Server virtualisation platforms and management

Get news and technical advice on virtualisation platforms, virtualisation management and strategy. Our resources weigh the pros and cons of virtualisation platforms (VMware, Hyper-V and XenServer) in light of your datacentre requirements and offer step-by-step guidance on virtualisation management tasks, such as installing Hyper-V or VMware, monitoring, troubleshooting and securing virtual machines, P2V, V2P, V2V migration, desktop virtualisation strategies, and more.

News 20 May 2024
Red Hat CEO on OpenShift evolution and AI moves

Red Hat CEO Matt Hicks talks up how OpenShift AI and RHEL AI can work together to lower the cost of training and inferencing to drive AI adoption and the company’s traction with customers looking to move away from VMware Continue Reading
News 10 Apr 2024
Breakthrough may herald secure home quantum computing

An emerging approach to quantum security dubbed blind quantum computing may one day help spur mass adoption of quantum computing safely and securely, using technology that is already available today Continue Reading

Definition 10 May 2024

virtual machine escape

A virtual machine escape is an exploit in which an attacker runs code on a VM that lets the operating system (OS) running within it break out and interact directly with the hypervisor. Continue Reading
Definition 22 Apr 2024

host virtual machine (host VM)

A host virtual machine is the server component of a virtual machine the underlying hardware that provides computing resources to support a particular guest VM. Continue Reading
15 Apr 2024

Education sector facing huge VMware cost increases after Broadcom ends discounts

UK non-profit London Grid for Learning and Belgian university KU Leuven are just two of the academic organisations facing huge licensing increases after Broadcom scraps VMware academic discount scheme Continue Reading
News 10 Apr 2024

Breakthrough may herald secure home quantum computing

An emerging approach to quantum security dubbed blind quantum computing may one day help spur mass adoption of quantum computing safely and securely, using technology that is already available today Continue Reading
News 04 Apr 2024

Education sector facing huge VMware cost increases after Broadcom ends discounts

UK non-profit London Grid for Learning and Belgian university KU Leuven are just two of the academic organisations facing huge licensing increases after Broadcom scraps VMware academic discount scheme Continue Reading
Blog Post 20 Mar 2024

Maybe Einstein Was Wrong with E and MC - Apparently SoftIron = VM Squared...

Let’s face it, the scenario facing VMware for resellers and customer alike, post-Broadcom acquisition is common knowledge – the future landscape is not as it was. On top of that, it has to be ... Continue Reading
Definition 18 Mar 2024

paravirtualization

Paravirtualization is a type of hardware virtualization that enables the guest operating system (OS) in a virtual machine (VM) to access the hypervisor directly, rather than indirectly through a complex abstraction layer, as is the case with conventional full virtualization. Continue Reading
Feature 11 Mar 2024

A better way to manage hybrid or multicloud deployments

Cloud-native strategies notwithstanding, workloads running on-premise or in private clouds will continue to present management challenges Continue Reading
News 05 Mar 2024

Dutch organisations start building a federated European cloud

The ‘European cloud services in an open federated ecosystem’ (ECOFED) project is co-funded by the Dutch government and will run from 2024 to 2027 Continue Reading
Definition 04 Mar 2024

application containerization (app containerization)

Application containerization is a virtualization technology that works at the operating system (OS) level. It is used for deploying and running distributed applications in their own isolated environments, without the use of virtual machines (VMs). Continue Reading
Feature 26 Feb 2024

Tracking the change in enterprise attitudes to hybrid cloud

Hybrid cloud deployments are poised to become even more prevalent in the enterprise as public cloud fails to live up to the hype on cost savings Continue Reading
Definition 20 Feb 2024

hypervisor

A hypervisor is software that facilitates running multiple virtual machines (VMs) with their own operating systems on a single computer host's hardware. Continue Reading
Definition 12 Feb 2024

guest operating system (guest OS)

A guest operating system is the operating system installed on either a virtual machine (VM) or partitioned disk. It is usually different from the host operating system. Continue Reading
Opinion 28 Nov 2023

