Virtualization Report | David Marshall | August 2006

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August 2006

August 31, 2006

Apple's Mac Pro and the Virtualization Question

As Apple proudly announced the launch of its fastest Mac ever, the new Intel-based Mac Pro running at speeds up to 3GHz and sporting a new 64-bit Dual-Core Intel Xeon "Woodcrest" processor, the questions started rolling in... what about virtualization support?

Parallels immediately went to work to try and answer those questions. Is Parallels Desktop for Mac compatible with the new Mac Pro tower? Ben Rudolph, Marketing Manager at Parallels, answers this question by stating, "Not yet. The new Mac Pros have a different CPU model, and work with a specifically optimized OS X kernel. It is not difficult to make Parallels compatible with either of these, but it does take a bit of time. We should have a compatible build very soon."

And when he says very soon, he really means it. Parallels hopes to have a compatible build out within the next few days. Not too bad, considering that Apple only recently announced the new Mac Pro product earlier this month.

Posted by David Marshall on August 31, 2006 05:45 AM

August 31, 2006

Stream Theory Awarded Another Streaming Software Patent

According to the latest press release from Stream Theory, it appears as though the company has been granted yet another patent centered on the hot technology of streaming applications.

Stream Theory, Inc., a leading developer of patented virtualized software delivery and digital rights management solutions, today announced it has been awarded U.S. Patent number 7,096,253 for "Method and Apparatus for Streaming Software." The patent, which covers core technology related to streaming remotely located software programs and data to a local computer, underpins the Company's worldwide leadership role in virtualized software delivery.
"This new patent, now added to our growing patent portfolio, firmly positions Stream Theory as a focused technology company and leading developer of a virtualized software delivery platform for the Internet and other high-speed networks," commented Steig Westerberg, CEO of Stream Theory. "Our versatile platform supports the goals of the business world to deliver on-demand software with instant worldwide deployment, centralized updating, measured usage, but without impacting operating systems.

Traditional online delivery methods require complete download, installation on end user computers, and costly one-on-one updates and support. However the Stream Theory virtualized software delivery platform enables businesses to run applications as a network service. Streamed software is delivered to and updated in a secluded environment guaranteeing the integrity of the operating system and all the applications. This new patent granted to Stream Theory helps support the rapidly rising practice of providing software as a service for businesses and game/software/digital media subscriptions and try-before-you-buy for online consumers.

Until this announcement, Stream Theory has been somewhat quiet since it dropped the bomb shell news back in May of this year that the company was filing a lawsuit against Softricity, AppStream and Exent, claiming the three companies were infringing on its patents. The lawsuit was filed just about the same time that Microsoft announced its intentions of acquiring Softricity.

Posted by David Marshall on August 31, 2006 05:28 AM

August 31, 2006

Virtualization Shapes Microsoft's OS and the Data Center

The analyst group Gartner believes virtualization will allow Microsoft to create a more flexible operating system in the future based around modularity. And companies such as Data Synapse and United Devices are looking to application virtualization as another approach to utilizing Grid technologies. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on August 31, 2006 05:18 AM

August 31, 2006

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 2 Ready

Following up on their previous beta release in April, Microsoft has just released Beta 2 of their Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. For complete details and to download the software, the usual applies - sign up at Microsoft Connect using your Windows Live, MSN, or Windows Passport account.

The Beta 2 release introduces a few new features. Along with the hardware assisted virtualization support for Intel's Virtualization Technology (Intel-VT) previously added, Beta 2 now introduces support for AMD's Virtualization Technology (AMD-V), formerly known as Pacifica. Check the release notes for more information. If you are running an x64 version of the Windows operating system on an AMD machine, you will need to download and install a hotfix before installing Beta 2.

This release also introduces another highly anticipated feature - support for Microsoft's Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). This will add the ability to perform snapshot backups.

Beta 2 adds other features, such as the ability to mount virtual hard disk files (VHDs) offline as well as adding Active Directory integration using service connection points. A technical white paper explaining how to perform host clustering has also been included.

Remember to shutdown or save the state of your virtual machines before you upgrade your host server to the latest Beta release. Enjoy!

Posted by David Marshall on August 31, 2006 04:38 AM

August 30, 2006

Amazon Tries Hand at Virtual Computing

For the longest time now, when someone talked to me about Amazon, we were talking about ordering books online. But today, Amazon seems to be stretching itself into all kinds of new areas.

Recently, Amazon announced the launch of a new virtual computing service called "Elastic Compute Cloud" or EC2. The company claims the solution offers easily scalable computing on demand to developers. The service works in conjunction with another service that the company launched in March, Amazon's Simple Storage Service or S3.

Each virtual server instance is equivalent to a 1.7Ghz Xeon CPU with 1.75GB of memory, 160GB of local disk, and 250Mb/s of network bandwidth. Amazon claims the new service will reduce the time required to obtain and boot a new server and allow for scaling.

And of course, a person can get as many as they like. The price? Well, you only pay for what you use, and the current published rate seems to be $0.10 per instance-hour consumed. At first, that doesn't sound too bad. But, when you start doing the math, that translates to about $72 a month. And that doesn't include data transfer yet! Data transfer is going for $0.20 per GB of data transferred outside of Amazon (i.e. Internet traffic). Data transferred within the Amazon EC2 environment, or between EC2 and S3, is free of charge.

The company lists the following information on their Web site:

Amazon EC2 Functionality
Amazon EC2 presents a true virtual computing environment, allowing you to use web service interfaces to requisition machines for use, load them with your custom application environment, manage your network's access permissions, and run your image using as many or few systems as you desire.

To use Amazon EC2, you simply:

Create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) containing your applications, libraries, data and associated configuration settings. Or use our pre-configured, templated images to get up and running immediately.

Upload the AMI into Amazon S3. Amazon EC2 provides tools that make storing the AMI simple. Amazon S3 provides a safe, reliable and fast repository to store your images.

Use Amazon EC2 web service to configure security and network access.

Use Amazon EC2 web service to start, terminate, and monitor as many instances of your AMI as needed.

Pay for the instance hours and bandwidth that you actually consume.

Service Highlights

Elastic - Amazon EC2 enables you to increase or decrease capacity within minutes, not hours or days. You can commission one, hundreds or even thousands of server instances simultaneously. Of course, because this is all controlled with web service APIs, your application can automatically scale itself up and down depending on its needs.

Completely Controlled - You have complete control of your instances. You have root access to each one, and you can interact with them as you would any machine. Each instance predictably provides the equivalent of a system with a 1.7Ghz Xeon CPU, 1.75GB of RAM, 160GB of local disk, and 250Mb/s of network bandwidth.

Designed for use with Amazon S3 - Amazon EC2 works in conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to provide a combined solution for computing and storage across a wide range of applications.

Reliable - Amazon EC2 offers a highly reliable environment where replacement instances can be rapidly and reliably commissioned. The service runs within Amazon's proven network infrastructure and datacenters.

Secure - Amazon EC2 provides web service interfaces to control network security. You define groups of instances and their desired accessibility.

Inexpensive - Amazon EC2 passes on to you the financial benefits of Amazon's scale. You pay a very low rate for the compute capacity you actually consume. Compare this with the significant up-front expenditures traditionally required to purchase and maintain hardware, either in-house or hosted. This frees you from many of the complexities of capacity planning, transforms what are commonly large fixed costs into much smaller variable costs, and removes the need to over-buy "safety net" capacity to handle periodic traffic spikes.

Posted by David Marshall on August 30, 2006 04:41 PM

August 28, 2006

Using Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 for Application Compatibility

Microsoft recently published a whitepaper about leveraging the capabilities of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 to help verify application compatibility.

With each new release of the Windows operating system, Microsoft includes added features and capabilities. The company therefore makes every effort to maintain the highest levels of compatibility possible for existing applications that ran under previous versions of Microsoft Windows. However, before migrating to a newer version of the Windows operating system, customers should confirm that their applications continue to behave as expected.

Microsoft Windows Vista is a highly anticipated operating system. And as such, it is important to perform due diligence before rolling it out. Microsoft claims that most applications that ran with Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 should continue to run with Windows Vista. One concern is the added security found in Windows Vista that builds upon the comprehensive security model introduced with Windows XP SP2.

