March 26, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Preview: Parallels Server beta looks promising
The market for hypervisor-based server virtualization is about to get more crowded. Parallels, the one-time nascent maker of desktop virtual machine (VM) solutions for the Mac, is preparing to jump into the server virtualization arena with offerings for Mac OS X Server, Linux, and Windows.
This is a major step up for Parallels, which, following parent company SWSoft (the combined company was recently rebranded under the Parallels moniker), is aggressively targeting the enterprise datacenter. Previously, Parallels had been known for its Parallels Desktop solution for OS X-based Macs, a traditional desktop VM product that allows Apple users to run Windows in a VM.
Benefiting from the management tools built around Virtuozzo, the company's OS partitioning solution for Linux and Windows, Parallels Server takes aim at the 800-pound gorilla of server virtualization (VMware ESX) and the looming elephant (Microsoft Hyper-V) by providing a product that supports both “bare metal” and “lightweight hypervisor” runtime models. In the former, Parallels will boot a scaled-down Linux kernel that acts as the hypervisor layer upon which you can build your VM (the ESX model). In the latter, Parallels will install a combination device driver/service on a host OS (the Hyper-V model), allowing you to build your VM infrastructure atop an existing server platform.
Parallels was kind enough to allow us a sneak peak at an early beta build of Parallels Server. Installing the Windows hosted version onto an existing Windows Server 2003 system was straightforward, and it didn’t even require a reboot. Once installed, Parallels Server presented me with a well-crafted management UI that allowed me to easily create and configure new VMs.
The “Add Virtual Machine” wizard was particularly well thought-out, providing all of the usual configuration settings (number of CPUs, memory size, disk configuration) as well as prompting for optional – yet important – parameters, such as which CD drive or ISO image to use as the Guest OS installation source. All of these elements worked together to streamline the VM creation process and help get my Parallels Server configuration up and running quickly.
Note: Since this was an early beta release, I didn’t pay much attention to performance. However, I did find Parallels Server to be quite responsive, allowing me to install Windows Server 2003 into a new VM at a very competitive pace. I also found the various performance and resource utilization counters to be both helpful and informative, with everything arranged neatly in a series of tabbed panes within the VM console window.
One feature I found most welcome was support for multiple virtual CPUs. Many server applications are tuned to behave differently on a single-CPU system, limiting scalability in non-SMP VM environments. Parallels Server’s multi-CPU support should give these applications a healthy performance boost.
Another welcome addition – the absence of which I found to be a major deficiency when I reviewed Parallels Workstation against VMware Workstation, Microsoft Virtual PC, and innoTek (now Sun) VirtualBox last March – was support for Network Address Translation (NAT) for VMs. Now you can give your VM access to the outside world without having to create a network bridge or otherwise exposing them to other systems.
In summary, the inclusion of multi-CPU support and improved networking in Parallels Server – plus the aforementioned “bare metal” option (which I didn’t get to test here) – are important steps forward and should help the company to establish its virtualization offering as a viable data center competitor to VMware and Microsoft.
Posted by Randall Kennedy on March 26, 2008 06:00 AM
November 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Preview: VMware Server 2 beta unleashes big changes
The next generation of VMware's free server virtualization product has hit public beta, and it's a doozy. So much has changed between the current version and what this beta promises that it's almost a completely different product. Briefly, these changes include
- A completely new Web-based UI
- Integration with VirtualCenter (though I haven't seen this yet)
- NFS datastores available from the UI
- Support for up to 8GB of RAM per virtual machine, up to two virtual SMP processors, and up to 64 virtual machines per host
- Enhanced OS support, including Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 Beta, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and Ubuntu 7.x
In fact, you can even generate a specific URL to access the VM console from any browser. Pasting the URL into an e-mail, for example, will give the recipient the ability to just click and get to that specific console. Nice.
