VMware

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VMware Inc.
Type Public
Traded as NYSE: VMW
Industry Computer software
Fate Acquired by EMC
Founded Palo Alto, California, USA, 1998
Founder(s) Diane Greene
Mendel Rosenblum
Scott Devine
Edward Wang
Edouard Bugnion
Headquarters Palo Alto, California, USA
Key people Joseph M. Tucci (Chairman)
Carl M. Eschenbach (COO)
Pat Gelsinger (CEO)
Products vSphere, ESX Server, ESXi Server, Workstation, Fusion, Player, Server, VMware Service Manager, ThinApp, View, ACE, Lab Manager, Infrastructure, Converter, Site Recovery Manager, Stage Manager, vCenter Orchestrator, vCenter Operations Management Suite
Revenue Increase US$ 4.61 billion (2012)
Operating income Increase US$ 872 million (2012)
Net income Increase US$ 746 million (2012)
Total assets Decrease US$ 8.09 billion (2012)
Total equity Increase US$ 4.63 billion (2012)
Employees 14,300 (December 31, 2013)[1]
Parent EMC Corporation (since 2004)
Website VMware.com

VMware, Inc. is an American software company that provides cloud and virtualization software and services,[2][3][4] and was the first to successfully virtualize the x86 architecture.[5] Founded in 1998, VMWare is based in Palo Alto, California, USA. In 2004 it was acquired by and became a subsidiary of EMC Corporation.

VMware's desktop software runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, while its enterprise software hypervisors for servers, VMware ESX and VMware ESXi, are bare-metal hypervisors that run directly on server hardware without requiring an additional underlying operating system.[6]

History

In 1998, VMware was founded by Diane Greene, Mendel Rosenblum, Scott Devine, Edward Wang and Edouard Bugnion. Greene and Rosenblum, who are married, first met while at the University of California, Berkeley.[7] Edouard Bugnion remained the chief architect and CTO of VMware until 2005,[8] and went on to found Nuova Systems (now part of Cisco). Until 1998, VMware operated in stealth mode with roughly 20 employees by the end of that year. The company was launched officially in February 1999 at the DEMO Conference organized by Chris Shipley.[9] The first product, VMware Workstation, was delivered in May 1999[10] and entered the server market in 2001 with VMware GSX Server (hosted) and VMware ESX Server (hostless).[11] In 2003, VMware launched VMware Virtual Center, the VMotion and Virtual SMP technology. 64-bit support appeared in 2004. The same year, the company was acquired by EMC Corporation for $625 million.[12]

In August 2007, EMC released 15% of the company's shares in VMware in an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock debuted at US$29 per share and closed the day at $51.[13]

On July 8, 2008, VMware co-founder, president and CEO Diane Greene was unexpectedly fired by the VMware Board of Directors and replaced by Paul Maritz, a retired 14-year Microsoft veteran who was heading EMC's cloud computing business unit.[14] In the same news release VMware stated that 2008 revenue growth will be "modestly below the previous guidance of 50% growth over 2007." As a result, market price of VMware dropped nearly 25%. Then on September 10, 2008, Rosenblum, the company's chief scientist, resigned.

On September 16, 2008, VMware announced its collaboration with Cisco to provide joint data center solutions. One of the first results of this is the Cisco Nexus 1000V, a distributed virtual software switch that will be an integrated option in the VMware infrastructure.[15]

On April 12, 2011, they released an open source platform-as-a-service system called Cloud Foundry, and a hosted version of the service. This supports application deployment for Java, Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, Node.js, Scala and support for MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Postgres, RabbitMQ.[16]

In April 2013, VMware and EMC formally created a joint venture with GE called Pivotal. All of VMware's application- and developer-oriented products, including Spring, tc Server, Cloud Foundry, RabbitMQ, GemFire and SQLFire were transferred to this organization. The Hyperic monitoring tool, acquired through the SpringSource acquisition, remains a VMware product.

