Parallels at VMworld Europe

I'll be out of the office all next week, representing Parallels at VMworld Europe. If you're attending the show, be sure to swing by our booth to see what's new with Parallels Virtuozzo Containers 4.0, Parallels Server Beta, and of course, Parallels Desktop for Mac. We're booth #11 in the main exhibition hall.

Also be sure to join me and Rob Lovell, Managing Director of Parallels' UK offices, for a presentation on "Deploying a Hybrid Virtualization Solution to Maximize Datacenter Investment". We'll be on stage at 3:15 on Wednesday, and 2:15 on Thursday discussing how to effectively deploy both hypervisor and container virtualization to make your datacenter rock.

I hope to see you there. If not, I'll catch you in a week when I'm back stateside.

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Pick Parallels' theme music and win a free iPod Shuffle

While driving around this weekend I heard "New Soul" by Yael Naim on my Sirius radio. It's a cute song that's kind of folksy and light, and Yael's got a nice melodic voice that's easy on the ears. About 30 seconds into the song my ears perked up and I made the "where the heck have I heard this song before?" connection...."New Soul" is the background music for the new MacBook Air commercial.

This is one of the most interesting cross-marketing successes I've seen in a while. Not only has Apple made a product that's so cool that everyone wants one (note I said "want" not "need"), but they've also figured out a way to make the commercials so engaging that thousands of people ran to iTunes to buy the commercials music, and call their local station to request to hear it on the radio. Apple makes an extra $1 thousands of times over and gets a pile of free marketing off of it when guys like me make the connection while driving to a tennis match (your Saturday leisure activity may vary).

Microsoft is getting in on the action too. "Lake Michigan" by Rogue Wave has been getting a lot of airtime on the alt stations around Seattle as well as on Sirius' Alt Nation and Left of Center stations. This is the song from the most recent Zune commercial, and is a great piece of quasi-indie-sounding rock. And, like "New Soul", whenever I hear it, I think of the new Zunes.

I'm not sure who-copied-who here, but regardless, both Apple and Microsoft did a great job with their products and their ads.

Having said all of this, my question is...if you had to pick a song for Parallels, what would it be? Email me or post a comment. Get me your suggestion by 2/29...we'll pick a winner and send him/her a shiny new iPod Shuffle.

UPDATE: PLEASE make sure to include your email address or other means of contact in your email to me, so if you win I know how to find you! I can not ship an iPod Shuffle to "anonymous". :)
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Dilbert, continued

Looks like Dilbert's foray into the virtualization world continues:

This is unfortunately exactly what happens in a lot of enterprise deployments; what looks simple really isn't. When you're gearing up for a virtualization project, here are a few things you should be sure to look into:

• Hardware: What legacy boxes you looking to replace/consolidate? Is your current hardware beefy enough to handle more services, or will you have to upgrade?
• Workloads: What's a prime candidate for virtualization and what isn't?
• Licensing: Are you OSes and applications ready for virtualization?
  
• Administration: Who's managing the virtual servers? What will you do to contain VM and OS sprawl? How will you handle provisioning new virtual servers or containers?

Of course, this is just scratching the surface, but hopefully its food for thought, and should reinforce the fact that if you plan ahead, your virtualization project WILL be easy and successful.

If you want to discuss your pending or "maybe someday" virtualization deployment, give us a yell and we'll be happy to help.


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Dilbert goes virtual

Everyone's favorite office drone, Dilbert, entered the virtualization world this week with two pretty entertaining cartoons. Both are below, as well as a bit of commentary on each:

I think the joke here is interesting; while deciding that server virtualization is a good idea, making it work well, driving ROI, and streamlining IT with it requires a solid plan. Plan ahead an work with your vendor (us, hopefully) to determine which workloads should be virtualized and which shouldn't, assess your hardware and physical infrastructure, and discuss management and administration options and best practices. Also make sure that you evaluate both hypervisor virtualization technology (i.e., Parallels Server) as well as container technology (i.e., Parallels Virtuozzo Containers) so you can determine which approach - or maybe both - is right for you.

This reminds me of a maxim I learned from my jiujitsu shihan, and that used to tell my self-defense students; "Cry in the dojo so you can laugh on the battlefield." For those of you who don't speak esoteric, that means "put in the work to plan ahead and your virtualization deployment will be easy, cost effective and productive".

Here's the second cartoon:
Aside from being a pretty funny jab at consultants, this raises a good point about how difficult most virtualization solutions - actually, most enterprise software in general - are to get up and running.

Here at Parallels, we saw that and realized that hard doesn't necessarily equal good, which is why we've spent so much time and effort in all of our products, even sophisticated ones like Parallels Server and Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, to make them super easy to install and manage. Try them for yourself and see what I mean.

What I'm most impressed about these trips is that Scott Adams (Dilbert's creator, writer and illustrator) managed to capture all of this in 6 frames and 8 sentences, and it took me about a full page of text. And his strips were funny. Where as my post is, well, not as funny.

You win this round, Scott...but thanks for the industry plug anyway!


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Wanted: Parallels Desktop expert

Saw this job posting in my Google Alerts this morning and thought it was worth sharing. Open the image and take a look at bullet #5. Very cool to see that knowing how to work with Parallels is a must if you want this job!

Speaking of, if you DO want this job, you can read the full description and apply here.
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Parallels on the MacBook Air

Finally got my MacBook Air for testing, and I'm happy to report that Parallels Desktop works great on it. I installed Windows XP on build 5584.


While I stick to my original assessment that this is not ready to be a primary machine, it its quite cool to play with. Apple was not kidding when they said it was super light...this thing is small enough that you kind of want to play frisbee with it!

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New Parallels Workstation for Win/Lin build released

The boys (and girls) in engineering have posted a new build for Parallels Workstation for Windows & Linux. The new build, numbered 2222, offers a number of nice performance and usability enhancements:

• Full compatibility with the newest Linux Kernel (2.6.24)
• Add up to 5 network adapters to any virtual machine
  
• Better support for Ubuntu 7.10 and Fedora 8 as both primary and guest OSes
• A better Windows Vista Parallels Tools package
• Better support for AMD-V (AMD's built-in virtualization technology)
  

The build is free for all Parallels Workstation customers, and should pop up via auto-update starting today. If you want to download and install it manually, hit the Parallels Download Page.

On another note, the new, redesigned Parallels.com is live. Check it out and let me know what you think.
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