Security improvements that may affect application compatibility in Windows Vista include:

Windows Resource Protection (WRP) of system files and protected registry locations. Windows Vista includes protected system file and registry locations for better security and stability. Most applications that previously referenced these locations will automatically be redirected to temporary locations during that session, to ensure application compatibility. However, if your applications' data is attempting to persist data in these protected system areas, you will need to modify those applications, as the temporary locations are removed after each application session.

Windows Vista User Account Control (UAC). If you are implementing a "Standard User" environment in your organization, applications will need to support standard user permissions as defined in Windows Vista to allow for both Administrative and Standard-User scenarios.

Running Microsoft Internet Explorer in Protected Mode. To protect the integrity of Windows Vista, Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista will now run with Standard User rights, typically not allowing access to all registry or system files. Internet and intranet applications may need to be modified to run in this more restrictive security scenario.

New firewall/antivirus application programming interfaces (APIs). New system APIs expose the layers of the Windows Vista operating system for antivirus software and firewall manipulation. Applications that perform these functions will need appropriate modifications by using the new system APIs.

Newly architected Windows Login. Gina is no longer the Windows Login process used in Windows Vista. If you have applications that perform pass-through authentication with Windows, you may need to re-architect these applications.

In addition to the security improvements, there are other Windows Vista innovation features that may affect application compatibility:

Concerns with 64-bit versions of Windows Vista.

16-bit applications and 32-bit drivers are not supported on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista.

Automatic registry and system file redirection is not supported in the 64-bit environment. These changes require that 64-bit applications must adhere to a stronger set of Windows Vista application standards.

Applications that check operating system version. Applications may check for a specific version of operating system, such as Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows 2000, or Windows XP. Although the application may run correctly on Windows Vista, logic in the application may prevent the application from installing if a specific operating system version is not discovered. You can mitigate this issue by running applications in other operating compatibility modes within Windows Vista.

Microsoft has been testing hundreds of applications and a broad range of partners have tested applications for Windows Vista compatibility and Microsoft has created the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) version 5.0 to help identify application compatibility problems in a corporate environment.

There may be legacy applications in your environment that will not run on Windows Vista, or that you may not be ready to re-engineer or retire. To address these application requirements in your organization, Microsoft has made Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 available as a no-charge solution to meet your needs.

To read the entire whitepaper, download it here.

Posted by David Marshall on August 28, 2006 04:05 PM

August 28, 2006

Scalent Systems Releases V/OE Version 2.0

Scalent Systems today announced general availability of Scalent Virtual Operating Environment (V/OE) version 2.0, the industry's next-generation server infrastructure repurposing technology. Scalent is the first company to deliver comprehensive data center virtualization technology, addressing not only individual servers, but also the entire related network and storage environment. Scalent V/OE 2.0 enables enterprises to radically increase data center flexibility and asset utilization, while combating spiraling IT costs.

...

"Scalent is the first company I've seen successfully take Virtualization to the next level, going beyond server virtualization to address the entire infrastructure – servers, LAN, and SAN access." said Ken Schuelke, VP Enterprise Architecture for Ameriquest Mortgage. "Scalent V/OE helps Ameriquest drastically increase server utilization by repurposing our idle Disaster Recovery servers for Test and Development. Scalent helps us save over a million dollars annually."

With Scalent V/OE, infrastructure repurposing becomes nearly instantaneous. Changing system function and topology doesn't require touching physical cables or machines. Instead of spending hours or days reloading software, changing configurations, and even moving machines and cables, IT teams can rack once, cable once, then reconfigure repeatedly, in minutes, effortlessly. Failover is automatic, and data center functionality matches the data center schematic—what you see is what you get.

This infrastructure flexibility results in a dramatic increase in server utilization. Instead of provisioning each application silo for peak demand, IT organizations can provision for average demand and shift spare resources to match business needs. Specific business systems can be dynamically redeployed as dictated by real-time business priorities, time of day, or other policy-based criteria – so fewer hardware, software, and other resources are needed. Scalent V/OE thus delivers higher IT asset utilization, less costly failover and disaster recovery alternatives, rapid and efficient test and lifecycle processes, and a more easily managed infrastructure.

"The ability to coordinate virtualization across the LAN and SAN environments is critical for customers to capture the value of dynamic systems," said John Humphreys, Program Director, IDC. "Scalent Systems is bringing a new approach through its server infrastructure repurposing software that can help make policy based automation a reality."

Scalent V/OE 2.0 extends Scalent's broad hardware and OS support, with the introduction of additional enterprise extensibility, including:

Support for Solaris 10 on x86 and SPARC

Support for enterprise-class bladed Ethernet switches (for example, the Cisco 65xx)

Addition of a programmatic interface for third-party systems integration

"The modern multi-tier architecture depends on multiple interdependent and interconnected machines, and physically altering this infrastructure to meet ever changing demands is too expensive, time consuming, and risky", said Ben Linder, CEO of Scalent Systems. "Scalent makes infrastructure repurposing rapid, reliable, and practical. With Scalent V/OE 2.0, companies can virtualize their entire existing data center infrastructure and quickly implement cost-effective disaster recovery, IT consolidation, and other initiatives without making any physical changes or disrupting business processes."

Posted by David Marshall on August 28, 2006 03:30 PM

August 28, 2006

Scalent Systems to Bring V/OE to Solaris 10

According to their press release: Scalent Systems, the leading provider of server infrastructure repurposing software for large enterprise data centers, today announced that its Virtual Operating Environment (V/OE) 2.0 software now supports the Solaris 10 operating system. Scalent has certified Sun's x64 (x86, 64-bit) and SPARC Sun Fire servers, including the Sun Fire server line with CoolThreads technology, and will bundle Solaris 10 with Scalent V/OE 2.0, leveraging Sun's Solaris OEM program. Scalent V/OE 2.0 provides a just-in-time server repurposing solution for Solaris, enabling Solaris customers to dramatically increase data center flexibility and improve asset utilization.

Today's enterprise data centers face escalating costs stemming from out-of-control server sprawl, fluctuating server utilization and rapidly changing operational demands. These challenges result in lower business efficiency, a lack of IT agility and reduced bottom-line success. Unlike many traditional virtualization solutions, Scalent V/OE can meet all of these challenges. Scalent's solution addresses the entire data center environment, not just the individual server "box." Scalent V/OE enables data center operations owners to rapidly change entire systems and associated topologies -- which servers are running, what software is running on them and how they're connected to network and storage -- without altering physical infrastructure.

"Scalent has the ability to dynamically repurpose entire Sun x86 and SPARC environments running Solaris," said John F. Davis, vice president, Global Channel Strategy and Marketing, Sun Microsystems. "With Scalent's ability to abstract not only the software stack, but also the associated network and storage connectivity, Scalent V/OE brings flexibility and business agility to our customers' data centers. Additionally, customers can gain significant time-to-market and productivity advantages by utilizing Sun's N1 management software to automate system and application deployment."

"The combination of Sun servers and Scalent's Virtual Operating Environment creates a cost-effective and flexible infrastructure, enabling customers to respond quickly and successfully to the dynamic and difficult challenges facing large data centers today," said Kevin Epstein, vice president of marketing, Scalent Systems. "We look forward to continuing to work with Sun technologies to deliver added flexibility and cost benefits to Sun customers."

For more information, visit the company's Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on August 28, 2006 03:14 PM

August 28, 2006

Virtualization a Hot Topic at LinuxWorld

Virtualization was a hot topic at this past LinuxWorld. But there were two interesting topics that we'll spotlight today. The first, the controversy between Red Hat and Novell centered around the readiness of Xen. And then, what else can go into the Linux kernel? We added the Xen hypervisor and now it looks like virtualization containers could be next! listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on August 28, 2006 02:29 PM

August 27, 2006

Stealth Virtualization Start-Up with a Who's Who List

Multiple sources in the industry are talking about a new start-up venture that is being launched in the San Jose area - called Nuova Systems or Nuova Impresa (Italian for 'new enterprise'). There doesn't seem to be a lot of information about the company floating around, but bits and pieces of information have materialized here and there about this stealthy project.

The company is supposedly working on some type of virtualization project in the storage networking space that would combine storage, networking and computing technology in a single box.

According to The Register, "The system is meant to align with Cisco and Intel's larger strategy around Data Center Ethernet (DCE)". They continue, "Broadly, DCE is a proposal to add more virtualization to networks and make it possible for myriad types of traffic to share Ethernet networks. It's not hard to imagine a company such as Cisco seeing Nuova and DCE as a means of encroaching on the turf of Sun, IBM, HP and Dell."