Acquisitions

In October 2005, VMware acquired Asset Optimization Group, specializing in capacity planning.[17]

In May 2008, VMware acquired Israeli start-up company B-hive Networks for an undisclosed sum. Following the acquisition VMware opened an R&D center in Israel, based initially on B-Hive’s facilities and team in Israel.[18]

In October 2008, VMware acquired Grenoble-based mobile hypervisor developer Trango Virtual Processors.[19]

On November 26, 2008, VMware acquired Tungsten Graphics, a company with core expertise in 3D graphics driver development.[20]

On August 10, 2009, VMware announced the acquisition of SpringSource, which did enterprise and web application development and management.[21] The acquisition allowed use of the term platform as a service (PaaS). The acquisition expanded VMware's education services to include SpringSource University and its authorized training partners such as Spring People in India.[22] The SpringSource assets became part of the Pivotal joint venture in April 2013.

On January 12, 2010, VMware acquired Zimbra, an open-source collaboration software tool, from Yahoo (later sold in July 2013 to Telligent Systems).

On May 6, 2010, VMware acquired GemStone, to be operated under VMware's SpringSource division.

On April 26, 2011, VMware acquired SlideRocket a startup which developed a SaaS application for building business presentations that are stored online. Through a Web-based interface, users can handle all parts of the process, from designing slides and compiling content, to reviewing documents and publishing and delivering them. VMware subsequently sold SlideRocket to ClearSlide on March 5, 2013.

On July 2, 2012, VMware acquired DynamicOps.[23]

On July 23, 2012, VMware acquired Nicira Inc.[24][25]

On February 11, 2013, VMware acquired Virsto.[26]

On October 15, 2013, VMware acquired Desktone.[27]

On January 22nd 2014, VMWare acquired AirWatch for $1.54 billion.[28]

Core product design

VMware developed a range of products, most notable of which are their hypervisors. VMware became well known for their first type 2 hypervisor known as GSX. This product has since evolved into two hypervisor products lines, VMware's type 1 hypervisors running directly on hardware, along with their hosted type 2 hypervisors.

VMware software provides a completely virtualized set of hardware to the guest operating system.[29] VMware software virtualizes the hardware for a video adapter, a network adapter, and hard disk adapters. The host provides pass-through drivers for guest USB, serial, and parallel devices. In this way, VMware virtual machines become highly portable between computers, because every host looks nearly identical to the guest. In practice, a system administrator can pause operations on a virtual machine guest, move or copy that guest to another physical computer, and there resume execution exactly at the point of suspension. Alternatively, for enterprise servers, a feature called vMotion allows the migration of operational guest virtual machines between similar but separate hardware hosts sharing the same storage (or, with vMotion Storage, separate storage can be used, too). Each of these transitions is completely transparent to any users on the virtual machine at the time it is being migrated.

VMware Workstation, Server, and ESX take a more optimized path to running target operating systems on the host than emulators (such as Bochs) which simulate the function of each CPU instruction on the target machine one-by-one, or dynamic recompilation which compiles blocks of machine-instructions the first time they execute, and then uses the translated code directly when the code runs subsequently (Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac OS X takes this approach.) VMware software does not emulate an instruction set for different hardware not physically present. This significantly boosts performance, but can cause problems when moving virtual machine guests between hardware hosts using different instruction-sets (such as found in 64-bit Intel and AMD CPUs), or between hardware hosts with a differing number of CPUs. Software that is CPU agnostic can usually survive such a transition, unless it is agnostic by forking at startup, in which case, the software or the guest OS must be stopped before moving it, then restarted after the move.

VMware's products predate the virtualization extensions to the x86 instruction set, and do not require virtualization-enabled processors. On newer processors, the hypervisor is now designed to take advantage of the extensions. However, unlike many other hypervisors, VMware still supports older processors. In such cases, it uses the CPU to run code directly whenever possible (as, for example, when running user-mode and virtual 8086 mode code on x86). When direct execution cannot operate, such as with kernel-level and real-mode code, VMware products use Binary translation (BT) to re-write the code dynamically. The translated code gets stored in spare memory, typically at the end of the address space, which segmentation mechanisms can protect and make invisible. For these reasons, VMware operates dramatically faster than emulators, running at more than 80% of the speed that the virtual guest operating-system would run directly on the same hardware. In one study VMware claims a slowdown over native ranging from 0–6 percent for the VMware ESX Server.[30]

VMware's approach avoids some of the difficulties of virtualization on x86-based platforms. Virtual machines may deal with offending instructions by replacing them, or by simply running kernel-code in user-mode. Replacing instructions runs the risk that the code may fail to find the expected content if it reads itself; one cannot protect code against reading while allowing normal execution, and replacing in-place becomes complicated. Running the code unmodified in user-mode will also fail, as most instructions which just read the machine-state do not cause an exception and will betray the real state of the program, and certain instructions silently change behavior in user-mode. One must always rewrite; performing a simulation of the current program counter in the original location when necessary and (notably) remapping hardware code breakpoints.

