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April 23, 2008 | Comments: (0)

VMware releases the official VirtualCenter plug-in guide

Last month, I reported that VMware was working on an "official" VMware VirtualCenter plug-in guide. And just that quickly, the company has released the guide - although only with "experimental" support. But that's more support than they would have given the reverse-engineered guide from Andrew Kutz.

VMware writes:

With the release of VirtualCenter 2.5, VMware offers third‐party developers and partners the ability to extend the VMware Infrastructure Client (VI Client) with their own product‐specific menu selections, views, tabs, and toolbar icons, to provide access to external, Web‐based functionality.
These extensions, or VI Client Plug‐ins, comprise the set of configuration files, URLs, icons, and Web‐server‐hosted resources that work together to display extended menu items, icons, and other user
interface (UI) items in the VI Client and provide access to the external functionality.

Adding a plug‐in to the VI Client is relatively simple—the only requirement for the extended functionality is that it be available from a Web server, using a standard URL that can be accessed directly from your end‐users' desktop machines.

This technical note provides an overview of the VI Client Plug‐in architecture and helps you get started adding your own extensions to the VI Client.

The document is actually very well written, straight forward, and easy to understand. What's interesting however is that it took someone like Andrew Kutz to make a lot of noise in order to get this document officially written and sanctioned by VMware. If Kutz never reverse-engineered VirtualCenter plug-in creations and never wrote a step-by-step guide of his own, would VMware have stepped up and published this document? Who knows. But we're all here now, so hopefully individuals and 3rd-party companies will be able to make the most of it.

So what happens to Kutz and his viplugins.com Web site? Does VMware's document trump his? And what about his selection of plug-ins available for download? I asked Kutz that very question, and he said that VMware's announcement hasn't slowed down his site traffic. In fact, it was just the opposite. His Web site traffic has increased because of the awareness that VMware has brought to his plug-ins.

So both documents have been well received by the public. One is unsupported, and the other is experimental. Off to a good start here. In a recent blog post on SearchVMware.com, Kutz offers a number of other differences between his process and VMware's. Here, he describes one such difference:

Official plug-ins function very similarly to mine (they should, they are built using the same principals), but they could be considered inferior in one very important manner. Although the user interface to activate a plug-in is the same (context menus, tabs, menu items), the interface for official plug-ins can only be a web page. For instance, a user right-clicks on a virtual machine and clicks on the context-menu item labeled Migrate storage which launches my Storage VMotion plug-in rewritten as an official plug-in. Instead of having a Windows form appear that maintains a consistent user interface, instead a web browser appears and runs a script or web application that has authentication information and object information passed to it from the VI client (much like my Invoke plug-in).

If you think you're ready to create your own VirtualCenter plug-in, you might want to check out VMware's official "Getting Started with VI Client Plug-ins". At 13 pages, it is a quick and easy read, and it will easily get you started down the road of plug-in creation success.

I wouldn't doubt if we see VMware create their own "marketplace" for VirtualCenter plug-ins, much like they did with their very successful Virtual Appliance Marketplace.

Posted by David Marshall on April 23, 2008 07:16 PM

April 20, 2008 | Comments: (0)

EMA virtualization research offers trends, forecasts and recommendations

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), a leading IT management research and consulting firm, announced the release of its latest research report titled, "Virtualization and Management: Trends, Forecasts and Recommendations."

EMA and its research director, Andi Mann, digs deep within one of 2008's hottest technologies - virtualization. A technology that cuts across many different layers such as server virtualization, network virtualization, storage virtualization, grid and cluster computing and more. In order to really see what's going on within the industry, and to move past the marketing hype, the firm surveyed more than 625 IT professionals this year in order to learn their thoughts on virtualization and the IT management implications of the technologies. Respondents are actively working with the technology and come from small and medium sized businesses as well as very large enterprises. And these respondents also work in different industries and come from various geographical locations - leading us to a very comprehensive 70-page research report.

"The promise of IT virtualization continues to be significant as it rightfully gains traction across servers, desktops, applications, networks, storage and more," said Mann. "This latest research report identifies what is really happening within the exploding virtualization marketplace, the impact it is having on IT professionals and the technology options that are available today."

Some of the interesting findings in this research report include:

Virtualization isn't just for development and testing anymore. Almost three-quarters of all enterprises are now using virtualization for production applications.
In 2008, VMware still has the highest percentage of deployments. However, a growing threat is coming from its competitors. Microsoft is already within 10% of VMware's lead, and Citrix is 20% behind that. VMware dominates within server virtualization, but Microsoft Hyper-V is expected to be a serious challenger. Already, a third of respondents are planning to deploy Hyper-V, and that number is expected to grow as Windows Server 2008 deployments increase.
In the next 12-24 months, desktop virtualization is expected to be the most hotly contested virtualization market. It has the strongest potential for growth in the virtualization market, and VMware, Microsoft and Citrix are all neck-and-neck within 2% of each other in enterprise penetration.
Human issues are the single most important problem in virtualization today. Political infighting is holding back successful virtualization deployments. And as I've reported before, Enterprises are still facing an impending skills crisis in attracting and retaining virtualization resources. Since 2006, the report shows that the number of enterprises that have the virtualization skills they need has dropped by 25%.
Virtualization management tools are still lagging well behind virtualization management needs. They typically do not manage across multiple platforms, technologies or vendors; they don't integrate with the rest of the IT management stack; and they don't align IT services with business objectives.

"The key to success is to approach virtualization as a strategy, not just a series of projects, and to approach it with more realistic expectations," said Mann, "Companies need to adjust their goals, and find ways to deploy and manage virtualization in more effective ways. This report will help them to do exactly that."