ByteandSwitch describes what the company is doing as "trying to aggregate compute IO from the server and centralize it into a single or small number of network elements, connected back to the servers via a high-speed low-latency 'closed' network". This frees up processor memory and CPU cycles so that larger clusters of servers are possible.

According to both The Register and ByteandSwitch, Nuova seems to be attracting some top-name talent to the organization. According to different reports, names being mentioned as coming aboard this stealthy operation are:

Tom Lyon, founder of Ipsilon Networks, an early contender in IP switching that was acquired by Nokia.

J.R. Rivers, the Cisco Distinguished Engineer who led the team developing the Catalyst 3750 enterprise switch.

Ed Bugnion, founder and former CTO of VMware, the recognized virtualization leader in the industry.

Fabio Ingrao, the project lead for server start-up Fabric7.

Dan Lenoski, the former VP of engineering at Cisco.

As you can see, if reported correctly, it is definitely a who's who list of players.

Posted by David Marshall on August 27, 2006 07:49 AM

August 27, 2006

VMware Relaxes Tools Distribution Policy

In yet another positive step forward, VMware has announced that it is once again relaxing its policies, this time centered on the distribution of their VMware Tools for Linux.

NOTICE: Effective immediately, VMware has modified its current policy with regard to VMware Tools as follows:
Subject to your compliance with the VMware Master END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT, the restriction in Section 3.5 of the VMWARE MASTER END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT prohibiting distribution of the VMware Tools to third parties is applicable only to the Windows version of VMware Tools and NOT to the Linux version of VMware Tools. You may distribute the Linux version of VMware Tools to third parties in object code format only and solely in conjunction with, and as part of, the Virtual Machine you create with the Software.

Unless otherwise modified herein, the remaining terms of the VMWARE MASTER END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT shall remain in full force and effect and in the event of a conflict, the terms in this notice shall control.

This policy change will also be reflected in the next release version of the VMWARE MASTER END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT.

The change makes it legal to redistribute the VMware Tools inside of a virtual appliance, as long as that virtual appliance is running a Linux operating system. The new policy doesn't go as far as allowing the redistribution of the VMware Tools for a Windows operating system, but there are bigger legal issues to overcome with redistributing a Windows operating system in a virtual appliance.

Is Microsoft missing the boat on this one? At every turn, it looks like VMware and other software manufacturers are praising virtual appliances for what they can do and what they offer. But with Microsoft's licensing restrictions that are set in place, it becomes impossible for anyone to build and distribute a virtual appliance that is created on top of a Microsoft operating system. Even beyond licensing and serial numbers, programs to help stop piracy such as Windows Activation and Windows Genuine Advantage will further hinder the creation of a Windows based virtual appliance.

If the demand for virtual appliances continues to grow in the market, Microsoft may have to rethink part of their licensing strategy if they want to continue to fight for operating system dominance as well as grow their percentage of the virtualization market share.

Posted by David Marshall on August 27, 2006 07:11 AM

August 26, 2006

Migrating to VI3 with no Downtime

According to all of the information circulating out there, we know that VMware ESX Server is heavily deployed throughout the world. And because of that, one of the first questions that we asked ourselves after the VI3 announcement was made and the excitement wore down was "how do we migrate our existing infrastructure?"

According to Damian Murdoch, VMware expert and owner of ozvms.com, "It has been a pain point since VI3 was first announced that customers would have to plan for downtime to perform the upgrade. This meant complex plans for outages that dragged out over a large timeframe."

But a solution to this pain point could be out sooner than we think. Damian received information about a new VMware ESX Server 3.0.1 release that could solve this problem. He was told "the upgrade path in the ESX 3.0.1 release will significantly reduce the upgrade downtime in going from an ESX 2.x to ESX 3.x environment for customers using VirtualCenter. Using VMotion and Relocate, customers will be able to migrate their ESX 2 | VMFS 2 virtual machines to the new ESX 3 | VMFS 3 environment one at a time without any downtime."

In addition to bug fixes, the new ESX 3.0.1 update is also supposed to include:

Added support for selected 64-bit guest operating systems

Support for servers based on the AMD 2000/8000 series processors as well as the Intel Xeon 7100 series of processor

Support for Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) on Microsoft Windows XP virtual machines

Support for iSCSI arrays such as EqualLogic PS300 and NetApp FAS3000

We'll have to wait for the official release and announcement from VMware, but it looks like this minor dot release will bring a lot of added benefit to VI3 users.

Posted by David Marshall on August 26, 2006 08:31 AM

August 24, 2006

Parallels Announces AMD Support and Workstation 2.2

Parallels is at it again. If you thought they were simply focused on the Parallels Desktop for Mac solution, you thought wrong.

The company announced that it is beginning another one of its now famous public beta testing runs, this time for Parallels Workstation 2.2 for Windows and Linux. The new platform is expected to deliver faster performance, better OS stability and stronger virtual machine isolation than the previous versions.

The product enables users to simultaneously run quite a number of different guest operating systems that include one of any version of Windows, any Linux distribution, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OS/2, eComStation or DOS. All of this can be run on top of any computer running Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, or 2003, or any version of Linux.

The Parallels Workstation 2.2 Beta includes a number of key improvements, such as:

A new, more user-friendly look and feel

Support for AMD Secure Virtual Machine Technology (SVM) for better virtual machine performance and stability

Better USB support, including support for USB devices that run Windows Mobile 2005

Better networking, including automatic bridging to the available network via the default adapter, WiFi support in Linux, and the ability to change network and bridge type "on the fly"

An easy-to-set-up, easy-to-use shared folders utility that lets users quickly share files and folders between operating systems and programs

Broader guest OS support, including stronger support for Sun Solaris and full support for NetBSD

Improved full-screen mode in which guest OSes are automatically re-sized to the native screen resolution for a perfect full-screen fit

Better video support, including support for dynamic primary OS video modes, custom video modes, and 32 bpp video modes

Full Unicode support lets users name files in any language

Better sound playback and recording in virtual machines

An improved Parallels Tools package makes using Parallels Workstation even more comfortable and convenient, and a more powerful Parallels Image tool helps users quickly create .iso images and re-size virtual hard drives

To view a complete list of new features and upgrades, visit the following Web site.

Parallels is allowing both current customers as well as new users to download and evaluate the beta of this product for free. Visit the following Web site for download.

Posted by David Marshall on August 24, 2006 08:09 PM

August 24, 2006

Lxlabs Announces Full Xen Management Capabilities

Lxlabs announced today that they have added full Xen management capabilities to their virtualization software HyperVM, which brings unprecedented levels of flexibility to hosting companies who can now offer a wider selection to their customers.

The company makes the claim that hyperVM is the first and only product offering both software level and hardware level virtualization in the industry today.

"HyperVM had been a much bigger success than we had anticipated," said CTO K T Ligesh, "and we are extremely gratified by the reception accorded to our software, and this has only spurred us to exceed our customer's expectation of us".

Following on this announcement, the company also announced support for Solaris containers and VMware in addition to the Microsoft Virtual Server support. Doing so, it attempts to offer the one umbrella solution that can handle multiple virtualization scenarios.

The company hopes that the key feature of hyperVM (the absolute transparent way in which it handles all the different technologies, enabling the customer to switch from one to another without realizing that their core technology has changed) will keep it unique in the market. SWsoft recently made a similar announcement about planning to support multiple alternative virtualization technologies. To that, Ligesh said "It's nice to see that SWsoft has finally acknowledged the severe limitations of virtuozzo when it comes to many hosting scenarios and are proactively taking steps to ensure that they will stay relevant as the virtualization industry matures. Of course, we are also flattered to see that SWsoft finds it newsworthy that they are going to do in the next year what we already have now."

Strong words.

You can find out more about HyperVM by visiting the company's Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on August 24, 2006 07:50 PM

August 22, 2006

Blade Server Acceptance Grows Dramatically

Today, TheInfoPro (TIP) released wave 3 of their server study that they have been conducting. According to over 130 in-depth interviews conducted with leading server professionals, TIP found that blade servers are finally gaining acceptance within the enterprise computing market. When Wave 2 of the server study was conducted in the 4th quarter of 2005, there was a negative feeling towards blade technologies and 8% of those surveyed were skeptical of the technology. Wave 3 of the study was conducted in the 2nd quarter of 2006, and this time, over 85% of those surveyed now report that blade servers are "valuable" or "critical" to their long-term server plans.