Although VMware virtual machines run in user-mode, VMware Workstation itself requires the installation of various drivers in the host operating-system, notably to dynamically switch the Global Descriptor Table (GDT) and the Interrupt Descriptor Table (IDT).

The VMware product line can also run different operating systems on a dual-boot system simultaneously by booting one partition natively while using the other as a guest within VMware Workstation.

Products

Desktop software

  • VMware Workstation (first product launched by VMware in 1999). This software suite allows users to run multiple instances of x86 or x86-64 -compatible operating systems on a single physical PC.
  • VMware Fusion provides similar functionality for users of the Intel Mac platform, along with full compatibility with virtual machines created by other VMware products.
  • VMware Player is freeware for non-commercial use, without requiring a licence for VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion; or for commercial use with permission. Player versions before 3.0.1 could not create virtual machines.

Server software

VMware has produced two virtualization products for servers:

  1. VMware vSphere[31] (also called "ESXi"), an enterprise-level product, can deliver greater performance than the freeware VMware Server, due to lower system overhead. VMware ESXi, as a "bare-metal" product, runs directly on the server hardware, allowing virtual servers to also use hardware more or less directly. In addition, VMware ESXi integrates into VMware vCenter, which offers extra services to enhance the reliability and manageability of a server deployment, such as:
    • VMotion — the capability to move a running virtual machine from one ESX host to another whilst the Operating System continues to run and service users(and faster than some other editions)
    • Storage VMotion — the capability to move a running virtual machine from one storage device to another whilst the Operating System is running
    • DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler) — automatic load-balancing of an ESX cluster using VMotion
    • HA (High Availability) — in case of hardware failure in a cluster, the virtual servers will automatically restart on another host in the cluster
  2. VMware Server (formerly called "GSX Server"; obsolete as of 2013)[32][33] was[34] also provided as freeware for non-commercial use, like VMware Player, and can also set up virtual machines. As a "hosted" application, VMware Server runs within an existing Linux or Windows operating system.

Cloud management software

A VMware event that focuses on virtualization and cloud computing.
  • VMware vCloud
    • VMware vCloud Director enables self-service access to logical pools of compute, network and storage resources with policy driven controls and service level agreements.
    • VMware vCloud Datacenter Services
    • VMware vCloud Express
    • VMware vCloud Consulting Services
    • VMware vCloud API
  • VMware Go[35] is a web-based service to guide users of any expertise level through the installation and configuration of VMware vSphere Hypervisor.

Virtual desktop infrastructure

Application platform

  • VMware vFabric tcServer, an enterprise Tomcat App server.
  • VMware vFabric Enterprise Ready, an enterprise Apache Web server.
  • VMware vFabric Hyperic provides web and custom application monitoring and performance management for physical, virtual and cloud environments.
  • VMware vFabric GemFire Is an in memory data grid that enables real-time data distribution, data replication, caching and data management using a non-relational key-value store, to allow storage of data for client applications.
  • RabbitMQ provides robust and reliable inter-system messaging for modern applications.
  • VMware vFabric SQLFire is memory-oriented data management software delivering application data at runtime with horizontal scale and lightning-fast performance while providing developers with the well-known SQL interface and tools.
  • VMware vFabric Web Server increases your web tiers performance, scalability and security while reducing deployment times and complexity with VMware vFabric Web Server, the HTTP server and load-balancing component of the vFabric Cloud Platform.

Backup software

In April 2011, EMC transferred control of Mozy to VMware.[36]

Mozy produced MozyHome and MozyPro.[37] MozyHome is the consumer version of the Mozy backup service. It is available to buy on a monthly subscription.[38] MozyPro is the business version of the Mozy backup service. MozyPro requires a separate license for each computer that is being backed up, as well as a server license for any server that is being backed up. Customers then pay per gigabyte of data they have in the data center.[39]

Networking and security products

  • vCloud Networking and Security is a software-defined networking and security solution that allows businesses to rapidly adapt network and security needs.