In addition to purchasing this report, you can also find out more about the latest EMA IT virtualization research and what Andi Mann recommends enterprises need to do to succeed with this emerging technology by attending and viewing a free webinar titled "Virtualization and Management: New Research and Highlights" to be held on Thurs., May 15, 2008 at 2 p.m. EDT.

Posted by David Marshall on April 20, 2008 11:28 AM

February 24, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Vizioncore offers 10 tips for P2V migrations

When people finally climb aboard the virtualization train and go down the road of server consolidation, one of the first questions they have is, "How do I move my existing servers into a virtual machine format?"

And that really can be an annoying process for someone if they don't have any clue as to where to begin. Sure, IT admins know all about imaging and backups, but if they are just now being exposed to virtualization, they typically don't know much about the migration process let alone the terminology of P2V.

Vizioncore has been at this virtualization stuff for quite some time. And because of years of experience, they are able to offer quite a few different software applications that help people out with their virtual environments.

To help combat some of the fear or frustrations around P2V, Vizioncore has created a "Top 10 Tips for a Successful P2V Server Migration" brief.

The company said that the brief is based on Vizioncore's experience from thousands of successful server conversions and it presents tips for managing the process and selecting the solution that best meets organizational requirements. Highlights of the brief include:

1. Assess immediate and future needs - scalability and speed are two of the biggest differentiators among conversion solutions - understand current and future needs.

2. Establish timelines, deadlines and budgets - total conversion time and simultaneous conversion capacity of different approaches are important considerations.

3. Assess skills - personnel and budget questions can't be answered until you determine whether your staff has the skills and time to execute the conversion.

4. Set a success rate goal - determine how many failed conversions you can withstand, set a success rate goal, and use it to help evaluate options.

5. Learn the options and their limitations - there are four basic approaches to P2V conversions, and each is effective in specific use cases, and each has limitations.

6. Estimate the total time of each method - more than one approach might seem appropriate, but there is likely a big difference in how much time each approach requires.

7. Prep servers to streamline the conversion process - conversion times go down and success rates go up when physical servers are effectively prepared in advance.

8. Automate execution as much as possible - executing each conversion step takes from 30 minutes to 20 hours - the time required impacts project cost and deadlines.

9. Verify and test - the complexity of preparation and conversion creates opportunities for error - newly-converted virtual machines must be tested to ensure success.

10. Repeat as necessary - the method must be repeatable. Some solutions have features to eliminate the redundancy for converting dozens or hundreds of physical servers.

"There are many approaches for converting physical servers to a virtual environment, but practical options sharply decline as the size of the project grows," said Jason Mattox, VP of Support and Product Development for Vizioncore. "For large-scale server migrations, staff time is often the most expensive element of the virtualization project. Expertise and availability are also common constraints. Organizations must consider the end-to-end conversion time when evaluating different approaches and determine which tasks they need their conversion solution to handle. By considering and managing these variables, organizations can select the most efficient solution for their needs."

The complete article titled "10 Tips for a Successful P2V Server Migration" is available for download, here.

Posted by David Marshall on February 24, 2008 06:58 PM

February 24, 2008 | Comments: (0)

VMware's performance team releases two new papers

One of the claims to fame of VMware's virtualization products have been their ability to perform very well over the last few years - creating a benchmark, in my mind, for others to reach and achieve with their own platforms.

Performance has been and continues to be one of those hot topics covered in the virtualization space. People are always trying to squeeze out every bit of performance that they can in their environment, and rightly so.

And along side of trying to architecturally and programmatically improve the performance of their product, VMware has also created a performance group called VROOM! that takes a deeper look at various performance issues on the company's blog site.

VROOM! team members recently added two new performance papers online.

SPECweb2005 Performance on ESX Server 3.5

Virtualization is revolutionizing data center computing by making it easy for people to run multiple operating systems and multiple applications seamlessly on the same computer. More and more organizations are adopting VMware Infrastructure 3 for server consolidation and to reduce the total cost of ownership.

VMware ESX Server 3.5 is designed for high performance. With a number of optimizations for superior performance, even the most I/O‐intensive applications perform well when deployed on VMware Infrastructure 3. In this paper we compare the performance of a virtual machine to that of a similarly configured native machine using the industry standard SPECweb2005 workload.

In our virtualized tests we achieved close to 85 percent of native throughput performance using the highly network‐intensive SPECweb2005 workload. In the tests focused on measuring latency, we did not observe any noticeable difference in application latency between the native and virtual environments. These results demonstrate that users need not sacrifice performance in order to embrace the benefits of virtualization technology.

Performance of VMware VMI

VMware ESX Server 3.5 introduces support for guest operating systems that use VMware's paravirtualization standard, Virtual Machine Interface (VMI). This paper describes VMI and its performance benefits, concluding that VMI-style paravirtualization offers performance improvements for a wide variety of workloads, but that the actual performance gains depend on the nature of those workloads.

Posted by David Marshall on February 24, 2008 01:35 PM

January 08, 2008 | Comments: (0)

New Study Profiles Virtualization Impacts, Needs and Benefits

A new study from Saugatuck Technology says server virtualization will have the single largest impact on budgets for IT hardware and support through 2010.

The survey, titled "The Many Faces of Virtualization -- Understanding a New IT Reality," says that virtualization is a key enabler of IT and business efficiency, but is vastly misunderstood and underestimated within user enterprises. Because of that, the report finds that user executives fail to effectively manage it, and therefore fail to realize the full potential and benefits of IT virtualization. It goes on to say that IT vendors seldom realize the breadth and depth of opportunities that IT virtualization presents to them.

The study finds that through 2010, all facets of IT virtualization will see substantial enhancements in functionality and performance, with the most significant enhancements in virtualization technology being found in microprocessor, hypervisor and operating system.

