Russia in defence warning to US

Russian President Vladimir Putin raises concerns over US plans for a missile shield in Europe in his annual address.

US House votes for Iraq deadline

The House of Representatives narrowly passes a war funding bill setting a timetable for US troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Premier claims Somali 'victory'

Ethiopian and government troops seize control of Somalia's capital after fierce fighting, the PM says.

EU motion urges Johnston release

EU lawmakers are to back a resolution calling for the immediate release of BBC reporter Alan Johnston.

Malaysia's new king takes office

Malaysia's new monarch formally takes office, under the country's five-year rotational system.

US prison chief arrested in Iraq

The US commander of a military jail in Iraq is charged with "aiding the enemy" and other offences.

Burma, North Korea restore ties

Burma and North Korea, two of the world's most isolated nations, restore diplomatic ties after 24 years.

Row as Sudan blocks 'GM' food

Sudan agrees to let in a shipment of food for Darfur, after blocking it on the basis it was genetically modified.

Ukraine PM opposes poll move

Ukraine's PM steps up opposition to the president's election call after the date is delayed to June.

Cricket: Australia 'not afraid'

Captain Ricky Ponting says Australia have no fear of Sri Lanka in Saturday's World Cup final.

VMware fires back at Oracle's VM performance claims

A VMware official on Friday scoffed at Oracle's contention that its recent entry into the virtualization market performs better than "the existing leader server virtualization product."Oracle has not named names, but the identity of that "existing leader" would appear to be the market-dominant VMware.Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said Wednesday the company will provide benchmark numbers to back its claims, but as of Friday, those figures were not available. An Oracle spokesperson said Friday the numbers will be available "soon" but could not provide an exact date.Brian Byun, VMware's vice president of global partners and solutions, said in the absence of hard numbers, Oracle's claims amount to marketing spin. "When VMware launches a product and makes claims, we publish the full data," he said.A document posted on Oracle's Web site states: "Oracle ran many performance benchmarks comparing Oracle products running with Oracle VM against the existing leading server virtualization product and also with Oracle products on non-virtualized operating systems on x86 and x86-64. Oracle consistently saw much better resource utilization with an average of three times less overhead using Oracle VM, and also saw significant scalability with virtual SMP. In many cases, the comparison with real hardware was approximately equal in performance."Byun refused to speculate on how Oracle arrived at its assertions. "We're not in a position to state what that means on behalf of Oracle.... From a VMWare perspective, we're looking for confirmed, reproducible data," he said.VMware has also responded by putting up a blog post titled "Ten Reasons Why Oracle Databases Run Best on VMware."Oracle VM is based on the open-source Xen hypervisor. Forrester Research analyst James Staten said Oracle's performance claims are ultimately based on figures put forth by the Xen project . Staten added that customers should test Oracle's VM product against others based on their own, real-life production workloads.Oracle is giving away its VM software for free and will make its money on support. However, the company has sent mixed messages over whether it plans to offer support for its applications running on other virtualization platforms.Byun said his company's understanding is that Oracle will continue to support its applications running on VMware, but will refer any virtualization-related issues to VMware.Oracle wasn't the only company to introduce a virtualization product this week. Sun unveiled its xVM offering at OpenWorld on Wednesday. Sun said it will put $2 billion behind the effort.XVM is also based on Xen. Byun said he believes VMware will actually end up benefiting from Sun's move. The proliferation of Xen-based products will create a "confounding landscape" for customers looking at virtualization, and they will ultimately retreat to VMware, he argued."I wouldn't go that far," Forrester's Staten said. "The more people that participate in the virtualization market, the better the choice for the end-user." VMware has a substantial lead but Xen-based offerings are playing catch-up, he noted: "VMware's in a great position right now. The question is whether that's sustainable."

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