The Virtual Data Center

DISCLAIMER: This is long and the opinions are mine.I’ve written a good bit here about the various ways Microsoft and Citrix overlap in the hypervisor space, ranging from topics like shared code base through competition for the desktop space. To me, these two players have always been the underdogs battling for the right to go head-to-head against VMware in the main enterprise (and now cloud) virtual data center event. I’ve long said here that I think Microsoft is in the best position to make that move, but to be honest, Citrix currently has better technology. In other words, Microsoft has a better strategic play, Citrix a better tactical play. The announcements that came of out Synergy last week prove that. Citrix knows what it’s doing and they know how to build virtualization products to compete with VMware.As has been asked many times before, here and elsewhere: What would happen…what would be the benefit to the market…if Microsoft were to acquire Citrix and merge the best strategy and tactical solutions into one? The idea and rumor has been around for a while, so why am I revisiting it today? Since these rumors first started to really circulate in September of 2008 (around VMworld) there’s been very little advancement from the Microsoft camp on Hyper-V, and a tremendous amount of advancements from Citrix and the Xen products. We’re also seeing a few cases where the two have opted to work together. Case in point: the Essentials family for managing XenServer and Hyper-V VMs and storage. Citrix has made some excellent headway in the VDC with product announcements this year; that’s the real reason to take another look at this idea.For better or for worse, Microsoft and Citrix are already collaborating, both individually and to an extent togeter, to go after VMware. In the grand scheme of things why continue to do that on their own when they can do it together, mount one single offensive with one single goal, and bring enough technology to actually make a dent in VMware’s VDC footprint? Join forces and all that 2 against 1 stuff. Let’s look at a few categories where this makes sense, where Microsoft acquiring Citrix technology would go head to head against VMware and actually have a chance of winning:

• Networking and Application Delivery: To me recent movement from Citrix in this space is the paramount camel’s straw/tipping point for why Microsoft should finally take the leap. Citrix’s application delivery product line, NetScaler, has been a good appliance-based product for Citrix. Not a market leader, but they’ve held their own against F5 and Cisco. They manage application delivery well enough. With the announcement last week of NetScaler VPX, their virtual appliance version of MPX, NetScaler has made the leap into software-based application delivery, ala Zeus. This is huge for the acquisition discussion. First of all it could bring networking and application delivery into Microsoft’s world, something they’ve avoided with Hyper-V to date. Customers use virtualization for applications and they need to deliver those applications outside their data center. Couple VPX with the new software switch Citrix announced to compete against Cisco’s Nexus 1000v and you have the critical missing pieces for application deliver via Hyper-V (as well as another angle for Microsoft to compete against Citrix). And then add in the Citrix desktop and access-related apps for the non-MS platforms, like the iPhone, and Microsoft makes a huge push owning the application delivery stack from the VDC to the client, any client.
• VDI: Citrix has done an amazing job on virtualization geared towards the client. Going back to Metaframe and Presentation Server and then today with the work they’re doing with Xen on client virtualization, Citrix has always been focused on the client. Ironically, even though Microsoft is the de facto enterprise desktop client (in a sense), it hasn’t addressed the client virtualization markets too well. App-V is a step forward, but MED-V (with desktop virtualization code based on Virtual PC rather than Hyper-V) is a step back. VMware is making a huge push in this market with VMware View; if any player is going to win the VDC space completely they have to include a VDI solution, one that works locally and remotely, in their portfolio. Citrix could help Microsoft make that push by combining their respective solutions for hypervisor and application virtualization technologies. Many of the enterprise desktops and apps are Microsoft; the underlying technology running those desktops and apps in the data center and over the network are Citrix.
• Cloud Platforms/Providers: Xen owns a good bit of real estate in cloud and service provider data centers. Although Microsoft has good presence with customers running Windows operating systems, it doesn’t have the same exposure for Hyper-V as a platform that VMware and Xen have. I think MS is looking to change this with Azure but it will still be limited to the MS-only solution (for the short term anyway). Acquiring Citrix would give Microsoft that cloud provider mindshare by name alone. They could then take that business and technology model that Xen has built and create a best of breed service provider platform between Xen and Hyper-V for customers that want to run non-Windows apps on Xen and .Net-based apps on Hyper-V. This could drastically help Microsoft’s Oslo application lifecycle plan moving forward with cloud providers while not alienating non-.Net apps.
• Application Virtualization: As you know, I’m a huge fan of a true application virtualization model, something that I believe App-V will ultimately be able to deliver. However it will most likely be focused on .Net and Microsoft apps only and is still a few years away from full delivery and even more from adoption. In the mean time we have this bridging technology between VDI, client virtualization, and streaming apps. VMware is getting there with tools like View and ThinApp, but Citrix is staying in lockstep. Microsoft could use a Citrix acquisition to springboard App-V into a multi-focused application delivery platform, taking what’s good today with streaming apps and client virtualization and continue to work on true application virtualization for all apps.
• Customer/Device Support: And as a roll-up benefit of the above categories, we have application delivery to devices. I don’t want to place too much emphasis on supporting remote access via the iPhone, but when you look at Microsoft’s historic relationships with Apple and Linux (as a whole), of which Citrix has obvious ties into both now, that’s an appealing way for Microsoft to jump right into those groups. That doesn’t mean they’ll keep the momentum alive, but at least it would give them more opportunity than they have today. The overlap between VDI, XenApp, secure remote access, and the iPhone is an extremely appealing proposition for mobile users; a turn-key solution for Microsoft to cover a huge gap in their overall cloud and virtualization offerings.