Agreed, but a fairly generic claim. Things have progressed significantly within the virtualization market last year alone. So it seems almost certain that within the next three years, each of these technologies will surely be enhanced in any number of ways.

The study also finds that through 2010, three vendors, Cisco, VMware and Citrix will dominate IT virtualization and account for 60 percent of all new virtualization deployments.

Without further information, I would assume the report is combining network and server virtualization into this number since it included Cisco in that group. Curious that it combined them into the 60 percent number rather than breaking them out. And equally curious that the study ignored the emerging Microsoft Hyper-V platform into the server virtualization market. Surely over the next three years, the Redmond giant will account for some significant percentage of the new virtualization deployments. I guess they control some portion of the remaining and mysterious 40 percent.

"We're at a very critical point in the evolution and adoption of virtualization by both users and vendors. Almost everyone sees opportunity in virtualization, but very few really grasp its scope and complexity," stated Saugatuck vice president Charles Burns, the study's lead author. "That leads to a lot of missed opportunities -- and some very inflated costs of management."

Burns continued, "Our goal with this study is to provide a foundation for understanding key categories of virtualization, their benefits, and how to manage them effectively."

The full 20-page study is available for purchase via Saugatuck's Web site, here.

Posted by David Marshall on January 8, 2008 06:46 PM

January 01, 2008 | Comments: (0)

VMware updates compatibility guides for ESX

In case you missed it, VMware recently updated its compatibility guides for the VMware ESX Server product:

HCL: Storage Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.x

VMware ESX Server 3.x has been tested and deployed in a variety of storage area network (SAN) environments. This guide describes the combination of HBAs (host bus adapters) and storage devices currently tested by VMware and its storage partners.

HCL: Systems Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.x

VMware ESX Server is tested for compatibility with a variety of major guest operating systems running in virtual machines. Additionally, VMware ESX Server is tested for compatibility with currently shipping platforms from the major server makers in pre-release testing. Our goal is to support a variety of storage and network adapters used as standard options for these platforms as they come to market.

HCL: I/O Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.x

VMware ESX Server Software delivers high performance I/O for PCI-based SCSI, RAID, Fibre Channel, and Ethernet controllers. To achieve high performance, these devices are accessed directly through device drivers in the ESX Server host, and not through a host operating system as with VMware Workstation and GSX Server products.

VMware certifies that specific systems and components are compatible with ESX Server software. Through the VMware Preferred Hardware Partner Program, ESX Server software works with leading server vendors to ensure that appropriate configurations of their current and future server products are certified.

HCL: Backup Software Compatibility for ESX Server 3.x

This is not an exhaustive list of all backup software packages and versions that are compatible with ESX Server software, but it represents those servers that VMware or its partners have tested with the current release of ESX Server software.

Posted by David Marshall on January 1, 2008 08:36 AM

November 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Offers SCVMM 2007 Scripting Guide

The Virtual Machine Manager Scripting Guide is a 143 page guide that explains how to create Microsoft Windows PowerShell scripts that execute Virtual Machine Manger 2007 commands, and provides many useful sample scripts.

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 is a server application that facilitates the centralized management of a large physical and virtual system infrastructure.

The Virtual Machine Manager 2007 (VMM) command shell is built on Microsoft Windows PowerShell, an administrator-focused, interactive command-line shell and scripting language that is integrated into the Windows operating system. VMM commands, called cmdlets, can be used separately to perform simple administrative tasks, as an alternative to using the VMM Administrator Console. VMM cmdlets and other command-line elements can also be aggregated into scripts to perform more complex tasks and to automate tasks involving a large number of managed virtual machines that would be burdensome to perform from the Administrator Console.

You can download the guide, here.

Posted by David Marshall on November 19, 2007 03:09 PM

November 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Releases SolutionAccelerators Doc and Slideshow Deck

Microsoft is releasing a series of solution accelerators, and the first of the series is dedicated to helping an organization with leveraging virtualization in their infrastructure planning and design phase.

Microsoft says that the Infrastructure Planning and Design guides (IPD) are the next version of Windows Server System Reference Architecture. The guides in this series help clarify and streamline design processes for Microsoft infrastructure technologies, with each guide addressing a unique infrastructure technology or scenario.

Each guide leads the reader through critical infrastructure design decisions, in the appropriate order, evaluating the available options for each decision against its impact on critical characteristics of the infrastructure. The IPD Series highlights when service and infrastructure goals should be validated with the organization and provides additional questions that should be asked of service stakeholders and decision makers.

IPD currently consists of the following downloadable packages:

Infrastructure Planning and Design Series Introduction (11 Pages) Planning the next generation of technical infrastructure for corporations is a complex and daunting task. If done well, the Information Technology (IT) group's capabilities are well aligned with the business and will be a strategic asset for the company. If done poorly, IT can be a barrier to the agility of the organization. The success of any infrastructure is measured in how well the infrastructure choices that are made match the objectives of the business. Although there are often hundreds or even thousands of pages of product documentation available, historically it has been very difficult to find guidance on how to appropriately plan the core infrastructure for an organization.
The Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) series provides architectural guidance for Microsoft infrastructure products. The series is designed to present the reader with the most concise planning guidance for Microsoft technologies. It also provides a means to validate design decisions with the business to ensure that the solution meets the requirements of both business and infrastructure stakeholders.

This paper describes the background for the guides as well as the format of each guide and defines characteristics common to all of the guides.
Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology (16 Pages)
The objective of this guide is to enable the reader to rapidly and accurately select which Microsoft virtualization technology or technologies to use for specific scenarios. The reader will then be able to proceed with the planning and design process for that virtualization technology by using the appropriate Infrastructure Planning and Design guide.
SoftGrid Application Virtualization (54 Pages)
Application coexistence continues to be a significant issue for business customers. The task of managing the portfolio of applications in a company has remained a very complex process with few tools available to help reduce this burden. Some of the challenges when managing applications include accommodating multiple versions of the same application as well as updating application packages.