While users continue to be evenly split between "scaling out" (adding processing power through the addition of small units such as blades) and "scaling up" (adding processing power through virtualizing larger systems), the blade option is no longer taking a back seat to virtualization, and in fact, many users cited plans to virtualize on blades.

In a detailed examination of blade servers, TIP found that:

In Wave 2, 25% of users cited little or no cost benefits as a major inhibitor to blade deployment; many were citing acquisition cost, and not factoring in lowered operational costs; in Wave 3, this percentage has dropped to under 10%

Blade users have become more pragmatic, as the benefits users cite have dropped from complex and futuristic such as automated failure to simple space consolidation.

Simplified provisioning rose from 4% of users citing it in Wave 2 to 14% in Wave 3, while the more complex automated failover dropped from 16% to 6% of user mentions.

"User opinion of blade servers has shifted from disappointment over unfulfilled promises, to acceptance and understanding of just where blades fit in the enterprise," notes Bob Gill, TIP's Chief Research Officer. "As vendors have toned down the hype over blades, users are increasingly viewing blades as simply another form factor with unique advantages and disadvantages, rather than some radically new server type. As one leading edge user describes it, 'After all, for us it's just x86 hardware in a different type of box'. That kind of pragmatic approach is allowing blades to rise above the hype in users' eyes."

To view a preview of the results of the study, go here.

Posted by David Marshall on August 22, 2006 04:37 PM

August 22, 2006

LeftHand Networks to Support VI3

LeftHand Networks, a provider of iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions, has announced support for VMware Infrastructure 3, which includes VMware ESX Server 3.0 and its native iSCSI initiator.

LeftHand's Open iSCSI SAN technology combined with VMware offers customers virtualized, highly available and scalable server and storage environments, thereby reducing IT costs and simplifying overall IT management.

VMware's virtualization software allows customers to divide individual servers into multiple virtual machines, offering customers greater hardware utilization and flexibility. The company claims its LeftHand SAN/iQ software transforms industry-standard platforms into virtual storage modules, allowing users to easily consolidate storage and manage data protection.

Customers can benefit from LeftHand's storage clustering, and scale their Open iSCSI SANs as they add more applications and/or virtual machines to the virtualized server infrastructure.

When VMware and the LeftHand SAN are used together, both server and storage environments are protected from hardware failure by leveraging VMware's ability to restart a virtual machine on a different platform and LeftHand's ability to stripe and mirror data across the cluster using SAN/iQ Network RAID. This allows a customer to have a highly available virtual server and storage solution that will grow together over time.

"VMware and LeftHand are both leaders in server and storage virtualization. We have consistent goals: to simplify and consolidate IT management for customers," said Karl Chen, LeftHand vice president of marketing. "Virtualization and storage clustering have proven to help LeftHand's 1500-plus customers reduce their IT costs and we're thrilled to continue to support VMware's latest product offering."

LeftHand has been a member of VMware's Technology Alliance Partner Program since late 2004. And according to LeftHand, the two companies have a number of mutual customers benefiting from the partnership.

Posted by David Marshall on August 22, 2006 04:02 PM

August 21, 2006

Computerworld Horizon Award Honors Virtualization

Let's take a moment to congratulate two winners of the Computerworld Horizon Award 2006. The two solutions honored are from Altiris, their Software Virtualization Solution, and VMware's Distributed Resource Scheduler. Virtualization is definitely capturing the attention of the IT community, and this award is further evidence of that. listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on August 21, 2006 04:52 PM

August 21, 2006

TeamQuest Performance Software Update Supports VMware ESX Server 3.0

TeamQuest Corporation, which focuses on IT Service Optimization (ITSO), has released an updated software solution that supports capacity management activities in a virtualized environment.

With their latest release, TeamQuest Manager 9.2, the company now provides added support for VMware ESX Server 3.0 which helps further extend the company's performance suite of software for next-generation data centers.

"TeamQuest continues to provide IT organizations the ability to make better use of resources, see the big picture and play a larger role in IT/Business alignment," says TeamQuest CEO Jerred Ruble.

As an example, a company using TeamQuest software in a virtualization environment can better understand utilization rates, discover how to optimize resources for their virtualized environment, and make informed purchasing decisions that align with their customers' needs.

In addition to VMware ESX Server 3.0, TeamQuest Manager 9.2 also supports the following platforms:

HP-UX on Itanium systems

HP-UX on PA-RISC systems

IBM AIX on POWER systems

Microsoft Windows Server

Microsoft Windows

Sun Solaris on SPARC and Intel systems

Red Hat Linux

SuSE Linux

You can read more about TeamQuest's virtualization efforts by visiting the following Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on August 21, 2006 04:28 PM

August 21, 2006

Virtualization Adoption in the Middle East - Slow

ITP Technology recently published an article titled Keeping IT simple, which basically describes the growth of virtualization in the Middle East as slow compared to the explosion that is taking place in Europe and the United States.

Virtualisation, while not a new technology, is still considered an emerging one in the Middle East. Contrary to what is happening in Western Europe and the US, server virtualisation is just starting to make its mark in the region.
...

"I would classify it as an emerging technology in the region," agrees Ryan D'Souza, product manager, industry standard servers, HP Middle East. "However, in most of Western Europe and the US, it is being adopted to a much greater extent. In terms of adoption, customers in the region are not yet comfortable with virtualisation. A lot of concentration in the market is still resting in the maturity as far as going for virtualisation technology is concerned," D'Souze said.

D'Souza says that for the most part the Middle East is still toying around with the idea of virtualisation. "There are some customers who have gone down the path of evaluating the benefits that they would get out of virtualisation. There are a lot of customers who are still in that evaluation phase," he claims.

Nair believes the reason for the slow growth, particularly in the past, is twofold: the high acquisition cost of virtualisation solutions and the lack of technical skills to support the technology.

Read the entire article, here.

Posted by David Marshall on August 21, 2006 03:41 PM

August 21, 2006

Virtualization Honored with 2006 Horizon Awards

The Computerworld Horizon Awards was established in 2005 to make readers aware of cutting-edge technologies from research labs and companies that are "on the horizon."

Back in May, Computerworld began accepting nominations for innovative technologies that meet the needs of enterprise IT. They ultimately received more than 200 nominations.

To be eligible, organizations were required to meet one of the following criteria:

Provides a means of integrating applications across disparate systems and locations.

Facilitates communication and collaboration among geographically dispersed teams or business units.

Provides security for corporate information assets and safeguards the privacy of employee and customer information.

Manages burgeoning needs for information storage and disaster recovery in today's regulated world.

Provides manageable mobile/wireless computing for office workers, remote employees and business travelers.

Improves communication and visibility within the supply chain.

Makes it easier to manage the plethora of computing, networking and storage devices in today's corporations.

Manages e-commerce and Web initiatives and helps them turn a profit.

Extracts and leverages critical business intelligence from expanding data stores.

Develops high-quality in-house software applications that meet business needs and does it on time and within budget.

Makes basic improvements in hardware or software architecture that enhance processing or communication for a wide variety of applications.

This year, virtualization made its mark by winning two of the ten awards, as well as two of the ten honorable mentions. The winners were:

Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) - Over time, adding and removing applications degrades performance and makes computers unstable. When multiplied by the number of computers and applications in use, these problems increase IT support costs and reduce employee productivity. Altiris SVS eliminates application conflicts and protects the operating system from being corrupted, provides an on/off capability so applications can be made instantly available or unavailable, and allows IT staff to reset an application back to "just installed" state without redeploying the application.

Read their full story.

VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) - Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS) automatically balances the workload among pools of virtual servers, allowing servers to operate at 80% or greater utilization. Once policies are established, DRS manages performance, automatically provisions virtual servers, balances loads and activates fail-over without administrator action. By optimizing infrastructure resources, DRS helps create a self-managing, efficient dynamic data center.

Read their full story.