Of course, this being beta software, I ran into problems getting the console to actually function on my brand-new install, and I'm sure that others will too -- the fix was decidedly non-obvious. The symptoms were that nothing could connect to the VM consoles under Windows and Linux, IE and Firefox. The fix (on a CentOS 5/RHEL5 host) is to modify /etc/services to accurately reflect the port description that xinetd requires. Namely, replace ideafarm-chat with vmware-authd for TCP/902. Suddenly everything works, because xinetd can now start the service when requested.
Another issue may be IPv6, which is enabled by default on newer RHEL releases. When running the vmware-config.pl script, there's a new warning about this at the top, although the steps listed to disable IPv6 on Red Hat systems are inaccurate.
For the record, to really disable IPv6, add
alias net-pf-10 offalias ipv6 off
to /etc/modprobe.conf and reboot.
Also for the record, disabling IPv6 didn't appear to help the problem, which is definitely related to the installer not modifying that file, or conversely, an incorrect xinetd parameter file, and I have seen some bizarre netstat output showing localhost listeners on several dozen ports, repeated dozens of times. I also had Firefox quit abruptly during the creation of a Windows VM. Beta, to be sure.
Once I had the console up and running, it was surprisingly smooth, essentially feeling exactly like the VMware Server Console application used to manage the current version of VMware Server. A big downside is that the "fat" client is no longer supported.
I can recall talking with a VMware product manager a year ago about VirtualCenter, VI3, and VMware's Windows-only management server and clients. His comment was, "Well, if we had to do it all over again, we certainly wouldn't be using .NET; it would be closer to AJAX." It seems that VMware is doing it all over again, if this UI is showing us what might be on the way for ESX server management in the future.
Adding NFS datastore mounting to the UI significantly simplifies the process of adding external storage to a VMware Server system. Prior to this, NFS mounts were done at the OS level, and VMware Server was essentially none the wiser. Now, NFS mounts are managed in the UI much like ESX datastores are managed in VirtualCenter. SAN support isn't included though, so iSCSI volumes will still need to be mounted at the OS level.
The increased CPU counts and RAM levels are substantial, but beg the question of why anyone would run such high-spec VMs under VMware Server and not ESX. I doubt anyone would in production, but in QA and lab environments, this could certainly come in handy.
I'll be poking at VMware Server 2 over the next few weeks, but given the fact that this is beta code, and I've already tripped over several relatively major issues, I won't be putting anything valuable on this box.
My first impressions are that this is certainly a step in the right direction for VMware, and shows a genuine focus on cross-platform support. Now if I could just run the VirtualCenter client on my Linux workstation...
Posted by Paul Venezia on November 13, 2007 06:00 PM
August 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
XenEnterprise 4.0: Questions and answers
XenSource's XenEnterprise 4.0, announced today and available August 20, erases a number of shortcomings Paul Venezia noted in his July 9 review of XenEnterprise 3.2. These included lack of support for 64-bit guests, no live VM migration or automated load balancing, and in fact no support for shared storage, putting XenEnterprise well behind the curve set by VMware and even a few steps behind Xen-based rival Virtual Iron (see Xen masters take aim at VMware).
XenEnterprise 4.0 fills some of these gaps but not others, and some of the important details were left out of the press release (surprise). XenSource CTO Simon Crosby was kind enough to set the record straight with the following answers to my questions.
Q: Does XenMotion automate load balancing, or are migrations triggered manually?
A: XenMotion is manually initiated from the GUI, however it can be manually or programmatically managed via the XenAPI which offers bindings in Java, C, C# and the CLI, which offers 3 scripting language bindings. There are various plug-in products that will be announced by ISV partners and by XenSource as a result of its Symantec partnership, that deliver on the value propositions of HA, DR, DRS, and so on.
Q: The 4.0 release "also supports up to 8-way SMP per guest, and leverages ACPI to support dynamic hot-plugging of CPU, network and storage into running virtual machines." Is this also a manual operation?
A: There is a very simple wizard that allows you to add hard disk storage or networking interfaces into a running guest VM. You have to identify what storage you want to use, and then you simply assign it to the VM, and it automatically shows up as "hot plugged hardware" in the guest, where you can assign it to various volumes etc. Nutshell, entirely automated via simple wizards.