Microsoft SoftGrid enables organizations to respond to the challenge of managing applications by implementing application virtualization. The purpose of this guide is to present the infrastructure planning process for SoftGrid by providing a clear and concise workflow of the decisions and tasks required to plan for each method.

This guide, when used in conjunction with product documentation, will enable companies to confidently plan the SoftGrid 4.2 infrastructure. Although additional options and guidance will be available in SoftGrid 4.5, none of the planning or sequencing work done today will be wasted effort.

The appendix includes a sample job aid for recording the decisions made during the design process.
Windows Server Virtualization (for Windows Server 2008 virtualization and Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1) (46 Pages)
This guide leads the reader, step by step, through the process of planning the server virtualization environments. The first six steps in the guide focus on determining requirements for the guest operating systems, applications, and services; they enumerate the capacity and performance requirements that will be used in planning host systems. By addressing information such as resource requirements, backup approaches, and availability first, the user can determine the size of the load that the virtual applications will require from the host infrastructure.

Steps 7 through 13 in the guide focus on the planning and design issues that affect the physical host infrastructure design. Specific guest workload requirements determine the server form factor, server placement, and the storage and network architecture. Specific steps and an overview of the entire decision process appear later in this document.

You can download these documents, here.

Posted by David Marshall on November 11, 2007 01:26 PM

November 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Top Ten Server Virtualization Technology Considerations

SWsoft, a provider of both operating system and hardware virtualization products, has an interesting whitepaper titled "Top Ten Considerations for Choosing a Server Virtualization Technology".

This top ten list provides key guidelines for honing in on the differences between hardware virtualization, para-virtualization and operating system virtualization, and it attempts to help you understand the basic options and limitations of each virtualization approach.

While reading the whitepaper, keep in mind that it was written by SWsoft, so it will obviously tend to favor its own solution. However, it does give a good overview of these various techniques and does provide a lot of useful information, especially if you are just starting out and trying to make a decision for your own environment.

It writes:

The playing field for server virtualization has become much more crowded over the last few years. Competition is always good for a market as more choices always push vendors into providing better products at more competitive prices. It can be very time consuming to digest each vendor's marketing materials to come to the right solution for your organization. This checklist provides a list of the main considerations and basic differences between the technologies to provide a starting point for technology evaluation. The three main technologies discussed in this analysis are: hardware virtualization, para-virtualization and OS virtualization.

And the ten considerations include: management tools, virtualization level, performance, density, platform support, migration, resource management, isolation and security, intended virtualization deployment and a capabilities and performance comparison.

Posted by David Marshall on November 4, 2007 06:37 AM

October 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

CIS Releases New Security Guidelines for VMware ESX Server

Back in September, the Center for Internet Security (CIS) released a whitepaper titled "Virtual Machine Security Guidelines - Version 1.0". In it, they addressed security concerns that apply to virtual machine technologies. But while the document focused on issues unique to virtual machines, it fell short of discussing security hardening steps needed for the popular VMware ESX Server virtualization platform.

In the second part of this document, ICS takes a look at security measures needed in the implementation of a VMware ESX Server 3.x environment.

It reads:

This document addresses the security aspects of virtual machine technologies and VMware ESX Server 3.x implementations. While these topics cannot be completely separated from the standard security issues of operating a physical computer or basic issues of running the individual operating systems involved, this document's primary focus is on virtual machine security issues. For this reason, we do not cover all of the steps needed to harden the guest operating systems. The Center for Internet Security has multiple documents, which address guest operating system security recommendations. Recommendations are based on a variety of public sources and input from members of the Center for Internet Security (CIS).

In this 70 page document, they cover installation considerations, network security settings, minimizing boot services, logging, file permissions, user accounts and more.

As VMware migrates toward 3i implementations where the VMware COS is no longer in play within their ESX environment, many of these security concerns go away. Until then, this is a great place to start if you want to make sure that your environment is secure.

You can download the documents by registering, here.

Posted by David Marshall on October 24, 2007 10:25 AM

October 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Offers Planning and Design Guides for SoftGrid and Viridian

Microsoft is starting a new Beta program called Infrastructure Planning and Design that is part of the company's Solution Accelerators group.

According to Microsoft, the Infrastructure Planning and Design guides are the next version of Windows Server System Reference Architecture. The guides in this series are expected to help clarify and streamline design processes for Microsoft infrastructure technologies where each guide plans to address a unique infrastructure technology or scenario.

All guides share a common structure including:

Definition of the technical decision flow through the planning process.
Listing of decisions to be made and the commonly available options and considerations.
Relating the decisions and options to the business in terms of cost, complexity and other characteristics.
Framing decisions in terms of additional questions to the business to ensure a comprehensive alignment with the appropriate business landscape.

The Infrastructure Planning and Design Beta Program is ongoing and will showcase multiple Beta release waves to support virtualization and Windows Server 2008 technologies in the coming months. Future plans will extend the architectural guidance to additional Microsoft operating system and software technologies.

The first two guides look at Microsoft's SoftGrid application virtualization technology and the company's hypervisor virtualization technology found in Windows Server 2008, Windows Server Virtualization (Viridian). The next guide in the series will cover Microsoft's Terminal Services technology.