Uncertainty lingers with Broadcom’s VMware acquisition

Large enterprises with complex VMware environments are looking to de-risk their businesses from potential changes resulting from the Broadcom-VMware deal Continue Reading
News 07 Nov 2023

VMware consolidates AI push at Explore in Barcelona

VMware’s vision is of ‘cloud smart’ enterprises that run on-premise, in multiclouds and in the ‘edge cloud’, with secure and compliant generative AI fuelling efficient business processes Continue Reading
Definition 08 Sep 2023

virtual CPU (vCPU)

A virtual CPU (vCPU) is the processor of a virtual machine (VM). Continue Reading
News 07 Sep 2023

Node4 helps performing arts charity revamp staff home working setup with IT infrastructure overhaul

Managed cloud services provider Node4 opens up about the work it has done to help make it easier for one of its long-standing clients to embrace remote working Continue Reading
Definition 09 Aug 2023

VMware snapshot

A VMware snapshot is a copy of a virtual machine (VM) in a VMware environment taken at a specific point in time. Continue Reading
News 04 Aug 2023

VMware Cloud on AWS expands to Melbourne cloud region

MLC Life Insurance is tapping the VMware Cloud on AWS service in the AWS Melbourne cloud region to exit its datacentre and reduce technology costs Continue Reading
News 25 Jul 2023

Forestry and Land Scotland uses Nutanix to gain breathing space in cloud modernisation

With its datacentre contract coming to an end, the Forestry and Land Scotland agency, which has a cloud-first strategy, needed a way to manage cloud migration Continue Reading
Definition 12 Jul 2023

Windows containers

Windows containers provide abstracted, isolated, lightweight and portable operating environments for application development on a single system. Continue Reading
Opinion 10 Jul 2023

How Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware will accelerate multi-cloud adoption

How will the $60bn acquisition accelerate the private cloud and how important are regulator concerns about interoperability? Continue Reading
News 06 Jul 2023

VMware ramps up on sovereign cloud in APAC

VMware is working with local partners to deliver sovereign cloud services in the region, amid growing sovereignty interests among governments and the need maintain business continuity Continue Reading
News 28 Mar 2023

BNP Paribas moves to Swedish datacentre in high-performance computing strategy

BNP Paribas is moving data-intensive workloads to a Swedish datacentre to increase capacity while reducing its carbon footprint Continue Reading
Definition 16 Mar 2023

bare-metal provisioning

Bare-metal provisioning is the process of installing an operating system (OS) or Type 1 hypervisor directly on a computer's hard disk. Continue Reading
Feature 27 Feb 2023

Green tech and the private sector: How the UK government will hit its 2050 net-zero emissions goal

The UK government is targeting net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, but it will need the private sector’s help and its appetite for investing in green technologies to meet its goal Continue Reading
Definition 14 Feb 2023

heartbeat (computing)

In computing, a heartbeat is a program that runs specialized scripts automatically whenever a system is initialized or rebooted. Continue Reading
News 06 Feb 2023

Ransomware operator turns their fire on two-year-old VMware bug

A vulnerability in VMware ESXi servers that users should have patched in 2021 is now being exploited to spread ransomware Continue Reading
News 01 Feb 2023

Cisco fixes two bugs that could have led to supply chain attacks on users

Two vulnerabilities uncovered in Cisco hardware could have opened the door to serious supply chain cyber attacks, according to the Trellix researchers who found them Continue Reading
News 20 Jan 2023

Veeam survey finds ransomware blocks digital transformation

Annual report shows secular trend to the cloud and increased use of containers, but prevalence of ransomware attacks means digital transformation is hindered Continue Reading
News 27 Dec 2022

Top 10 ASEAN IT stories of 2022

Despite the challenges over the past year, ASEAN businesses have taken things in stride as they press on with digital transformation, whether it is empowering citizen developers or building cloud-native applications Continue Reading
News 16 Dec 2022

