Archive
Archive for the ‘Tech Report’ Category
- Dell: Latitude XT2 Docs and Specs.
Update: Looks like they’ve pulled the page down for the time being. Nothing really earth shattering there, but at least the new machine uses a standard Intel chipset. The ATI X1250 chipset on the XT is horrible.
- Project Virtual Reality Check. “Project Virtual Reality Check (VRC) is a joint venture of Log•in Consultants and PQR, who have researched the optimal configuration for the different available hypervisors (hardware virtualization layers). The project arises from the growing demand for a founded advice on how to virtualise Terminal Server and Virtual Desktop (VDI) workloads.”
- Heise Security: A Single Overwrite Will Do It. It’s been conclusively proven that overwriting the data on a hard drive just once will make it impossible to recover. Now how to convince our security guys that this is true? I’m sure they have an order in for one of these.
- Chris Wolf, Burton Group: Client Hypervisors. Citrix and Intel announced an embedded client (i.e. desktop/laptop) hypervisor strategy today. Frankly I think they’re going to get crushed by Microsoft in this market, just like I think that VMWare will. It’s pointless for these vendors to spend a lot of time on this stuff in the short term. First of all, the large corporations they’re targeting are nowhere close to being able to deploy anything in this space and secondly Windows will work better with Hyper-V and Windows is the only game in corporate environments. Sure, the server guys have some (usually dinky) VMWare deployments, but those efforts are tiny and logistically trivial compared to any sort of workstation deployment. As an example of how far the corporations are from this, how many organizations have even begun to deploy much simpler technology like TPM, Smart Cards, or disk encryption? I’ll see if I can pull the numbers, but my guess is less than 10 percent. And these vendors and analysts expect IT to manage not only an embedded hypervisor, but some sort of dual workstation setup on a bunch of random laptops that the employees bought themselves? Lovely dream. Centralized virtual desktops are far more likely at this point.
- Chris Wolf: Microsoft Licensing Revisions for Virtualization are Imminent. There’s a glitch in the licensing model right now that if you use Hyper-V from inside Server 2008 for your hypervisor you need Server 2008 CALs for every device or user that connects to any of the virtualized servers on that box. (Yes, even if those servers are running Server 2003 or NetWare or Linux.) Obviously if you’re using VMWare as your hypervisor there’s no such requirement. And even weirder, if you use Hyper-V Server no extra CALs are required. Chris links to various primary resources on this and it’s clear that this situation is currently the case. So MS has a problem. They certainly don’t want to be in a position where folks are discouraged from running Server 2008 or where VMWare can claim that it’s cheaper to run ESX than it is to run Hyper-V.
- Tim Sneath (of Microsoft): Bumper Crop of Windows 7 Secrets. A very nice rundown of thirty Windows 7 (and, frankly, Vista) features that haven’t been covered to death.
- Tim Bray: Mobile Gold. Responding in part to Scoble’s post yesterday that claims that now that Palm has announced their new iPhone-look-and-feel-clone Pre, MS and Nokia are going to be shut out of the Smartphone market in the US moving forward. Bray makes the overall point that even if that’s the case (and people disagree about that), having four solid Smartphone OS vendors (Apple, RIM, Google, Palm) is great for the entire mobile ecosystem.