SoftGrid Application Virtualization Guide (37 Pages)
Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization is the only virtualization solution on the market to deliver applications that are never installed, yet securely follow users anywhere, on demand. It dramatically improves IT efficiencies, enables much greater business agility, and provides a superior end-user desktop experience. The Infrastructure Planning & Design Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization guide discusses when to use standalone mode and connected mode for application distribution. It assists designers in the infrastructure planning process for SoftGrid by providing a clear and concise workflow of the decisions and tasks required for each method. This guide enables you to plan the infrastructure required for meeting your application virtualization service goals.

Windows Server Virtualization Guide (50 Pages)
A virtualized computing environment can improve the efficiency of your computing resources by utilizing more of your hardware resources. Windows Server virtualization enables you to create a virtualized server computing environment using a technology that is part of Windows Server 2008. The Infrastructure Planning and Design: Windows Server Virtualization guide discusses Microsoft virtualization options using Windows Server virtualization in Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. The guide explains design considerations at critical decision points and helps plan for an optimized server virtualization infrastructure architecture to meet organizational goals for performance and consolidation.

You can join the Beta program and download these guides by going to Microsoft's Connect Web site, here and then click Invitations.

When prompted for an invitation code, enter: IPDM-QX6H-7TTV

Posted by David Marshall on October 16, 2007 07:49 PM

October 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Finished Baking How To's in These Virtualization Cookbooks

If you've previously read any other technology cookbooks released from other publishers or other companies, then you are probably already well aware of the value provided by these technological recipes.

Cookbooks are structured and designed in a way to give us the information that we need in the amount of time that we have to spare. These Microsoft cookbooks do exactly that. They tend to provide step-by-step instructions to help you get a basic understanding of the concepts, techniques and applications being used. In addition to providing you with the general information that you need, you should be able to reference these cookbooks as a how-to-guide to perform specific tasks.

So with that quick overview, check out these valuable cookbooks covering Microsoft's virtualization technologies.

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1 and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager
The goal of this cookbook is to provide the steps and guidance necessary for you to successfully install and configure Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. You may then create and manage virtual machines, and perform P2V migration.

Download and read it, here.

Backup and Recovery using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1 and Acronis True Image 9.1 Enterprise Edition
The goal of this cookbook is to guide you through installing Acronis server imaging solutions for workgroups and installing Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. The cookbook covers creating a virtual machine (to serve as a standby for recovery) and restoring the contents of a server representing your production workload to the waiting virtual machine.

Download and read it, here.

Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1, and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager
The scenario presented in this cookbook will take you through the steps necessary to install Virtual Server and SCVMM, and then convert a workload to a virtual machine. This cookbook also includes the steps necessary to install DPM and to back up a running virtual machine, as well as information about monitoring and reporting using DPM.

Download and read it, here.

Quick Migration with Virtual Server Host Clustering Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition & Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1
This cookbook describes a simple configuration in which you use Virtual Server 2005 R2 to configure one guest operating system, and configure a server cluster that has two servers (nodes). With this configuration, you can migrate workloads easily from one node to the other.

Download and read it, here.

Mobile User Access of Applications. Terminal Server running on virtual machines using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1
In this cookbook we will install Terminal Server on a virtual machine and access the terminal server remotely. We will also show how to install Remote Desktop Web Connection and how to configure Windows Firewall to allow remote clients to access the terminal server.

Download and read it, here.

Hosted Backup and Recovery Solutions for Service Providers using Data Protection Manager (DPM) and Virtual Server (VS)
This cookbook will provide procedural, step-by-step guidance to an IT Generalist audience providing data backup and recovery to customers as a hosted solution using Virtual Server and System Center Data Protection Manager 2007.

Download and read it, here.

Simple Offsite Backup and Recovery of virtual machines using DPM and VS
This cookbook will provide procedural, step-by-step guidance to an IT Generalist audience for backing up and restoring virtual machines running in an offsite location using Virtual Server and System Center Data Protection Manager 2007.

Download and read it, here.

Simple Onsite Backup and Recovery of virtual machines using DPM and VS
This cookbook will provide procedural, step-by-step guidance to an IT Generalist audience for backing up and restoring running virtual machines using Virtual Server and System Center Data Protection Manager 2007.

Download and read it, here.

High Availability with VS and WS03R2 Enterprise Server Clustering
This cookbook will provide procedural, step-by-step guidance to an IT Generalist audience for implementing high availability of server workloads using Windows Server 2003 Server Clustering and Virtual Server using Intel-based hardware.

Download and read it, here.

Application Isolation and Operation in BO Using VS
This cookbook will provide procedural, step-by-step guidance to an IT Generalist audience for isolating and operating applications on separate virtual machines in branch offices using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, in an Intel-based hardware environment for regulatory compliance and improved legacy workload performance.

Download and read it, here.

Posted by David Marshall on October 14, 2007 08:39 AM

September 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Whitepaper: Virtual Machine Security Guidelines

Virtualization security is always a hot topic of discussion. And now the Center for Internet Security (CIS) is joining in that discussion with its latest whitepaper titled "Virtual Machine Security Guidelines - Version 1.0".

For those not familiar with CIS, they are an independent body that provides benchmarks, scoring tools, software, data, information, suggestions and ideas as a public service to Internet users worldwide. Their recommendations are typically the result of a consensus-building process that involves many security experts and are generally generic in nature.

The 30 page whitepaper addresses security concerns that apply to virtual machine technologies. Their recommendations are considered to be vendor neutral and are based on a variety of public sources and contains input from members of the Center for Internet Security.

While the document focuses on issues that are unique to virtual machine deployments, it does not cover all of the steps that are needed to harden the individual operating systems. Other documents from the CIS provide the necessary guidance to secure other aspects of a computing infrastructure.

The next CIS whitepaper will be the addendum for VMware ESX Server. That document will cover specific steps needed to apply the general concepts discussed in this document to an installation of VMware ESX Server.