And let’s be honest: Microsoft has had some challenges with their virtualization solutions and their overall direction. Client virtualization based on Virtual PC and no enterprise VDI solution? Hyper-V management hiccups through SCVMM/SCOM and delaying live migration for so long? Azure wanting to change the way applications run and are written on-premise? These raise questions in my mind, a lot of “Why?” questions. Citrix, on the other hand, is heading squarely in the right directly for virtualization solutions.  Citrix continues to plow ahead against VMware at a good pace, whereas Hyper-V isn’t quite at that same pace. The virtual switch announcement from Synergy last week is an excellent example; we haven’t seen any movement or advancements on virtual switching or networking for Hyper-V at all. Sophisticated virtual networking and switching management is an absolute critical component for virtual and cloud-based platforms, IMO. Moving internal roles and tasks to VMs running on the platforms is something we’ve seen for a while with VMware, even going so far as to running the full version of ESX 4.0 in a VM on top of ESXi 4.0. Citrix is doing the same with their Dazzle product. In other words both VMware and Citrix are finding optimized ways to use their own technology for their own benefit. We’re not seeing this today from Hyper-V. Again, there’s nothing to say that Microsoft acquiring Citrix would change that, but at least it might help grease the skids a bit towards internal product unification. Citrix knows how to do it well.To be clear, I am not being critical of Microsoft technologies or business practices (as any long-time readers of my blog will undoubtedly know). I am suggesting that when compared on a chart, Citrix is closer today to where the market and VMware are going for virtual platforms, and if the goal is to compete with VMware for both enterprise and cloud virtual platforms then Microsoft could benefit in leaps and bounds by acquiring Citrix for both Xen and their networking products. Microsoft would get virtual platform, application, and networking tools that they don’t have today.I’ll leave you with one final thought on how compelling a Microsoft/Citrix acquisition could be: Imagine a year from now if Azure launched out of beta running on both Xen and Hyper-V. This would be the best of both worlds: Microsoft could continue to push it’s current developer-based approach to Azure, SaaS, and application cloud computing, focusing on .Net and helping to push users to re-write their current and new apps. They could also support non-.Net customers by allowing them to run their services on Xen in Microsoft’s cloud. Customers wouldn’t have to choose based on their app needs. That would be the ultimate competitor to both Google and Amazon for cloud mindshare, bridging the two cloud models together and backed by the Microsoft brand.  Awesome. Will we ever see it? I hope so for market and customer needs.“Wish You Were Here” Image © 1975 EMI, Storm Thorgerson

After pushing my latest post, Securing the Cloud: Shared Hardware and the Data Plane, Hoff posted a series of excellent questions and responses to the post via Twitter. I thought responding via another blog post, so that his questions could be addressed alongside my last post, was the way to go. I’ve trimmed some of his questions here for brevity but all of his questions can be found on his Twitter stream. And here we go.

@thevirtualdc I hate to tell you this, but your last blog isn’t about securing “the Cloud” at all. You are interchanging cloud & virt…

You are correct that I am presumptively interchanging the cloud with virtualization within the cloud. The primary point of this series of cloud security posts is to break out all the areas that securing the cloud entails, taking a huge topic that many people are discussing and breaking it down into small bits. A very large bite of those small bits, in my opinion, is the platforms that run each individual cloud. It’s been my experience that the majority (definitely not all) of cloud providers right now, and the customers that are seeking out these cloud providers, are using some form of virtual platforms. This is an assumption I’ve discussed here before. I’m definitely not saying virtualization=the cloud, but rather that most cloud implementations rely somewhat on virtual platforms. Virtual platforms introduce a layer of transparency in cloud providers; a customer who choose a provider that’s running virtual platforms will most likely know what that platform choice and what version it’s running. To that extent, the security of those platforms is paramount to the security of the cloud itself.