And the honorable mentions go to:

VirtualIQ Enterprise - VirtualIQ Enterprise manages virtual computing infrastructures -- cross-platform and multitiered -- allowing organizations to obtain a holistic view of their virtual infrastructure (server, applications and clients) and control it based on top-level business policy objectives to prolong product life, protect IT investments and maximize returns on investment. The suite includes global visibility and control of virtual infrastructures, workflow automation for provisioning and decommissioning of virtual machines, and host protection and resource optimization.

VMware Player - VMware Player lets users evaluate new or beta software contained in virtual machines (a software file containing an operating system and an application) without lengthy setup or system configuration. VMware Player installs like a standard desktop application. Once installed, it runs virtual machines in a separate window. It includes features that enable users to configure their machines for optimal performance and access to host PC devices.

Congratulations to all four companies for making the grade!

Posted by David Marshall on August 21, 2006 03:04 PM

August 20, 2006

XenSource Releasing its First Product

Last week at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, XenSource CEO Peter Levine announced that XenSource would be launching its first product, XenEnterprise, which would compete head-to-head with virtualization market leader VMware. XenEnterprise is an open-source product that serves as a virtualization hypervisor. To help reduce costs, companies have begun using virtualization to run multiple applications inside of isolated, virtual machines to allow a company to better utilize its server equipment.

"XenEnterprise is ready to go" said Peter Levine. He believes there is a lot of demand for this technology. He cited a TWP Research report that found about 6 percent of servers today use virtualization software. And so XenSource has made the consumption and pricing of their product to be in-line and available for the other 94 percent.

Levine described the product launch as a soft launch, where a more formal launch would take place later in the year. He also said that XenSource would make XenEnterprise available exclusively through a two-tiered sales channel and distribution partnership throughout Europe and North America. The company had recently announced a distribution partnership with Tech Data.

Initially, the company had planned to sell management tools to administer the virtual computing environment. But now the company is leaving that area for other software companies. Instead, XenSource will offer management APIs and open interfaces for third-party software tools, but the company plans to stop there. They are stopping at that level because they want to encourage an ecosystem of vendors to support this architecture.

XenSource plans to sell more software called "extension packs" to help other operating systems do more with Xen. It will offer these extension packs to Red Hat Linux, Novell SUSE, Solaris and other Linux distributions that use Xen. It plans to also offer extension packs to Microsoft's Viridian hypervisor for the Longhorn Windows Server.

XenSource CTO Simon Crosby offered two ideas for future extension packs: storage virtualization to help virtual machines connect to storage systems, and high availability to help computers launch a new virtual machine in place of one that crashes.

Posted by David Marshall on August 20, 2006 01:47 PM

August 20, 2006

Server Virtualization with 64-bit Computing

As server hardware continues to go through its refresh process, more and more people are going to start migrating their servers over to the more powerful x64 platforms. The need to migrate to a 64-bit platform will become further accelerated as software manufacturers begin releasing 64-bit only versions of their applications. So the question becomes, can server virtualization help me with this transition from a 32-bit to a 64-bit environment? The answer, unfortunately, is not cut and dry.

64-bit computing seems like the logical next step for server virtualization because of virtualization's resource hog-like nature, consuming as much processing power and memory as the virtual machines were configured to use. And since an x64 architecture typically offers a much higher CPU performance rating as well as an increased memory capacity, it seems like a marriage made in heaven.

But (there's always a but), this is where the "not so cut and dry" part comes into play. You would think that you should be able to go out and purchase an x64 system, install the operating system and virtualization platform, and then begin creating 64-bit virtual machines. Not so.

The first problem lies with the host operating system. Make sure that the host operating system you select is compatible with the x64 platform that you plan on purchasing. VMware ESX Server uses its own custom kernel as the host operating system, and therefore installs on bare metal. VMware offers a hardware compatibility guide to make sure that your hardware is compliant and supported with ESX Server. When installing VMware Server or Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, you must first install a base operating system such as Microsoft Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition. It is important to make sure that your x64 architecture is supported by the Windows operating system. It becomes important to do a little research here and not just assume.

Once you get beyond the host operating system problems, you must then contend with the limitations that surround virtualization and their guest operating systems. While most of the virtualization platforms offer some type of support for 64-bit computing, it is certainly a mixed bag.

The current market leader, VMware, offers some type of support for 64-bit computing on all of its platforms. However, if you want to run a 64-bit guest operating system, it does have limitations on supported processors.

AMD
Opteron, revision E or later
Athlon 64, revision D or later
Turion 64, revision E or later
Sempron 64, revision D or later

Intel
Intel EM64T VT-capable processors

There is no easy way to recognize which revision of AMD CPU you have unless you test it. VMware recommends contacting the vendor itself prior to purchasing.

To help, VMware Server performs an internal system check. If the host CPU is not a supported 64-bit processor, VMware Server will display an error message to indicate that the hardware on the host server is not compatible with 64-bit guest operating systems. VMware also offers stand-alone tools to help perform the same check. You can download the 64-bit processor check utility from VMware's Web site, or if you are using VMware ESX Server, you can use the included CPU check utility located on the product CDROM at /images/cpuid.iso.

It is also important to check VMware's constantly updated authoritative list of supported guest operating systems. VMware Server currently has the largest list of supported x64 guest operating systems, but the list is not all inclusive. Be sure to verify that the operating system you want to install is listed. VMware ESX Server version 3 offers experimental support for a number of 64-bit guest operating systems. Again, refer to the product's authoritative list for the full listing of supported operating systems.

Virtual Server 2005 R2 will also run on 64-bit host operating systems, and it supports both AMD64 and Intel IA-32e/EM64T (x64) processors. However, it does not currently support Itanium (IA-64) processors, nor does it support 64-bit guest operating systems. Microsoft seems to be holding off 64-bit virtual machine support until its Windows Server Virtualization product is ready - sometime within the next two years or so.

With the release of their latest version, Xen 3.0, Xen is now able to support a 64-bit guest operating system. And likewise, now that they are based on Xen, Virtual Iron's next release (3.0) is also expected to offer support for 64-bit guest operating systems.

So while adopting an x64 hardware platform and combining it with a virtualization solutions makes a lot of sense, you can see where the confusion comes into play. It is therefore important to do a fair amount of research before jumping in and buying something that doesn't work as expected.

Posted by David Marshall on August 20, 2006 08:58 AM

August 19, 2006

Is Virtualization the Answer for Mac Gaming?

When Apple announced that it was going to create an Intel-based Mac, it caused quite a stir in the industry. And with that announcement, a lot of things were raised, such as questions, eyebrows and expectations. Although the Intel-based Mac has been out for only a short while now, it seems like most people have gravitated toward it and the industry itself has embraced it. One area that has captured a lot of news and interest is Mac OS X virtualization.

When a little known company called Parallels first engaged the Mac market with its Parallels Desktop for Mac virtualization product, more than 100,000 people signed on to become beta testers. This alone seemed to validate the demand for virtualization on the new Intel-based Mac. But the demand at that time seemed to be focused around virtualizing the Microsoft Windows operating system so that users could run their Windows applications on their Mac... without rebooting their system.

And this technology seemed fine for running productivity applications, but what about gaming? Yes, Mac users like to game just as much as their PC neighbors, but getting the latest and greatest games on the Mac in a timely manner becomes more than just a chore - it is usually impossible. Can virtualization help the Mac gaming community like it did the productivity application market? Maybe. But first, typical virtualization packages need to overcome the 3D graphics limitation that has been plaguing virtualization since it was first launched for the PC.

The good news is that there are companies out there trying to make a difference and hope to offer some virtualized solution to enable game play on the Mac like it should be.

Parallels announced that it is currently working on a new version of Parallels Desktop for Mac that will allow the virtual machine's guest operating system to use 3D acceleration hardware in real-time. The company claims that it will be fast and hope to have it out before the end of the year. Doing so should give Mac users the ability to then run Windows games side-by-side with their Mac OS X.

CodeWeavers announced its plans to bring virtualization to the Intel-based Mac with its CrossOver Mac product. The product is based on the core technology of an open-source project called WINE. And because of the underlying code that is used to power CrossOver Mac, the applications don't require an expensive copy of a Windows operating system for it to work. Amazingly, the company claims that applications running on CrossOver Mac will offer comparable performance to that of Windows native apps. But, what about gaming? While the company's primary focus is productivity applications, they are working out details to provide support for a limited number of games.