CIO interview: Steve Capper, CIO, SNC-Lavalin

Engineering and construction giant SNC-Lavalin has consolidated its global datacentre estate and implemented private cloud to support the unique demands of its business Continue Reading
Definition 08 Dec 2022

virtualization architecture

A virtualization architecture is a conceptual model of a virtual infrastructure that is most frequently applied in cloud computing. Continue Reading
News 05 Dec 2022

How HashiCorp is driving cloud provisioning and management

HashiCorp CEO Dave McJannet talks up how the company is supporting cloud provisioning in a hybrid environment and its investments in Asia-Pacific to capitalise on the region’s growth potential Continue Reading
Blog Post 22 Nov 2022

VMware's breadth and depth impresses, but is it still a safe bet?

At the recent VMware Explore conference in Barcelona, there was an elephant in the hall: Broadcom. VMware execs spoke about the $61bn acquisition positively, confidently even. It would be business ... Continue Reading
News 31 Oct 2022

Prepare today for potentially high-impact OpenSSL bug

OpenSSL trailed a critical vulnerability patch last week, which will be only the second such flaw ever found in the open source encryption project. Unfortunately, the first was Heartbleed Continue Reading
News 14 Sep 2022

VMware Cloud on AWS debuts in Hong Kong

VMware has expanded its VMware Cloud on AWS to Hong Kong, following the launch of the Alibaba Cloud VMware service in Greater China Continue Reading
News 05 Sep 2022

VMware doubles down on cloud in ASEAN

Paul Simos, VMware’s managing director and vice-president for Southeast Asia and Korea, dives deeper into the company’s cloud strategy for the region Continue Reading
Feature 08 Aug 2022

Icelandic datacentres may lead the way to green IT

Iceland may soon become even more attractive to companies wanting to minimise their carbon footprint while using high-performance computing services Continue Reading
News 08 Aug 2022

Internet giants in favour as Ireland tightens rules on datacentres

Irish premier Michael Martin has insisted its temporary squeeze on datacentre construction is not a moratorium on the industry Continue Reading
News 02 Aug 2022

VMware CEO defends Broadcom deal

Raghu Raghuram is confident that Broadcom will invest in growing VMware through a broad portfolio of assets that will serve its entire customer base, not just its biggest customers Continue Reading
News 21 Jul 2022

Four key need-to-knows about CXL

Compute Express Link will pool multiple types of memory and so allow much higher memory capacities and the possibility of rapidly composable infrastructure to meet the needs of varied workloads Continue Reading
News 08 Jul 2022

How Bank BPD Bali modernised its datacentre infrastructure

The Indonesian bank has deployed the Nutanix Cloud Platform in a move to modernise its datacentre infrastructure and pave the way towards hybrid and multi-cloud Continue Reading
Definition 28 Jun 2022

distributed applications (distributed apps)

Distributed applications (distributed apps) are applications or software that run on multiple computers within a network at the same time and can be stored on servers or cloud computing platforms. Continue Reading
News 24 Jun 2022

US cyber agency in fresh warning over Log4Shell risk to VMware

Many VMware Horizon and UAG servers remain defenceless against Log4Shell, and organisations continue to fall victim to the vulnerability Continue Reading
News 30 May 2022

Analysts weigh in on Broadcom-VMware deal

VMware customers in APAC will need to assess their exposure amid uncertainty over the impact of the mega deal on the market Continue Reading
Feature 25 Apr 2022

Growing prospects for edge datacentres

Although the value that edge datacentres provide is not in question, for many companies, the journey to adoption is far from fixed Continue Reading
News 21 Apr 2022

Alibaba Cloud eyes VMware workloads with new cloud service

The Alibaba Cloud VMware Service is aimed at Chinese enterprises that are looking to move their VMware workloads to public cloud, perform disaster recovery and reduce their on-premise datacentre footprint Continue Reading
Feature 11 Apr 2022