@thevirtualdc …not that they aren’t related, but by lumping everything into the IaaS bucket (which is what you are essentially doing)…

I’m not necessarily lumping all cloud providers into the IaaS bucket. Non-IaaS providers, such as AWS, Azure, and Terremark, are cloud providers that build their solutions on top of virtual platforms. These are the types of cloud providers that fall into my assumptive clause above. I’m not so concerned in this post with what those providers are doing with virtual platforms or how they’re marketing their service, but rather the fact that they are running shared virtual platforms and relying on shared data plane management from companies that are outside their control. No matter how they’re implementing these technologies, the customers are trusting the providers and the providers are trusting the platforms (along with a ton of other pieces in the cloud puzzle that I’ll delve into later as part of this continuing series) to keep things secure. Basically I’m talking here about any cloud provider that’s implementing a solution on top of stadard virtual platforms.

@thevirtualdc I totally buy everything you wrote, except you decided to call it Cloud instead of Virt which will add 2 the confusion.

I completely agree with you on this one. Goodness knows I get all up in arms about terminology and definitions when it comes to technology, but the choice to lump a discussion about virtual platform and shared data security under the Cloud nameplate was intentional. I want people who are looking at the cloud, who are looking at security concerns in the cloud, to start thinking about security risks of what’s actually running most of the cloud. For example, a major cloud provider recently discussed their solution for cloud security was to deploy individually managed distributed firewalls for their customers. That’s good, but has nothing to do with the security concerns of the virtual platforms that are running those distributed firewalls. That’s the reason I want to associate virtual platform security with cloud security. Sure, there are providers and customers that won’t need to worry about this, but I believe the majority of both will. I don’t want people to think that the cloud is magical and mystical. It’s not; most of it is running some of the same software that we’re running in the enterprise, software that’s highly prone to security breaches.

Hoff concluded with this comment, which I’m unable to find in his Twitter stream but is available via Google cache:

 @thevirtualdc What about folks who use Xen derivatives…like the 800lb gorilla of Cloud, Amazon?

You are correct; I omitted Xen from my “take responsibility” list in that post. Xen introduces a different element that’s slightly harder to control: the OEM’ing and open-source nature of their solution(s). There’s no question that a provider like Amazon who’s depending on Xen as their platform foundation should be concerned about the security of that platform, however, Xen has the ability to be modified (to varying degrees). With respect to security, this makes it much more difficult for Citrix to be ultimately responsible for a secure running environment. The ESX hypervisor is always the same. The Xen hypervisor may be different across every implementation. That introduces risks to the data plane that are much harder to control. Still as critical but it’s harder to lump Citrix in the same bucket as Microsoft and VMware in this scenario for that reason. Regardless, you are correct in that I should have addressed this in my last post.

As always the feedback from Hoff is much appreciated and enjoyed. Even if I’m way off the planet on this (and most of what I wax about here) at least it contributes to the discussion and makes us think about these things. Security risks associated with virtual platforms and not controlling the data plane won’t directly impact all cloud providers or all cloud customers. But it will impact a good number of them, and the fact that we’re not looking to these technology creators (ie the platform vendors) to lead the way and create safe computing environments for shared data…well, that keeps me awake at night.

My heart is truly warmed (which isn’t easy) by all the talk around cloud security. This may mark the first time in my career that I’ve seen a non-security bleeding-edge technology (c’mon, the cloud is bleeding like a sieve) hit the market coupled with concerns and ideas about security. Even if we look to the virtual foundation of the cloud, none of those technologies (hypervisors, virtual CPUs, shared RAM, storage virtualization, etc) hit the market with any care or concern about security. In this way the cloud is creating a new model of accessible computing in more ways than one.

But all the talk still isn’t enough. I know, I’m never happy. The talk needs to lead to action, and that action should be led by the big three platform vendors: Microsoft, VMware, and Citrix. Regardless of how they’re addressing the cloud in public with marketing and solutions right now, these three platforms provide the backbone (figuratively, not as in networking) for both service provider and enterprise cloud computing. There are limitless other components to the cloud I’ve talked about before, but all of those components have some reliance on solutions from one of these three vendors. Sure, you can argue that the cloud can happen without any Microsoft, VMware, or Citrix technology, but that argument would be so short it wouldn’t be worth the coffee that was ordered for the argument. So keeping in tone with most of my recent posts, this is a call to arms for the big three: Why don’t you each have very public virtual security teams canvasing the globe to gather data and offer solutions?