You can download and read the entire whitepaper, here.

Posted by David Marshall on September 9, 2007 06:08 AM

August 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

The Impact of Virtualization Software on Environments

Virtualization of system resources aboard x86 servers is one technology that has the distinct potential to really change the dynamics of the industry in many ways as it quickly becomes a de facto component of modern computing.

Today's use of virtualization technology allows IT professionals to automatically manage the resources of the physical server to efficiently support multiple operating systems, each supporting different applications.

This IDC Technology Assessment presents IDC's view of how virtualization technologies are impacting and will continue to impact operating environments and the operating environment market near- and long-term.

Check out this 11 page whitepaper, here. It is a really good read.

Posted by David Marshall on August 21, 2007 08:37 PM

August 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Performance on VMware ESX Server 3

This VMware white paper discusses the performance and scalability of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 when deployed within virtual machines running under VMware ESX Server 3.0.1.

The introduction of this 19 page white paper reads:

Virtualization has become a mainstream technology, allowing enterprises to consolidate underutilized servers while helping to increase reliability and fault tolerance and simplify load balancing. As organizations embrace virtualization in the data center, many may consider virtualizing Microsoft Exchange software. This paper suggests how an enterprise-critical messaging application like Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 should be sized and deployed on VMware ESX Server1 to obtain a satisfactory Quality of Service.
Specifically, we examine:

The performance implications of running Exchange Server 2003 on a virtual machine versus a physical system.

The performance of Exchange Server 2003 in virtual machine configurations when "scaling-up" (adding more processors to a machine) and "scaling-out" (adding more machines).

This paper discusses the performance and scalability of Exchange Server 2003 when it is deployed within virtual machines hosted by VMware ESX Server 3.0.1 on a Dell PowerEdge 6850 server with a Dell-EMC CX500 FC SAN. The Heavy user profile from Microsoft's Exchange Server 2003 Load Simulator benchmarking tool was used to simulate the Exchange workload. Results indicated that a uniprocessor virtual machine can support up to 1,300 Heavy users. Our experiments also show that consolidating multiple instances of these uniprocessor Exchange virtual machines on a PowerEdge 6850 can cumulatively support up to 4,000 Heavy users while still providing acceptable performance and scaling.

A key observation in the study is that uniprocessor virtual machines are, from a performance perspective, equivalent to half as many multiprocessor (two virtual processors) virtual machines. Hence we recommend that the Windows and Exchange licensing costs, ease of management, and corporate standards guide your configuration in this regard.

You can download the whitepaper, here.

Posted by David Marshall on August 12, 2007 03:13 PM

July 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Book: Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Resource Kit

Robert Larson, an architect and expert on Microsoft Virtualization for Microsoft Consulting Services, and Janique Carbone have completed the Microsoft Virtual Server Resource Kit - described as the definitive, in-depth resource for administering Virtual Server 2005.

This book contains insights from the Microsoft experts who know the technology best. The official Microsoft Resource Kit provides the in-depth technical guidance on installing, configuring, administering, and supporting Virtual Server 2005.

In addition, you also get in-depth chapters on advanced configurations; development and test tools; migration and management tools; security, scripting; Linux support; disaster recovery; and extending and customizing Virtual Server 2005.

It also comes with a DVD that includes a copy of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Virtual Server R2 SP1, a bunch of new scripts, source code, sample applications, and a whole lot more.

To find out more about this coming soon book from Microsoft Press, go here.

Posted by David Marshall on July 27, 2007 05:55 PM

June 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Benchmark Paper: Networking Performance With Multiple VMs - VMware vs XenSource

VMware has created yet another technical paper in the hopes that its benchmark numbers and charts will showcase their hypervisor solution, VMware ESX Server 3.0.1, over that of its competitor, XenSource 3.2.0. In this paper, scaling and performance of the two products are measured by running a heavy networking load simultaneously in each of several uniprocessor virtual machines. The results are also compared with a single SMP native machine running the same total load. The paper begins with the following:

In a companion paper (Multi-NIC Networking Performance in ESX 3.0.1 and XenEnterprise 3.2.0, here) we looked at loading up a single virtual machine (VM) with multiple netperf instances, each running over its own NIC (Network Interface Controller). This effectively exposes the real virtualization overhead of high-throughput networking. While there are some real-world use cases that require this much network bandwidth in a single VM, a much more common scenario is spreading this bandwidth over many VMs running on one physical machine. This is a natural result of consolidating servers. For this paper we used the same hardware and software as in the multi-NIC paper, but performed a "scale-out" test: each of several VMs had a 1 Gbps physical NIC dedicated to it and each communicated to a similar dedicated NIC on the client machine through a netperf/netserver pair. The VMs did not share NICs. We hope this will lead to a better understanding of the performance issues involved with virtualizing networking.
By using up to four VMs/NICs here instead of the three NICs used in the earlier paper, we made better use of the 4-core server and were also able to test the scaling properties of each hypervisor. With dual- and quad-port network cards now commonly available, many users expect to be able to use four or more NICs even in low-end servers. Though the documentation included with XenEnterprise 3.2.0 indicates that the product supports only three physical NICs, the user interface had no problems configuring four NICs and issued no errors or warnings. Because of this ambiguity, and since this is such an important case, we included four-NIC benchmark results. Users should always verify support for their desired hardware configurations. VMware ESX Server 3.0.1 supports 32 e1000 physical NICs.

You can download and read VMware's entire paper, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 24, 2007 03:40 PM

June 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Details Windows Server 2003 Licensing with Virtualization Technologies

When you read about Microsoft Windows Server licensing, more often than not, the message is negative. Microsoft seems to be taking it on the chin a lot, but really for such a large software company, I think they are doing a fairly good job at trying to define and structure their licensing with respect to today's virtualized infrastructure. After all, there are other software companies out there that are still trying to license their software on a pure physical server basis without any regard to virtualization whatsoever.