The role of infrastructure as code in edge datacentre computing

As datacentre computing is pushed to the edge of the organisation’s network, IT has to address the overheads associated with remote server management Continue Reading
News 04 Apr 2022

Environmental campaigners halt Meta datacentre construction in the Netherlands

Datacentre being built to serve ‘metaverse’ worlds would consume nearly half as much energy as all other datacentres in the country Continue Reading
News 29 Mar 2022

Rising energy costs blamed as UK arm of colocation firm Sungard AS enters administration

Financial difficulties caused by downturn in demand for its services during the pandemic, coupled with ‘unprecedented’ energy price rises, force Sungard AS into administration in the UK Continue Reading
News 22 Mar 2022

NetApp Cloud Insights gets AI monitoring and ransomware detection

Cloud Insights adds artificial intelligence-based continuous audit and monitoring of entire IT estate and generates impact assessments from performance events, plus anomaly alerting for ransomware Continue Reading
Opinion 17 Mar 2022

Monitoring performance in a hybrid cloud world

The growing use of cloud demands a new breed of monitoring and observability tools to keep track of how cloud-native applications and services perform Continue Reading
News 16 Mar 2022

Facebook owner Meta plots Spanish datacentre build to power ‘metaverse’ strategy

Social media giant Meta wants to put Spain at the ‘heart’ of its vision for how the next-generation of the internet will work, with plans to build a datacentre and a remote working hub Continue Reading
Feature 16 Mar 2022

A waste of energy: Dealing with idle servers in the datacentre

Servers can be the slackers of the datacentre, consuming power without doing much work. Why not whip them into shape? Continue Reading
News 09 Mar 2022

Public sector warned about ‘environmentally unsustainable’ SSD disposal processes

Research from data sanitisation firm Blancco shines a light on the costly and contradictory stance that government IT managers have when it comes to disposing of old solid state drives Continue Reading
Opinion 25 Feb 2022

Server virtualisation is far from dead

Server virtualisation must be looked upon with an expanded and fresh perspective amid the growing adoption of containers and Kubernetes. Here are seven server virtualisation trends to watch Continue Reading
Definition 19 Jan 2022

virtual to virtual (V2V)

Virtual to virtual (V2V) refers to the migration of an operating system (OS), application program and data from a virtual machine (VM) or disk partition to another virtual machine or disk partition. Continue Reading
Feature 06 Jan 2022

Evolving datacentre chipsets put cooling, power and software management techniques under microscope

New processor designs that could revolutionise approaches to supporting higher power densities at the rack still look years away, it appears Continue Reading
Opinion 01 Dec 2021

Security Think Tank: In the cloud, anti-human approaches set us up to fail

Security learning is a career-long process, so as 2021 draws to a close, participants in the Computer Weekly Security Think Tank sum up the most important cyber lessons they’ve taken away from the past 12 months Continue Reading
News 19 Oct 2021

VMware refines cross-cloud strategy

VMware’s CTO Kit Colbert talks up the evolution of the company’s cross-cloud strategy and how it stands out from other suppliers eyeing the multicloud pie Continue Reading
News 07 Oct 2021

How VMware is tackling the Indian market

VMware is eyeing growing opportunities in India around cloud-native application development, remote work as well as 5G and edge computing, says VMware president Sumit Dhawan Continue Reading
News 06 Oct 2021

VMworld 2021: VMware CEO fleshes out and refines company’s enterprise multi-cloud strategy

VMware’s new CEO, Raghu Raghuram, uses the VMworld 2021 keynote to set out the company’s expanded take on the meaning of multi-cloud Continue Reading
Feature 29 Sep 2021

Could Iceland be the best place in the world for high-performance computing?