IT Business Management products

  • IT Business Management Suite
  • vCenter Chargeback Manager provides cost transparency for virtualized workloads.
  • IT Benchmarking allows businesses to benchmark their IT capabilities against others.
  • Service center automates IT Service Management. Presents IT services with a service catalog to end-users and automates the request process for provisioning cloud resources.

Other products

VMware vCenter Converter (VMware Converter) comes in both Enterprise ($, bundling and entitlement with vCenter Server) and Standalone (free) versions and is designed primarily for the following tasks:[40]

  • Convert a physical machine into a virtual machine; referred to as Physical-to-Virtual or P2V.
  • Convert a virtual machine of one type into another (V2V) - such as from Hyper-V to VMware, other VMware Products to vCenter (e.g. from VMware Workstation), backup images (e.g. Ghost, Acronis, BackupExec)
  • Run automated configuration tasks on VMware ESX/ESXi servers.

Converted VMs are compatible with VMware ESX/ESXi, VMware Server and VMware Workstation. A P2V conversion can be done from any physical machine running Microsoft Windows (XP or later) or Linux based (Linux only works on Standalone version). Conversions can be managed from a centralized console allowing for multiple conversions at the same time (using the Enterprise version). VMware vCenter Converter replaces the older VMware products "P2V Assistant" and "Importer". P2V Assistant allowed users to convert physical machines into virtual machines; and Importer allowed the import of virtual machines from other products into VMware Workstation.

VMware Capacity Planner, an information technology (IT) capacity planning tool, collects utilization-data in heterogeneous computing environments and compares it to industry-standard reference-data to provide analysis and decision-support modeling.

VMware ACE provides a means of distributing secured virtual desktops to networked client PCs. (now obsolete)

VMware ThinApp, formerly Thinstall, is a virtualization suite capable of creating portable software ("portable apps"). This software enables applications to execute without being previously installed.

VMware Infrastructure is a collection of VMware products used to manage a VMware ESX/ESXi server environment.

VSAN VMware's Virtual SAN technology, utilising local storage inside a host ESXi server to build a virtual SAN

VMware vSphere is a "cloud OS". VMware vSphere 4 was originally named VMware Virtual Infrastructure (VI) 3 and is capable of managing large pools of infrastructure, including software and hardware[41] both from internal and external networks.

VMware Tools packages add drivers and utilities to improve the graphical performance, including mouse tracking, for different guest operating systems. The packages also enable some integration between guest and host systems, including shared folders, plug-and-play devices, NTP clock synchronisation, and cutting-and-pasting across environments. VMware Inc makes VMware Tools available for Microsoft Windows, Linux, Sun Solaris, FreeBSD, and Novell NetWare guest systems.[42]

At VMworld 2007 VMware announced that large portions of VMware Tools for Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD guests were released under GPL and GPL-compatible licenses. They also announced the creation of the Open Virtual Machine Tools ("open-vm-tools") project on Sourceforge.net.[43]

On June 12 at Hadoop Summit 2012, VMware announced the release of Project Serengeti, open-source code that optimizes Hadoop for use in VMware virtualized environments. Serengeti allows administrators to deploy Hadoop nodes in virtual containers, which then can be managed through vCenter.[44]

VMware's promontory headquarters at 3401 Hillview Avenue in Palo Alto, California