For me, Microsoft's first step was creating a virtualization friendly license for Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise and Datacenter editions and SQL Server 2005 Enterprise edition.

The second positive step was when Microsoft detailed its licensing strategy with the creation of their Virtualization Calculators.

And now, it appears as though Microsoft is hoping to finally answer these licensing questions with something written down for all to read. The company has produced a new whitepaper or licensing brief that outlines how the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 operating system and other Microsoft server products are licensed when used with virtualization platforms such as Microsoft Virtual Server, VMware ESX Server and SWsoft Virtuozzo. In addition, it answers licensing questions about the use of virtualization technologies such as VMware VMotion and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

The introduction states:

To run Microsoft server software on a server, you must first assign the server a license. By assigning this license, you are designating a server to run an instance of Microsoft server software. In addition, you have the right to run as many instances on that server as the software allows-regardless of what kind of operating system environment (OSE) is present.
There are two types of OSEs: physical and virtual. A physical OSE is configured to run directly on a physical hardware system and can be physical and/or virtual. A virtual OSE is configured to run on a virtual-or otherwise emulated-hardware system. This distinction is vital to understanding how to license virtualization technologies; regardless of the type, each instance running requires a license.

To better understand the difference between physical and virtual OSEs, consider the following: Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition permits one running instance at a time, while Enterprise Edition permits up to five-one instance running in a physical operating system environment and four instances running in a virtual OSE. If you choose to run five instances at a time under the Enterprise Edition license, the instance of the software running in the physical OSE may only be used to run hardware virtualization software and software to manage and service OSEs on the licensed server.

You can read the entire document, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 11, 2007 04:37 PM

June 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Installing VMware ESX 3 on Workstation 6.0

Yes, you did read the title of the article correctly. We are talking about installing VMware's ESX Server inside of a virtual machine running on VMware's Workstation 6.0 product.

Come on, we've all been there before. Who didn't try to install older versions of VMware virtualization platforms inside of a virtual machine. Heck, I tried to install Connectix Virtual Server inside VMware ESX Server 1.0 and vice versa many ages ago... and guess what, it never worked. But hey, we try these things, don't we?

If you have ever tried doing this in the past (and failed), you might want to check out the latest white paper from Xtravirt. Paul Davey wrote this interesting 26 page white paper called the Guide to Installing VMware ESX3 on Workstation 6.

The white paper illustrates how to install and configure VMware ESX3 Server to run inside a VMware Workstation 6 virtual machine, and from that, the paper says that VirtualCenter, VMotion, HA and DRS features can be configured.

Using this configuration certainly won't win you any performance awards, and you most definitely aren't going to run this setup in a production environment. But what it does do is allow you to demonstrate, test or learn the software without having to worry about the VMware HCL and expensive server equipment.

Imagine, setting up and operating a VI3 environment on your laptop! How crazy is that? I definitely need to go try this one out.

You can download this easy to follow, step-by-step white paper, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 1, 2007 09:56 PM

May 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Performance Tuning and Benchmarking VMware Workstation 6

What a perfect time to come out with this whitepaper! VMware just recently announced the release of the long awaited desktop virtualization platform, VMware Workstation 6. And now, the company has created a valuable whitepaper titled "Performance Tuning and Benchmarking Guidelines for VMware Workstation 6".

This 34-page whitepaper provides valuable guidance in optimizing performance using VMware Workstation 6.0 and also offers a helpful performance benchmarking methodology, both of which are extremely important to people whether already virtualizing or still just thinking about it. (BTW, come on in, the water is fine!)

The preface reads:

There are some areas in which the best-performing configurations of VMware Workstation virtual machines vary slightly from the configurations of native machines. One of the goals of this book is to provide guidance about these variations. To this end, we discuss configuration of the host, the VMware Workstation software, and the operating systems and applications in the individual virtual machines.
The benchmarking guidelines in this book are intended to assist in the acquisition of meaningful, accurate, and repeatable benchmarking results. These guidelines are useful when you perform comparisons between VMware Workstation and either native systems or other virtualization products, as well as when you run benchmarks in virtual machines in general. The guidelines should not, however, be considered VMware best practices in all cases. Among other reasons, this is because benchmarking sometimes involves saturating one resource while overprovisioning others, something that would not be desirable in a production environment.

The book also includes examples of common pitfalls that can impact performance or affect the accuracy or relevance of the results obtained by benchmarking tests.

You can download the whitepaper, here.

Posted by David Marshall on May 21, 2007 05:25 PM

March 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

XenSource Versus VMware in Performance Comparison

If you remember listening to a recent Virtualization Report Podcast earlier this month, you may well remember the back and forth "Performance Comparison" news coming out of both camps - VMware and XenSource.

VMware initially offered a white paper comparing the performance between VMware's ESX Server 3.0.1 product and Xen 3.0.3. In that report, VMware's product clearly outperformed the open-source Xen solution in almost every category it tested. In doing so, the VMware product was deemed the superior hypervisor platform.

It wasn't long after the release of VMware's comparison white paper that XenSource CTO Simon Crosby came out with a response of his own. It was clear that Crosby found the white paper flawed. First, he claimed, "Xen 3.0.3 is not a commercial product, it's a code base. Second, Xen 3.0.3 only had partial support for hardware virtualization, and third, the VMware results are off - it seems ESX can get more than 1Gb/s out of a Gig-E NIC!"

To respond, XenSource ran exactly the same benchmarks on the same kind of machine to compare their commercial hypervisor product, XenEnterprise, against VMware's ESX Server 3.0.1.