Another company with ties to the WINE technology is TransGaming and their Cider solution. The product stems from the same technology foundation as TransGaming's Cedega software for Linux. Cider takes a different approach from the others. It works by directly loading a Windows program into memory on an Intel-based Mac and linking it to an optimized version of the Win32 APIs. Games are in effect "wrapped" up in the Cider engine allowing them to work on the Mac without any modifications to the original game source code. Because of that, developers need only have one code base to maintain while keeping the ability to target multiple platforms.

Even the industry proclaimed virtualization leader, VMware, is jumping into the Mac virtualization market. And while they face similar 3D graphics issues as Parallels, I'm sure they too are trying to come up with a 3D acceleration method of their own that would allow Mac gamers to run Windows games in a virtual machine.

But I leave you with one question. Is Intel-Mac gaming in a virtual machine really necessary? One of my biggest complaints about Apple's Boot Camp is the fact that the user has to exit out of their Mac OS X desktop and reboot the machine into Windows just to use a Windows application. This is not only a timing hassle, but it also keeps users from being able to share things from one OS to the other. But it doesn't seem like as big a problem to have to reboot my machine in order to game. I just don't feel like the same limiting factors are there hindering my gaming experience as they would my productivity use. So, I wonder to myself, is all this really necessary for gaming purposes or should I just use Apple's Boot Camp?

Posted by David Marshall on August 19, 2006 07:48 PM

August 18, 2006

Take a Walk into the Appliance World

This week, we finish off our discussion about VMware's Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge. The challenge is officially over, the judging complete, so who won? And speaking of appliances, rPath announced rBuilder 2.0 which helps software developers transform their applications into software appliances. Find out more! listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on August 18, 2006 08:12 PM

August 17, 2006

Linux Journal Announces Winners of Product Excellence Awards at LinuxWorld

Linux Journal and IDG World Expo announced the winners of the Linux Journal Product Excellence Awards at LinuxWorld 2006 in San Francisco. The winners were recognized in a ceremony that was held at the Moscone Center.

The Linux Journal Product Excellence Awards distinguish product and service innovations by LinuxWorld exhibitors and are divided into 13 categories, including an overall "Best of Show" award.

"All of the judges were very impressed by the nominations we received, it was a very difficult decision. We've seen many new innovations, and improvements on old favorites," commented Linux Journal Products Editor and Product Excellence Awards judge James Gray. "The open source community has been hard at work, and we're pleased to have the opportunity to recognize the advancements being made."

Some of the interesting winners to Virtualization Report readers include:

rPath - The Raleigh-based software company, which focuses on development of Linux-based software appliances, received the "Best Utility Grid Computing Solution" award for its rBuilder product.

IBM - Big Blue took home the "Best Virtualization Solution" award for its IBM Advanced POWER Virtualization product.

Novell - Novell received two awards, "Best Desktop Solution" and "Best of Show" for its Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop product.

Congratulations to each of the winners. For a complete list of all the categories and winners, check out SSC's Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on August 17, 2006 11:02 AM

August 17, 2006

Devon IT's ThinManage2 Controls Thin-Client Implementations

Devon IT announced that they were making their ThinManage2 software readily available; it is the latest version of their thin client management software.

ThinManage2 helps to increase the benefits of using Devon IT's NTA thin client terminals, which includes enhanced security, manageability, affordability, and reliability. ThinManage2 reduces IT management costs by managing thousands of thin client devices, including desktop and wireless thin clients, using less staff. It also enables administrators to update thin clients in a fraction of the time previously needed.

"Devon IT's NTA thin client terminals enable information technology executives to deliver greater IT performance and reduce their IT management costs, a key requirement for businesses to remain competitive in today's economy," said Joe Makoid, President, Devon IT. "ThinManage2 is a powerful management application that builds upon our real-world experience and further expands thin-client management capabilities. This application demonstrates how easy it is for businesses to incorporate a variety of thin client devices into their environment without creating IT management chaos."

ThinManage2 Features include:

Centralized control of thin clients

Ability to remotely shutdown and reboot thin client terminals (Wake-On-LAN)

IP Range searches allow you to quickly discover and inventory thin clients on your network

Maintains a permanent Inventory Database; no need to rediscover each time.

Schedule repetitive maintenance tasks on a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual basis

Administrators can install new versions of thin client operating systems from a central site

Administrators can learn to use ThinManage2 quickly with the simple GUI

The Groups feature allows administrators to group network devices according to organizational structure

ThinManage2 is now available for download.

Posted by David Marshall on August 17, 2006 10:59 AM

August 16, 2006

Egenera Raises $26 Million in Series E Funding

Egenera, Inc., one of the leaders in datacenter virtualization architecture, announced that it had raised $26 million in a Series E round of funding which was led by Pharos Capital Group and Fujitsu Siemens Computers.

The company plans to use this infusion of cash to further accelerate their global growth and to fuel technological innovations in virtualization and utility computing. With the Series E round, the company has raised more than $150 million in private funding.

"We are very pleased to add new participant Pharos and our strategic OEM partner Fujitsu Siemens Computers to the list of blue-chip investors that continue to provide enthusiastic support for Egenera," said Thomas Sheehan, chief financial officer, Egenera. "Our latest round of funding is a strong endorsement of the business value Egenera delivers to customers and reflects the success of our OEM relationship with Fujitsu Siemens Computers."

Sheehan continued, "Overall, this was a very strong round of funding for Egenera. Our ability to continue attracting new capital from world-class investors validates the tremendous progress we've made."

Egenera was founded in March 2000 by Vern Brownell, former CTO of Goldman Sachs, based on his experience running one of the world's largest and most sophisticated datacenters. An early pioneer in pivotal markets such as virtualization, blade servers and utility computing, Egenera brings its experience and depth to a rapidly expanding customer list of global enterprises, service providers and government agencies.

Posted by David Marshall on August 16, 2006 08:03 PM

August 16, 2006

OpenVZ Project to Build on RHEL4

The OpenVZ project released its OS-level server virtualization software in the form of a kernel build for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (RHEL4), plus enhancements that the company claims will provide users with additional flexibility.

As an example, OpenVZ virtual environments can now be called by designated names, rather than simply numeric IDs. It is also now possible to set the number of processors available to specific virtual environments to more finely-tune performance.

The RHEL4 kernel build is said to provide a more stable and secure base for the OpenVZ software as well as improving support for new hardware such as the latest gigabit Ethernet and SCSI adapters. The OpenVZ software release includes:

Checkpointing and live migration - a virtual environment can be frozen and stored, and then restored on another server.

Virtual Ethernet device support - allows network devices to be created inside virtual environments using designated names and hardware addresses that are different from the actual physical device.

"We continue to set a fast pace of software delivery to make available better and better technology with more and more capabilities," said Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project. "Within the past two weeks, we announced OpenVZ as part of the Debian distribution and now we're providing an update with more value for the user community."

The new OpenVZ kernel software can be downloaded here. To access helpful installation instructions, visit the OpenVZ wiki, which also serves as a forum to gain and share knowledge about OpenVZ.

Posted by David Marshall on August 16, 2006 07:30 PM

August 16, 2006

SWsoft Announces Single Vendor Management Tool

SWsoft doesn't seem content with just supplying the world with its award-winning operating system-level virtualization software - Virtuozzo. Today, they announced the company's strategic vision to provide IT organizations with the tools to manage other virtualized computer resources from additional vendors.

The company remarked that all future releases of SWsoft's Virtuozzo management tools will include support for other vendors' virtualization solutions. By doing so, SWsoft is giving data center managers unprecedented control over virtualized resources. It also offers data center managers the freedom to choose and explore different virtualization platforms without being forced to use multiple vendor's management tools.

"The benefits of server virtualization in the enterprise data center have been clearly established," said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of SWsoft. "Now, with different types of virtualization meeting different needs, IT managers require tools to be vendor agnostic and have the capability to manage different virtualization technologies. Previously, all technologies were separate with different management interfaces, often causing organizations to standardize on a single technology that does not meet all of its virtualization needs. SWsoft wants to be the best option for IT departments seeking to maximize the benefit gained through virtualized resources."

SWsoft will introduce its first wave of support of another technology later this year with VMware virtual machine management. Support for Xen is expected sometime early 2007 with support for Microsoft soon after that once it becomes clear what Microsoft's plans are. The price for these should be set sometime in the fall of 2006.