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Form 10-K, Annual Report for Fiscal Year ended December 31, 2012". VMware.com. 
  2. ↑ "VMware leader in virtualization market". 
  3. ↑ Lohr, Steve (2009-08-31). "VMware market share more than 80%". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-05-27. 
  4. ↑ "VMware, Hyper-V virtualization leave others in the dust". 
  5. ↑ http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware_paravirtualization.pdf
  6. ↑ "ESX Server Architecture". Vmware.com. Retrieved 2009-10-22. 
  7. ↑ Adam Lashinksky (2007-10-02). "50 Most Powerful Women in Business — Full speed ahead". CNN. "In 1988 she picked up a second master's, in computer science, at the University of California at Berkeley, where she met Rosenblum" 
  8. ↑ "Edouard Bugnion lives in the virtual world". 
  9. ↑ "VMware Milestones". 
  10. ↑ "VMware company history". 
  11. ↑ "VMware ready to capitalize on hot server market". June 30, 2000. 
  12. ↑ "EMC Completes Acquisition of VMware". Vmware.com. Retrieved 2013-06-27. 
  13. ↑ Mullins, Robert (2007-08-14). "Update: VMware the bright spot on a gray Wall Street day". IDG News Service. Retrieved 2007-08-15. 
  14. ↑ Savitz, Eric (2008-07-08). "VMware ousts CEO Diane Greene; cuts '08 guidance". Barron’s. Retrieved 2009-07-01. 
  15. ↑ "Virtual Networking Features of the VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch and Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches". 
  16. ↑ Cloud Foundry Frequently Asked Questions 
  17. ↑ "A look at VMware’s past acquisitions". 
  18. ↑ Vidra, Eze (May 28, 2008). "VMWare Snatches B-Hive, Opens R&D Center in Israel". VCcafe. 
  19. ↑ Ward, Keith. "The Next Frontier: Mobile Phone Hypervisors". Virtualizationreview.com. Retrieved 2013-06-27. 
  20. ↑ David Marshall (2008-12-16), VMware's year end acquisition of Tungsten Graphics, InfoWorld 
  21. ↑ "VMware to Acquire SpringSource". 
  22. ↑ springpeople.com
  23. ↑ "VMware to Acquire DynamicOps, Inc". VMware. 2012-07-02. Retrieved 2013-06-27. 
  24. ↑ "VMware to Acquire Nicira". News release (VMware). July 23, 2012. Retrieved July 11, 2013. 
  25. ↑ Williams, Alex (July 23, 2012). "VMware Buys Nicira For $1.26 Billion And Gives More Clues About Cloud Strategy". TechCrunch. Retrieved July 11, 2013. 
  26. ↑ "VMware to Acquire Virsto". News release (VMware). February 11, 2013. Retrieved July 11, 2013. 
  27. ↑ "VMware Acquires Desktone". News release (VMware). October 15, 2013. Retrieved October 15, 2013. 
  28. ↑ http://ir.vmware.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=820448.  Missing or empty |title= (help)
  29. ↑ "How does VMWare Work?". Extremetech.com. 2009-06-22. Retrieved 2009-07-01. 
  30. ↑ "A Performance Comparison of Hypervisors". 
  31. ↑ VMware ESXi Bare-Metal Hypervisor for Multiple Virtual Machines - United States. Vmware.com. Retrieved on 2013-10-16.
  32. ↑ "VMware Products Life Cycle Policies". VMware. 
  33. ↑ http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/support/Product-Lifecycle-Matrix.pdf
  34. ↑ "VMware Server, Free Virtualization Download for Virtual Server Consolidation". Vmware.com. 2011-06-30. Retrieved 2013-06-27. 
  35. ↑ "VMware Go Pro: Install and Configure Vmware vSphere Hypervisor via the Web". 
  36. ↑ Chris Mellor (April 5, 2011). "VMware 'buys' Mozy for its cloudy goodness". The Register. Retrieved October 3, 2013. 
  37. ↑ CrunchBase (January 1, 2008). "MozyHome / MozyPro". Retrieved 2010-08-30. 
  38. ↑ Harel Kodesh (February 1, 2011). "New MozyHome Plans". Retrieved 2011-02-02. 
  39. ↑ TechCrunch (April 3, 2007). "MozyPro Launches". Retrieved 2010-08-31. 
  40. ↑ VMware Converter. Retrieved 2008-03-31.
  41. ↑ "VMware vSphere". VMware. 
  42. ↑ "Installing and Upgrading VMware Tools". Workstation User’s Manual. VMware, Inc. 2007-09-20. Retrieved 2007-11-02. 
  43. ↑ "VMware Unveils VMware Tools as Open Source Software". LXer. Retrieved 2009-07-01. 
  44. ↑ "VMware virtualizing Hadoop via Project Serengeti". Brandon Butler, Network World. Retrieved 2012-06-13. 

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