This features provide more option which will allow the users to snapshot, backup, and restore the files, volume, VM or even a single file that you need. Many of us may think about using the VCB for our VM backup today, the Dell Equallogic had provide some interesting package which allow us to avoid of VCB in our environment, and provide better backup and restoration process.

If we talk about disk base backup, which is VTL, it always cost involve in term of disk space and software licenses. With the latest features from Equallogic, we will able to avoid the extra investment require on VTL, but provide the similar functionalities on disk base backup, and from disk to tape backup. If I bought the equallogic previously and sign up with the maintenance, I entitle the upgrade of the new features today. It will be a excellent surprise for my investment. As economy crisis, IT budget is been tight and require to work smarter, this should be a great news for the consumers. Personally, I will still say that the 10Gbe will be my option as to get rid of the fiber channel storage that we current use for VMware. As 48 spindles in a single array, we may need the bigger through put from the array to reach the client always.

According to DELL, we should able to see the official launch on 10Gbe on 1st quater of 2009.

But if we compare the technology today, I believe most of us will see that from virtual cpu perspective, VMware had been quite slow respond on that. If you do spoke to most of the VMware representative or consultant, they always told you not to allocate more than 1 Vcpu if not required.

In real world, I believe that non of us will be satisfied with the single core performance for our server environment. Dual core is been in the market for more than 2 years, and quad core had been also popularize to most of us. Single core will just be SLOW in most of the event. I am here to urge VMware to push harder for more virtual CPU per VM. The thing that should consider is to compare with the competitor products like Xen and Xensource.

In Xen, you will allow to configure 8 vcpu per VM if your host have 8 cores. That meant you should able to configure 16 cores per VM if your host do have 4 x quad cores today. I am yet to test with 16 cores per VM as my machine is come with 2 x quad cores.

I even try to run a VM with Windows 2008 which contains 8GB memory and 8 virtual cpu assign. The VM is run on local storage on the SATA disk. The performance on the VM is just fast compare to 4 vcpu VM I had in ESX. Again, not to say VMware is not good, and I strongly believe VMware is still the best today, but they are little behind with the delay of more vcpu per VM.