Most of Iceland’s cheap, sustainable energy is currently used by aluminium smelters, but recognising the need to diversify, the Landsvirkjun power company now promotes other uses Continue Reading
News 27 Sep 2021

Private equity cash fuels Nordic datacentre growth

Private equity companies are betting on the Nordic datacentre sector as demand for services in the region accelerates Continue Reading
News 23 Sep 2021

Threat actors target VMware vCenter Server users

Users of VMware vCenter Server are advised to patch a series of vulnerabilities post haste Continue Reading
News 02 Sep 2021

HPE signs 10-year GreenLake HPC deal worth $2bn with US National Security Agency

The US National Security Agency has enlisted the help of HPE and its GreenLake platform to aid the delivery of its data management strategy Continue Reading
News 31 Aug 2021

The Raxio Group sets out Pan-African colocation datacentre expansion plans

Pan-African datacentre developer The Raxio Group has embarked on a collaboration that will pave the way for it to increase its colocation footprint within the continent Continue Reading
Feature 06 Aug 2021

Hybrid IT: Making datacentre and cloud work better together in the enterprise

Enterprises are increasingly trying to balance and manage IT assets in a variety of environments, but there are plenty of tools and technologies out there to make the job a lot easier Continue Reading
News 13 May 2021

VMware names Raghu Raghuram as CEO to guide company through Dell Technologies spin-off

Several months on from the departure of ex-VMware chief Pat Gelsinger, the virtualisation giant names Raghu Raghuram as his permanent successor Continue Reading
News 15 Apr 2021

VMware CTO: The days of enterprises going ‘all-in’ on one public cloud provider ‘are dead’

VMware-hosted panel debate about enterprise public cloud adoption trends charts the apparent demise of CIOs plotting large-scale, multi-year moves to a single supplier’s public cloud environment Continue Reading
News 07 Apr 2021

VMware to ease hybrid cloud deployments

VMware is combining VMware Cloud Foundation and its Tanzu portfolio into a single software stack to simplify hybrid and multicloud deployment and management Continue Reading
News 05 Apr 2021

How Lenovo is tackling HCI workloads

Lenovo has teamed up with AMD to address mission-critical workloads such as in-memory databases as APAC organisations look beyond VDI in their hyperconverged infrastructure deployments Continue Reading
Feature 29 Mar 2021

Preparing for enterprise-class containerisation

As more workloads are deployed in containers, IT teams will need to assess how to manage container sprawl, reduce cloud bills and support databases Continue Reading
Opinion 23 Mar 2021

Moving from VMs to a container-based enterprise architecture

As organisations move to a cloud-native architecture, they will need to consider what to do with their existing virtual server estate Continue Reading
News 23 Mar 2021

Scottish government embarks on green datacentre investment push

The Scottish government is on a mission to position Scotland as a green datacentre hub as part of a push to boost the country's economy and achieve its net-zero emissions goal by 2045 Continue Reading
News 18 Mar 2021

Survey: Backup failures hit a high as pandemic working hits home

Veeam survey finds distributed working plus operations that span on-prem and the cloud the background to high numbers of failures in backup and restore, with 40% of SLAs not met Continue Reading
News 15 Mar 2021

Research: Continuous upgrades to datacentre virtualisation setups key to curbing carbon emissions

A VMware-commissioned report by Aurora Energy Research highlights environmental benefits that can be attained by operators taking steps to continually improve their datacentre virtualisation setups Continue Reading
Feature 04 Mar 2021

Prioritising workloads in a hyper-converged infrastructure migration

A cost-effective approach to combining virtualisation and unified management probably means deploying it workload by workload, experts suggest Continue Reading
News 26 Feb 2021

Amsterdam to open environmental talks with datacentres

City authorities and datacentre operators will open dialogue about sustainable datacentre industry expansion in the Dutch capital Continue Reading
Feature 22 Feb 2021

How colocation fits alongside a cloud-native architecture

IT departments are on a cloud-native roadmap to become more agile, but they are constrained by the risks involved in migrating core systems and data Continue Reading
News 03 Feb 2021

Google grows cloud sales as parent’s profits top $40bn

Alphabet announces massive overall profits and increased Google cloud sales Continue Reading
News 01 Feb 2021

Robert Gordon University delivers graphics workstations virtually

Engineering and architecture students require PCs that can run GPU-accelerated applications. VDI has enabled them to be streamed remotely Continue Reading
Feature 27 Jan 2021

How long until cloud becomes the preferred environment to run HPC workloads?

