on VMware!

schambers — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 10:36:43 GMT

Not only do you get built-in clustering with VMware with High Availability, which now clusters at the VM level not just the host level, but you can run other clustering products on VMware. Check out:

There's something missing, though... who can write up a Veritas Cluster practice - I worked on one of those three years ago, but I don't have my notes...

Call for action! Which application proven practices?

schambers — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:23:34 GMT

Some time ago I asked the community What other applications do we need proven practices for? I picked the top ten and created a new poll online to see which ones this community wants to focus on.

It's clear that Microsoft apps come the top of the list. The good news is that I know that all of them have been virtualized, in production, by existing customers, today. Now we need to find out how they did it!

Inside VMware we can find out the way(s) to do it - but I think the best answers come from the members of this community. So, have a look at the poll and see if you've virtualized any of these - and are you willing to write up what you did?

In most cases, virtualizing an application is straight forward... create VM, install OS, install app etc. but you might wish to include the design considerations, perhaps the infrastructure topology - be as creative as you like. You can upload images, even link to YouTube content -)

I'm going to ask Chris Skinner if he might kick things off with Active Directory because I can't believe people are STILL not virtualizing it, and I did this with customers over four years ago...but Chris is the master!

Cheers

Steve

Oracle RAC on ESX from Tim Hall

schambers — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:49:16 GMT

Tim Hall of oracle-base.com fame wrote a guide on installing Oracle RAC on VMware Server... to think that people are scared of running RAC on ESX, and here's Tim doing the job on our free, hosted product! Great work, Tim!

Of course, we couldn't leave it like that, so I logged on to Tim's website, registered myself, and asked him if he'd be interested in doing the same on ESX Server....

....once we got him some Not For Resale licenses to help him along with full access to our products, Tim arranged his own hardware and - this is the amazing bit - whilst consulting around the country he STILL managed to find time to install our products, create RHEL virtual machines, install RAC and get it all written up!

After working with myself and Tushar on getting things up and running and onto VIOPS, I think the whole thing took about a week in elapsed time and a couple of days in actual effort.

The end results are fantastic, and you can see them here:

Check out Tim's website for more goodies.

More applications proven practices are planned - why not contribute your own, or help us prioritize the ones that you want to see first? Post a question in the discussion forum, or just get going and submit your own proven practice - it's really easy!