Steve Herrod spoke about where VMware technologie is today, and where it’s going in the future. There was some interesting information offered. Some of the key points he spoke about:

1. CPU core technology. One of the items on VMware’s roadmap is the ability to power down unused cores to save kWh.

2. CPU VT technology. As the next generation of VT technologie comes out more performance will be available.

3. RAM Virualization. AMD and Intel have announced memory Virtualization which will make transparent page sharing much faster with less overhead.

4. Paravirtualization. Paravirtualization can provide higher performance but at a compatibility cost.

5. I/O Virtualization. Passthrough I/O will give the ability to pass I/O directly from a device to a VM. This would provide improved performance, but at a cost of not being able VMotion because we are tied to the hardware. This is something that VMware is working around, maybe using some sort of “hybrid” model.

6. Virtual Appliances. He gave an overview of virtual appliances and the advantage of having these from application vendors.

7. Open Standards. The ability to provide choice to customers, not only in their hypervisor, but in management tools.

8. Partner Collaboration. VMware has a community source program that is a hybrid of open source and closed cource. Community source allows partners access to the source code.

9. vmdev.net VMWare has also started vmdev.net, to stimulate more development and collaboration. Commercial companies and academic researchers work on projects spanning a number of technologies and products, including ESX Server and VMware Workstation, and have a direct influence on VMware’s future technology directions.

Thanks to aweeks at vi411 for this information.  To find out more from the show, visit his web site, here.