Interesting news out of Redmond -- Microsoft users will now be able to enable nested virtualization (or the ability to run a virtual machine within another virtual machine) in Azure, as this is now a valid deployment option under Microsoft's new Dv3 and Ev3 series Azure virtual machines (VMs).

The Dv3 and Ev3 series VMs use Hyper-Threading technology found in Intel's Haswell and Broadwell chip architectures, packing more of a punch in the underlying hardware and allowing it to support larger VM sizes.  The new Dv3 VM sizes are a good balance of memory to vCPU performance, with up to 64 vCPU's and 256GiB of RAM.  And the newly named Ev3 sizes provide users with more memory to vCPU than the Dv3, so that larger workloads can be run on sizes up to the largest E64 size, with 64 vCPUs and 432GiB of RAM.  And it is that extra power that helps provide for nested virtualization.

By unlocking more power from the underlying hardware, Microsoft has been able to harness better performance and efficiency, resulting in cost savings.  These new Hyper-Threaded sizes are said to be priced up to 28% lower than the previous Dv2 sizes.

What's the reason for running nested virtualization?

Grazed from ComputerTechReview.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Dell announced this week virtual workstation appliance to support the growing use of graphics-intensive, workstation-class workloads with dedicated GPU pass-through and shared NVIDIA GRID vGPU options in a number of work settings.

The Dell Precision Appliance for Wyse helps a variety of organizations – from media and entertainment to engineering firms to the exploration and energy industries – reap the benefits of workstation-class computing with improved IT efficiency, better data security and improved user workflows, while delivering on performance...

Grazed from AlgorithmsAndMe.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Essentially virtualization means to hide the physical object from user and present to him a copy of underlying object. This object can be anything like hardware, servers, or network. In between real object and the end user, they resides a intermediate layer which provides view of real object to user as per his/her requirement.

For example, same hardware is allocated to many users and they install operating systems of their choice on that hardware to use it. Even though there is only one consistent copy of hardware, every user will see it as his copy when accessing through his operating system. Intermediate layer in this case will be software like Virtualbox or VMware etc...

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Platform9, a company with a fundamentally new approach to creating and managing private clouds, today announced that Computer Reseller News (CRN) has named it the coolest virtualization startup of 2014: "Virtualization has had a beneficial impact on data centers for years, changing the way organizations run and manage their servers, desktops and infrastructure management," said Kevin McLaughlin, Chief Investigative Reporter at CRN.

"It's probably the single most important technology that makes cloud computing possible; without it, the data center wouldn't be nearly as dynamic and flexible as it is today." "We're honored to be named the coolest virtualization startup of 2014," said Sirish Raghuram, co-founder and CEO of Platform9. "Platform9's mission is to transform the private cloud computing experience, and we're thrilled with our early customer traction and market response."...

Grazed from VirtualizationSoftware.  Author: Webinar Announcement.

Attention VMware Admins... How would you like to find out what the top 5 virtual machine problems are, how to find them and the steps you need to take to fix them permanently (with GUI and PowerCLI instructions)?

If you haven't had these virtual machine problems yet - trust me, you will.  These VM problems and their solutions have been selected based on the real-world feedback from thousands of VMware Admins and you'll have two VMware vExperts live on the Webinar to offer insight and remedies...

Grazed from Sysfera. Author: PR Announcement.

SysFera has introduced a new version of its high performance computing (HPC) and Cloud management software, SysFera-DS version 5.0, featuring immediate visualization of simulation results without downloading and opening results within applications—to gain a significant boost in productivity. As well, for the first time, HPC administrators can create custom web pages for applications improving their ability to tailor the interface to their clients’ research and analysis needs. These new capabilities, along with significant enhancements to the web interface, promote user-friendly features and tighter applications’ integration, so engineers and researchers can run jobs more quickly and preview results faster.

On display next week in SysFera’s booth #3726 at the SC Conference in New Orleans, LA, SysFera-DS v5.0 boosts HPC and Cloud management with its new, better integration with simulation applications. Users gain faster access and more visibility to their output data. Results are previewed from the web browser, eliminating file search and download time regardless of the type of image their simulation creates for output...

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Chris Preimesberger.

Bracket Computing is a startup with a lofty mission: It's daring to show enterprises how to virtualize the cloud—which, as we all know, is already quite virtualized. The 3-year-old Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company came out of stealth mode Oct. 22 to unveil something called the Bracket Computing Cell, what it describes as the world's first cloud virtualization system.

We certainly know about virtualized servers, storage, networks and even I/O. Now, we've got virtualized clouds. Stay with us here. Companies that use this, Bracket claims, will obtain the reliable, high-performing enterprise-grade security and control that they require to run significant workloads on the public cloud...

Grazed from Zacks. Author: Editorial Staff.

On Oct 10, 2014, we issued an updated research report on Citrix Systems, Inc. (CTXS - Analyst Report), a leading provider of virtualization, networking and cloud computing solutions in the U.S. Citrix is concentrating on three broad markets: Desktop virtualization, Cloud Infrastructure and networking, and Collaboration and sharing. As desktop virtualization has become a top priority for any IT set-up, Citrix is continuously introducing innovative products that will facilitate business flexibility, security and centralized management system.

We believe the global trend toward virtualization and cloud computing will facilitate Citrix to retain its momentum in the long term. Moreover, both its XenMobile and XenApps are gaining significant market traction in the highly lucrative enterprise mobility segment and Windows app virtualization...

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

The use of solid state disk (SSD) storage is definitely on the rise in cloud computing as cloud services providers look for ways to offer greater performance in their virtual machines (VMs) and instances. Microsoft (MSFT) is the latest public cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider to see the SSD light.

Microsoft has launched new VMs called the D-Series, which are backed by SSD storage for better performance and more flexibility in the size of customers' instances. The new sizes range up to 112GB in memory with compute processors Microsoft noted are 60 percent faster than the A-Series VM sizes...

Grazed from CIO. Author: Kenneth Corbin.

Within the federal government, the shift toward virtualization and cloud computing is already well underway, but agency and industry officials warn that those migrations invite new security considerations, particularly in the form of insider threats. Eric Chiu, president of the cloud and virtualization security firm HyTrust, notes the familiar list of arguments in favor of virtualizing servers and systems – lower costs and increased agility and efficiency chief among them – but points out that there are dangers associated with that transition.

"Virtualization also concentrates risk … You're taking what used to be lots of separate physical systems that had their own configurations, their own separate management consoles, their own separate group of experts that managed them, and you're collapsing all that functionality onto a single software layer," Chiu said during a panel discussion hosted by Federal News Radio. "Any virtualization admin can access any VM, could copy any VM, could delete or destroy any VM," he adds. "If you look at today's threat, it's really coming from the inside."...