Posted by David Marshall on August 16, 2006 07:07 PM

August 16, 2006

Microsoft's Virtual Machine Manager Still Baking

Microsoft virtualization users waited patiently for Microsoft to open up beta testing of its long awaited virtualization management software, System Center Virtual Machine Manager. And Microsoft finally made good on its promise to get this product into the hands of the people, making beta 1 available for download to all registered beta users and therefore one step closer to giving IT administrators the ability to properly manage a Virtual Server infrastructure.

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the product is described by Microsoft as an enterprise management application for the virtualized data center that enables increased physical server utilization, centralized management of virtual infrastructure and rapid provisioning of new virtual machines by the administrator and end-users. The product has one goal - to make Windows the best platform for virtualization.

A lofty goal, especially with VMware having already released VMware Infrastructure 3 into the wild as well as having years of run-time on its own virtualization management software - VMware VirtualCenter.

With the beta release, users are finally getting to see for themselves the product and features that raised many eyebrows at the Microsoft WinHEC 2006 conference as the product was demonstrated before a live audience.

Some of the features in this product include:

Creating host management groups - A host group is a container that an administrator creates within Virtual Machine Manager to group a set of virtual machine hosts for easy management. For example, if you use Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service, you can create a host group that identifies all the hosts that support self-service users. Host groups are hierarchical; a host group can contain other host groups.

Centralizing backups by using checkpoints - a checkpoint enables an administrator to roll the virtual machine back to its state at the moment the checkpoint was created. Checkpoints are portable and can migrate with the virtual machine.

Virtual Machine self-service - allows administrators to delegate these tasks to users. The administrator can control the configuration of these virtual machines by limiting the templates from which users can create new virtual machines. The administrator can limit the set of hosts on which users can create virtual machines. The self-service user is presented with a Web page that enables virtual machine provisioning within preset controls.

Creating template images - You can use a template to create new virtual machines. If you use a template to create a virtual machine, you can customize the hardware and operating system configurations by specifying the hardware and operating system profiles.

Virtual Machine Manager Library - the library stores all resources that are used to create and manage virtual machines, including virtual machines that have not been assigned to a host. Library resources include templates, virtual hard disks, hardware profiles, guest operating system profiles, ISOs, and scripts.

Assisted Virtual Machine Placement - Placement is the selection of a host for a particular virtual machine. Any time you want to put a virtual machine onto a host, you will go through the placement process. Virtual Machine Manager provides host ratings to help you select a host for your virtual machines. The ratings indicate the suitability of the host for the virtual machine. The rating is calculated based on CPU utilization, memory utilization, physical disk space, disk utilization, and network utilization and takes several factors into account.

The product is obviously still in its early beta stage, as it does not seem to provide all the functionality that was originally claimed. The UI is functional, but definitely feels like a beta product in the early stages. It certainly doesn't have the look and feel to it that is provided with something like VMware VirtualCenter. It is however a step in the right direction, and you can clearly see where they intend to take the product.

To find out more information about the product, to download the beta, to view the product's FAQ, or to check out the WinHEC 2006 announcement about the product, visit the product's Web site.

Posted by David Marshall on August 16, 2006 04:42 AM

August 15, 2006

Mac Virtualization is Hot! Did You See it Coming?

The Mac virtualization market is really taking off. With Apple moving to the Intel platform, things are starting to take shape for this market. Did you see it coming? Who saw VMware coming in the front door while Microsoft slipped out the back? listen LISTEN!

Posted by David Marshall on August 15, 2006 04:55 PM

August 15, 2006

VMware's Virtual Appliance Challenge - and the Winner is?

Back in June 2005, VMware launched their VMware Technology Network (VMTN) and also introduced the concept of what we now know as Virtual Appliances. If you aren't familiar with virtual appliances, they are basically a pre-configured and ready-to-run software application that is packaged with an operating system and contained within a virtual machine. By creating a ready-to-run virtual machine, complex applications or complex setups can be pre-configured, and then distributed to those individuals or companies that need to run it. By doing so, the installation and setup becomes as simple as turning on a virtual machine.

When VMware launched the free VMware Player, virtual appliances became even more useful and wide-spread. Now, someone can create a complex software package into a virtual machine, distribute it, and it can then be launched and used within a royalty-free virtualization platform. Now, a virtual appliance can be both a time and cost-saving tool.

On February 27, 2006, VMware had a great idea to help foster adoption and excitement around the creation of virtual appliances. The company decided to come up with a challenge, calling it the "Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge", where contestants would be tasked with building an innovative and useful virtual machine appliance that would be judged by peers and an esteemed panel of judges.

Since that initial challenge was laid down, more than 170 appliances were submitted for judging. And now, after nearly 75,000 downloads later, the virtualization community and the judges have selected the winners.

First prize was awarded to Mikko Hiltunen, Erno Kuusela, Joachim Viide, Mika Seppanen and Jani Kenttala of Oulu, Finland, for creating HowNetWorks. HowNetWorks is an always-on, all-in-one, personal network troubleshooting console for those tired of the "laborious work" of network debugging. No more writing complicated sniffer filters, no more searching for ways to reproduce failures. HowNetWorks takes the next step in sniffer evolution–simply fetch the relevant data and throw it to your favorite analyzer.

Second prize was awarded to Andrew Macdonell, Michael Closson, Paul Nalos and Paul Lu of Edmonton, Alberta, for creating the Trellis NAS Bridge Appliance. The Trellis NAS Bridge Appliance makes it simple to access files across the network regardless of location, operating system or type of file sharing technology (SSH, NFS, SMB, etc.). It simplifies file access while maintaining security.

Third prize was awarded to Michael C. Jett of Senath, Mo., and Kennieth A. Goodwin of Paragould, Ark., for creating Sieve Firewall. Sieve Firewall makes it easy for Windows users to set up and use a transparent bridging firewall without having to learn Linux. The virtual appliance is managed by a Windows GUI application. The resulting XML configuration files are loaded to the Sieve Firewall virtual appliance and filtering can be up and running in minutes. Because the firewall is completely invisible to the outside world, it is not vulnerable to attacks that target more traditional firewalls. Not only can this appliance be used to create safe home networks, it can be used to manage and prioritize traffic in a multi-department, complex business network.

In addition to the top three winners, VMware selected virtual appliances that demonstrated excellence in five categories:

Collegiate: Open Network Registrar by Zachary Colgan of Potsdam, N.Y., is a drop-in administration tool that simplifies the simultaneous administration of BIND and DHCP.

Community: Hermes Memcached Virtual Appliance by Prabhakar Chaganti of Alpharetta, Ga., is a high-performance, distributed memory, object-caching system that provides a simple and fast caching mechanism to speed up database-driven applications.

Consumer: FreeNAS by Olivier Cochard of Paris, France, is a Web-based NAS server operating system based on FreeBSD 6.1 that provides network-attached storage services such as CIFS, FTP, NFS, SSH, SCP, RSYNC and AFP so users can access storage with a diverse set of protocols.

Developer: eBrainPool by Jatin Golani of Mumbai, India, automatically shares development environments through the P2P eBrainPool network so developers can search for and connect to other shared development environments that are available to the P2P sharing application. With this P2P network of environments it is no longer necessary to have every developer tool and every OS combination because developers can now share environments with others for specific tasks.

Server: Enterprise Encryption Server (EES) by Carl Bourne of Henley on Thames, United Kingdom, is an automated OpenPGP-based data encryption and decryption utility that makes it easy to deploy and manage centralized OpenPGP-compatible encryption resources. Send an unencrypted file to the EES virtual appliance (via FTP or through a shared directory) and it will send back an encrypted version ready to be transmitted securely over the Internet.

I'd like to personally thank all those people who took the time to contribute to this challenge. I downloaded and tried many of your time-saving appliances, and put many of them to work for my own use.

Congratulations to all the individuals and teams that won. Let's continue to explore and innovate!

Posted by David Marshall on August 15, 2006 07:16 AM

August 14, 2006

Veeam Software Releases Monitor for VMware

Veeam Software announced the release of Veeam Monitor, an application designed to monitor the performance and resource usage of VMware virtual machines.

Veeam Monitor provides a unified view of the performance and resource usage of all virtual machines running on a VMware Server or VMware Workstation platform. The best way to explain the product would be to describe it as a Windows Task Manager for VMware virtual machines. The Veeame Monitor accumulates the data from each virtual machine and then displays it on a single monitoring console. In addition, it provides a view of the specific usage of the subsystems such as the CPU, memory, disk, network and pagefile.