Here’s what I’d like to see from Microsoft, VMware, and Citrix:

1. A massive evangelical thought leadership virtual security push. I’m talking a carpet bomb attack where all you do it talk, talk, talk about the risks associated with security of virtualiztion and in the cloud. It doesn’t have to be accompanied by solutions at this stage, just spread the word and solicit feedback. I want to see deep technical security tracks at VMworld and MS TechEd. I’ll save a suggested list of topics for another post (’cause I got ‘em). At this point in the plan topics should cover all three types of virtual security.
2. Cloud security teams: It’s not enough to offer cloud services like Azure and AWS, you need to offer cloud security services as well. It (I’m generalizing here with the ‘it’ part) should be a click button when I provision a new system or service. There should be a toll-free number that I can call right now and ask Amazon what they use to secure storage calls over HTTP, or call MS and ask how they guarantee my sensitive traffic can’t leak across VLANs. I don’t want to search for it, I don’t want to submit a ticket, I want this information right in front of me and at my fingertips. And I want the people answering those calls to be security experts.
3. Behind-the-scenes security swat teams. As I’ve discussed before, virtual pentesters looking for ways to exploit hypervisors, to escape the guest, working with Intel and AMD on security risks of moving logic to the CPU, to MitM bus traffic as it moves from one CPU to another. I’m not picky on whether they publicly disclose this information (that’s not true, I would prefer they do but understand why they wouldn’t want to yet) so long as their doing the research today.
4. And finally, a single funnel-up management of all these teams. I want the hypervisor security team to work side-by-side with the cloud platform deployment teams. It does no good if these teams aren’t a single entity with weekly triage meetings. The evangelist who’s talking to an ISP in Japan needs to know the person back at HQ who’s responsible for securing traffic into the cloud data center. And no using the term ‘virtual teams’ here for the obvious reasons, and for the not-as-obvious reason that these need to be real teams that do nothing but cross-technology security research.

Not only will this plan help propel security of virtualization and the cloud, it will also do wonders for customers who are looking at the cloud for mission-critical apps. If I know how to deploy a secure vApp in my internal cloud, know how to secure the channel to move that vApp to my external cloud provider, and know that they are monitoring the security of my application data on the wire and on the bus, then I’m much more likely to move forward with a complete cloud model. Security geeks and business units unite! I want this group to explain to the world the security risks of VDI and how those compare/contrast to security risks of client virtualization.

I’ve heard from so many people in the field (partners, customers, friends) that virtual security isn’t a concern today, and that’s good news. But will you be ready when it is a concern, and who will you turn to for help getting ready? Hopefully you’ll be able to rely on your platform and cloud providers, so start asking them  your questions now.

As reported by Practical Technology yesterday, Citrix has announced that it will be giving away XenServer (the hypervisor portion of their acquired Xen solution) for free. Very similar to the VMware model, they will continue to charge for management and advanced features as add-ons to the XenServer platform but the core virtualization technology will be available for free. Will this have any impact in their market share or their stake in the virtual data center? I’m skeptical for a number of reasons:

1. Free doesn’t always mean better, and usually it’s the exact opposite. I’m reluctant to think that enterprise customers and mission-critical cloud providers will take the free route solely to save money. Maybe that’s more likely this year than last but I’m still not sold it will make that much of an impact, especially since this won’t be an OSS offering ala XenSource. They’re also competing up-stream against VMware’s ESXi and Hyper-V, both of which have value-add above and beyond the hypervisor. For Citrix to make this move work they’re going to have to prove that they have the same type of value-add with XenServer that the other two big players offer. And free doesn’t count as value where your mission critical apps are concerned.
2. They’re relying heavily on management solutions to bring in the money for XenServer customers. We all know you can’t deploy a truly reliable virtualization solution without having management. In practice free deployments of XenServer will be few and far between, instead they will be bundled with some management solution. But which one? If MS System Center will manage both Hyper-V and XenServer, then we’re back to that value-add question for MS shops. If I’ve already deployed MS SCOM/SCVMM then what’s the value in deploying a Citrix solution instead of Hyper-V — which is also integrated into my server platform? VMware shops will stick with VMware because they’re the only company that has an end-to-end solution today. So is management the golden ticket for Citrix?
3. They’re announcing a new partnership with Microsoft. Excluding their existing partnership (whether that partnership has benefitted Citrix is a decently debatable topic so let’s gloss over those particulars for now) — Has a partnership with Microsoft between competing companies ever worked out for the non-Microsoft partner? Yes, MS is an excellent partner resource for technologies that don’t compete, but really, this partnership (and the ability to manage XenServer) will drastically benefit Microsoft by extending their heterogeneous virtual management solutions with Systems Center. I don’t see it going the other way for Citrix. Again, we’re going back to the value for a complete solution and who offers the most value here: Microsoft or Citrix? My vote is very strongly printed in the Microsoft column.

Maybe this will work in Citrix’s favor by at least getting XenServer in more hands to play with, and maybe their technology value will bubble to the top. But how many times have we watched a better technology (assuming XenServer is better) go by the wayside because they didn’t offer enough business value? In this case, I question whether a free XenServer offers any business value above and beyond what Hyper-V or VMware ESXi already offer.