Q: Is XenMotion enabled in v4.0, or does it (and support for shared storage in general) await the integration of Veritas Storage Foundation? If enabled now, what flavors of shared storage are supported?
A: Enabled now. Shared Storage Repositories include NAS, LVM over iSCSI, and LVM over FC, with the specific proviso that the LVM over FC support is an enablement statement subject to continued ongoing testing against the very large number of vendors' products; we will support customers' use of this only for storage subsystems that we have certified. Moreover the Veritas Storage Foundation product suite also simply plugs in as an SR type, and we believe is the way most customers really want to manage their SAN based storage. It also allows us to leverage the certification and testing that Symantec will do for the integrated product in its labs.
Q: Does XenEnterprise support 64-bit Linux and 64-bit Windows guests? Any other 64-bit guests?
A: In this release 64-bit Windows Server only; 64-bit Linux will come in a point release toward the end of the year. The key workload we want to host with 64-bit is the 64-bit 2007 releases of Exchange and SQL Server.
Q: Veritas Storage Foundation will not enable incremental backups of virtual hard disks, will it?
A: Symantec will certify Veritas Net Backup for XenEnterprise, as the preferred backup utility.
I'll take that last answer as an artful no. Or maybe it's the answer to another question that I should have asked.
Posted by Doug Dineley on August 13, 2007 11:00 PM
November 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Opsware addition to manage VMware, Solaris virtual servers
Yesterday Opsware announced the virtual machine management product the company sketched out at its OPSWorld user conference in September. Called Opsware Virtualization Director, the software will be available as an add-on module to Opsware Server Automation System 6 come January.
Virtualization Director extends Opsware's prodigious server lifecycle management capabilities to VMware ESX hosts and guests, and to Solaris 10 Containers, allowing users to apply the same policies and best practices for provisioning, patching, and configuration management to virtual servers and physical servers alike.
In the initial release, Virtualization Director will allow Opsware SAS users to (click to view screen images):
Create, start, stop, and delete VMware ESX virtual machines and Solaris Zones
Track relationships between VMware and Solaris hosts and guests
Discover and visualize the dependencies among hypervisors and virtual machines
View and manage physical and virtual servers together
Opsware said that a subsequent release would tighten the integration with the VMware and Solaris Container management systems to support additional capabilities such as live virtual machine migration via VMware's VMotion. Support for Xen, and perhaps even Microsoft's "Viridian" platform, is also slated for the next release.
Posted by Doug Dineley on November 14, 2006 12:09 PM
September 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Opsware: Brace yourselves for virtual server sprawl
Opsware sees virtualization catching fire with customers, and the automation software vendor is sounding the alarm: IT orgs better come up with a plan, because virtual machines soon will be sprouting from the ground, falling from the sky, and multiplying like tribbles.
Opsware's plan for helping enterprises corral VMs is to build hypervisor hooks and VM management capabilities into its Server Automation System (SAS). Yesterday at the company's OPSWorld user conference, CEO Ben Horowitz trotted out a roadmap to bringing automation to virtual environments.
Here's a preview of the features list:
* Provision, configure, and manage heterogeneous virtualization platforms including VMware ESX, Solaris 10, Microsoft Virtual Server, and Xen.
* Create/start/stop/delete virtual machines and containers for all these virtual server platforms through a simple point-and-click interface.
* Track relationships among VMs and their hosts.
* Apply the same policies and best practices to managing both physical and virtual environments.
CTO Tim Howes said that the target delivery date is January, and demos at the conference showed that these four bullet points are largely accomplished for VMware ESX and Solaris Containers.
However, even with VMware and Solaris, Howe says his team still has work to do to tighten the integration with the virtualization platforms and tools:
"We can drive the vendor tools to create a container, or a host server, or create virtual zones or virtual machines inside of that. We can show relationships among them, and we can do impact analysis. We don't yet have extensive support for resource pooling. We can't through Opsware call VMotion and move a VM from one machine to another."
We'll check back in a few months.
Posted by Doug Dineley on September 14, 2006 02:13 PM
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