Like Windows Task Manager, Veeam Monitor can be an extremely useful tool for planning, balancing the resources, identifying performance bottlenecks and troubleshooting the virtual machines infrastructure. It provides administrators with performance counters and graphs for each virtual machine, and the monitor even collects performance information when it isn't active.

"Veeam Monitor is a unique solution as it provides a bird's eye view on virtual infrastructure as well as an easy way to drill down and view general resource usage per machine, all from a single console." - said Andrei Baronov, CTO, Veeam Software – "It gives VM administrators and users full control of their VMware infrastructure."

The product offers three different license types:

Veeam Monitor for VMware Server - $200

Veeam Monitor for VMware Workstation - $30

and Veeam Monitor for VMware Workstation Personal Edition - Free

You can learn more about the product by visiting the company's Web site. And, you can also download a free evaluation trial of the product by clicking here.

Posted by David Marshall on August 14, 2006 05:08 PM

August 13, 2006

VMware Updates VMware Workstation and Player

In case you missed it, VMware has updated their desktop products (VMware Workstation and VMware Player) with new dot releases. The new releases include general bug fixes as well as an increased host and guest operating system list.

VMware Workstation 5.5.2 (Build 29772) and VMware Player 1.0.2 (Build 29634) now include:

Updated Support for Host Operating Systems

Windows Server 2003 R2, 32-bit, 64-bit

Mandriva Linux 2006, 32-bit, 64-bit

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, 32-bit, 64-bit

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP3, 32-bit, 64-bit

SUSE Linux 10.1, 32-bit, 64-bit

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 update 7, 32-bit, 64-bit

Experimental support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 Update 8, 32-bit, 64-bit

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 Update 3, 32-bit, 64-bit

Experimental support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 Update 4, 32-bit, 64-bit

Ubuntu Linux 6.06, 32-bit, 64-bit

Ubuntu Linux 5.10, 32-bit, 64-bit

Ubuntu Linux 5.04, 32-bit, 64-bit

Updated Support for Guest Operating Systems

Windows Server 2003 R2, 32-bit, 64-bit

Mandriva Linux 2006, 32-bit, 64-bit

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, 32-bit, 64-bit

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP3, 32-bit, 64-bit

SUSE Linux 10.1, 32-bit, 64-bit

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 update 7, 32-bit, 64-bit

Experimental support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 Update 8, 32-bit, 64-bit

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 Update 3, 32-bit, 64-bit

Experimental support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 Update 4, 32-bit, 64-bit

Novell Netware 6.5 SP3, 32-bit

Experimental support for FreeBSD 6.1, 32-bit, 64-bit

Experimental support for FreeBSD 6.0, 32-bit, 64-bit

Solaris x86 10, 10 Update 1, 32-bit, 64-bit

Ubuntu Linux 6.06, 32-bit, 64-bit

Ubuntu Linux 5.10, 32-bit, 64-bit

Ubuntu Linux 5.04, 32-bit, 64-bit

To find out more information about the latest VMware Workstation product or to download it, click here. Or, to find out more information about the latest VMware Player product or to download it, click here.

Posted by David Marshall on August 13, 2006 09:55 AM

August 11, 2006

AMD has Broad Industry Support for its Next Gen Processors

AMD today announced broad software industry support for its upcoming Next-Generation AMD Opteron processor family, which provides the ISV (independent software vendor) and open source software development communities with hardware support for the development of the next evolution of business-class enterprise applications.

With the industry facing increasing demands for technologies that enable data center resource consolidation and lower total cost of ownership (TCO), the Next-Generation AMD Opteron processor is designed to provide a smarter choice with the introduction of AMD Virtualization technology and a seamless upgrade path from dual-core to quad-core processing.

So what are companies saying?

Microsoft - "Customers and partners are demanding solutions that help them achieve business agility and advance their businesses with high-performance IT infrastructure," said Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft Corp. "The Next-Generation AMD Opteron processor, along with current and future versions of Windows Server, will enhance software development and drive further adoption of the latest innovations in security, virtualization and management."

VMware - "VMware's virtualization platform and AMD Opteron processor-based systems are combined today in some of the most advanced data centers, resulting in significant power savings and unprecedented resource consolidation," said Brian Byun, vice president of Products and Alliances at VMware. "The Next-Generation AMD Opteron processor includes additional hardware support that further accentuates the benefits of VMware Infrastructure 3 as a true distributed platform for sharing resource transparently across the enterprise."

Novell - "Back in early 2003, Novell worked alongside AMD to bring the first production-level 64-bit operating system to the enterprise market, and since that time, our collaboration on solutions for the open source community has remained very active," said Roger Levy, vice president, Open Platform Solutions, at Novell. "AMD's Next-Generation AMD Opteron processor platform will enable customers to take full advantage of virtualization features in the recently launched SUSE Linux Enterprise 10."

AMD plans to announce the availability of the Next-Generation AMD Opteron on August 15, 2006. Also next week, at the LinuxWord Conference and Expo, held August 14-17, 2006 in San Francisco, AMD will be participating in several panel discussions, including "Linux in the Channel: Interactive Discussion Between the Channel and Linux Vendors," "The State of Linux on the Desktop: An OSDL Desktop Linux Working Group Panel Discussion," and "How Emerging Data Center Architectures Are Making Virtualization a Reality."

Posted by David Marshall on August 11, 2006 06:58 PM

August 11, 2006

Paper: A Comparison of Software and Hardware Techniques for x86 Virtualization

Steve Herrod, VMware's Vice President of Technology Development, recently pointed interested parties to a new whitepaper written by two of VMware's own, Keith Adams and Ole Agesen. The paper is going to be presented at the ASPLOS conference in October. However, it is being made available to the general public, now.

The paper is titled, "A Comparison of Software and Hardware Techniques for x86 Virtualization", and is described by Steve Herrod as "the most detailed description of VMware's virtual machine monitor (vmm) available." He goes on to say, "It also examines the vmm implementation trade-offs as the CPU vendors directly support x86 virtualization with architectural extensions."

From the paper's abstract:

Until recently, the x86 architecture has not permitted classical trap-and-emulate virtualization. Virtual Machine Monitors for x86, such as VMware Workstation and Virtual PC, have instead used binary translation of the guest kernel code. However, both Intel and AMD have now introduced architectural extensions to support classical virtualization.
We compare an existing software VMM with a new VMM designed for the emerging hardware support. Surprisingly, the hardware VMM often suffers lower performance than the pure software VMM. To determine why, we study architecture-level events such as page table updates, context switches and I/O, and find their costs vastly different among native, software VMM and hardware VMM execution.

We find that the hardware support fails to provide an unambiguous
performance advantage for two primary reasons: first, it offers
no support for MMU virtualization; second, it fails to co-exist
with existing software techniques for MMU virtualization. We look
ahead to emerging techniques for addressing this MMU virtualization
problem in the context of hardware-assisted virtualization.

Word to the wise, the paper is highly recommended, but definitely goes a lot deeper than what some people may be expecting.

Check it out for yourself. You can download the paper, here.

Posted by David Marshall on August 11, 2006 06:46 PM

August 11, 2006

Feel Abandoned by Virtual PC for Mac?

When Microsoft announced that it had no intention of offering an Intel-Mac compatible version of its Virtual PC product, many had reported that they felt abandoned or were upset with Microsoft's decision. But, I'm sure not everyone was upset. Suffice to say, Parallels and VMware probably didn't lose any sleep over the announcement, and neither did a company called iEmulator.

Instead, iEmulator took Microsoft's announcement and ran with it by making an announcement of their own. The company announced that iEmulator 1.7.9 (released June 26, 2006) was being made available to all Microsoft Virtual PC owners at the special price of $19.95. This upgrade price includes the full iEmulator application (Univeral Binary Application), comprehensive documentation (including step-by-step instructions for installing Windows 98, 98SE, 2000, XP and Vista Beta 2), a version of DOS (including a boot disk for Windows 9X installations), unlimited no-charge updates to iEmulator and rapid-response technical support.

Ok, great you say, but what is it? iEmulator is a high-performance PC emulator for PowerPC and Intel Macs running OS X 10.3.0 or later. It has been tested with Windows 95, NT 4.0, 98, 98SE