The high-performance computing market is growing, but enterprises that have already made large investments in on-premise HPC will need to weigh up whether a move to the cloud would be worth their while Continue Reading
News 22 Jan 2021

Where is Intel going to place its next strategic bet?

Intel is getting a new CEO and the company is on a mission to move beyond the x86, a processor architecture that it has defined and dominated Continue Reading
News 14 Jan 2021

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to step down and take over as Intel chief

Pat Gelsinger is calling time on his tenure as CEO at VMware to return to take over the leadership reins at ex-employer Intel Continue Reading
Feature 10 Nov 2020

Intel Optane Persistent Memory aims to fill the gap DRAM can’t

We look at Optane and its PMem product that Intel believes will fill a big gap between memory and storage that DRAM technology just cannot deal with Continue Reading
Feature 02 Nov 2020

Tackling multicloud deployments with intelligent cloud management

Organisations are moving to hybrid and multicloud deployments, which complicates software assets tracking and workload management Continue Reading
Feature 19 Oct 2020

How intelligent workload management tools can help IT admins cut through cloud complexity

IT administrators have to manage an increasingly complex and varied range of application types and IT environments, and intelligent workload management tools offer a helping hand with that Continue Reading
News 29 Sep 2020

Red Hat rivals VMware and Nutanix with hyper-converged OCS 4.5

Red Hat’s OpenShift 4.5 extended container orchestration to virtual machines. The arrival of OCS 4.5 moves the solution into the realm of hyper-converged systems Continue Reading
News 16 Sep 2020

Alibaba Cloud unveils ‘cloud computer’, delivery robot

At its annual Apsara conference, Alibaba Cloud debuts a thin-client computer and a logistics robot that can carry 50 packages in one go Continue Reading
Feature 13 Aug 2020

Aerospace and satellite comms: The next growth frontier for cloud service providers?

Space projects of the near future are less sci-fi and more about driving efficiencies through business intelligence, edge analytics and cloud technologies Continue Reading
Feature 12 Aug 2020

A Dell of a deal: What a VMware spin-off could mean for datacentre operators

Analysts doubt that Dell would be fool enough to entirely divest itself of VMware, which continues to offer massive value to the enterprise. And how would a change affect the datacentre? Continue Reading
News 05 Aug 2020

Egypt’s datacentre plans take key step forward

Government lays the foundations for a datacentre industry with its new data protection law Continue Reading
News 05 Aug 2020

Inside Juniper’s radical IT transformation

Western Australia’s aged care provider Juniper embarked on an aggressive strategy to completely transform its IT operations in just two years Continue Reading
Opinion 24 Jun 2020

Security Think Tank: Securing containers needn’t be taxing

Adopting containers promises great organisational efficiency advantages, but the fast-evolving technology can be problematic for security teams. What do CISOs need to know to safeguard containers? Continue Reading
News 18 Jun 2020

EU-backed bid to build data preservation cloud for European research community gathers pace

The Archiver project, which aims to create a hybrid cloud-based data preservation environment for scientific researchers across Europe, has named the ICT suppliers in the running to deliver on its vision Continue Reading
News 18 Jun 2020

Datacentre investment boost as Norway’s government reinstates tax relief

Government reinstates datacentre energy tax relief for cryptocurrency mining organisations after investments in the country’s datacentres drops Continue Reading
News 10 Jun 2020

Unsecured Elasticsearch server breached in eight hours flat

Comparitech’s Bob Diachenko wanted to find out how long it would take for hackers to find and attack an unsecured, public internet-facing database, so he set up a honeypot Continue Reading
News 09 Jun 2020

Netherlands digital sector yearns for government recognition

The sector building and supporting the Netherlands’ digital infrastructure wants to be valued as highly as Schiphol airport and the port of Rotterdam are for the Dutch economy Continue Reading