Until now, we have been unable to see those results because of VMware's EULA policy which prevents anyone from publishing benchmarks of their products without permission from the company. So XenSource submitted its test plan and findings to VMware for publishing approval, and after review, VMware has agreed to let XenSource publish the comparative numbers between the two products.

XenSource published the following conclusion in their white paper:

VMware appears to have failed to appreciate the difference between our Xen open source code base and our commercial XenServer products. For example, had they read the release notes for Xen 3.0.3, they would quickly have established that Intel VT was only partially supported in that release. Moreover, XenSource's Xen Tools for Windows, which optimize the I/O path, were not installed. The VMware benchmarks should thus be disregarded in their entirety.
Our performance results show convincingly that XenEnterprise 3.2 performs equally well or better than VMware ESX Server 3.0.1 in all but a couple of tests.

Given that we have not spent much time on optimizing our product for traditional benchmarks we are pleased to see that there is essentially no difference between the two products. Our tests highlighted a couple of areas in which ESX marginally outperforms XenEnterprise, namely on compile time, and for Netperf TX.

XenEnterprise outperforms ESX on the Passmark memory operations. XenEnterprise scales well to utilize multiple CPUs to allow a wide variety of workloads to be run. Additionally the scalability testing found that XenEnterprise provides similar scalability to ESX when additional virtual machines are added to the platform.

VMware also appears to have under-appreciated the performance advantages of the latest generation of Intel and AMD processors with built-in support for virtualization. Although VMware's legacy technology cannot exploit these features, XenEnterprise's high performance is proof that these technologies deliver tremendous price/performance advantages to end users. What's more, the performance of these CPU features will increase further over time, with Moore's Law.

In conclusion, XenSource's commercial products are reliable, affordable and offer the Windows or Linux IT Professional a high performance platform for server consolidation for production workloads. They are very easy to use, and offer open APIs that enable our ISV ecosystem partners to complement our products to deliver a range of solutions that in every way eclipses the expensive, single-vendor, closed "solutions" marketed by VMware.

Some time today, XenSource is expected to add a link to the entire comparison white paper. Once that happens, I will update the article to point directly to it.

** UPDATE **

Click here for the link to the report!

Posted by David Marshall on March 21, 2007 04:40 PM

January 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Symantec Research Paper - Attacks on Virtual Machine Emulators

Peter Ferrie, Senior Principal Researcher, Symantec Advanced Threat Research, recently released a new research paper titled "Attacks on Virtual Machine Emulators".

As of late, one such use case for virtual machine emulators has been to use them to help better analyze malicious code. Unfortunately, malicious code is adapting and fighting back! This paper attempts to explain known attacks against the most widely used virtual machine emulators (VMware and Microsoft), and also demonstrate newly discovered attacks on other virtual machine emulators of which you might not be that familiar.

The introduction to the paper begins like so:

Virtual machine emulators have many uses. For anti-malware researchers, the most common use is to place unknown code inside a virtual environment, and watch how it behaves. Once the analysis has been completed, the environment can be destroyed, essentially without risk to the real environment that hosts it. This provides a safe way to see if a sample might be malicious.
This brings us to the simplest attack that malicious code can perform on a virtual machine emulator: to detect it. As more security researchers come to rely on virtual machine emulators, malicious code samples have appeared that are intentionally sensitive to the presence of virtual machine emulators. Those samples alter their behavior (including refusing to run) if a virtual machine emulator is detected. This makes analysis more complicated, and possibly highly misleading. Some descriptions and samples of how virtual machine emulators are detected are presented in this paper.

A harsher attack that malicious code can perform against a virtual machine emulator is the denial-of-service, specifically by causing the virtual machine emulator to exit. Some descriptions and samples of how that is done are presented in this paper.

Finally, the most interesting attack that malicious code can perform against a virtual machine emulator is to escape from its protected environment. No samples of that are presented in this paper.

It is important to note here that most virtual machine emulators are not designed to be completely transparent. They are simply meant to be "good enough" so that typical software can be fooled to run inside it. Their use in the analysis of malicious code was never a requirement. This situation is changing, though, with the creation of new virtual machine emulators, such as Hydra. However, even with full knowledge of what has been used to detect existing virtual machine emulators, it is clearly difficult to write a virtual machine emulator that cannot be detected. Some descriptions and samples of how to detect Hydra are included in this paper.

The interest in detecting virtual machine emulators is also not limited to the authors of malicious code. If malicious code is released that makes use of its own virtual machine emulator, then it will become necessary for anti-malware researchers to find ways to detect the virtual machine emulator, too.

You can find the entire research paper, here.

Posted by David Marshall on January 20, 2007 12:49 PM

December 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Integrated Virtualization Manager on IBM System p5

IBM recently released a new IBM RedPaper that is titled and describes Integrated Virtualization Manager on IBM System p5.

Abstract:

The IBM Virtual I/O Server Version 1.2 provided a hardware management function called the Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM). It handled the partition configuration on selected IBM System p5, IBM p5, and IBM OpenPower systems without the need for dedicated hardware, such as a Hardware Management Console. The latest version of VIOS, 1.3.0.0, adds a number of new functions, such as support for dynamic logical partitioning for memory and processors in managed systems, task manager monitor for long-running tasks, security additions such as viosecure and firewall, and other improvements.

The Integrated Virtualization Manager enables a more cost-effective solution for consolidation of multiple partitions onto a single server. With its intuitive, browser-based interface, the Integrated Virtualization Manager is easy to use and significantly reduces the time and effort required to manage virtual devices and partitions.

This IBM Redpaper provides an introduction to the Integrated Virtualization Manager, describing its architecture and showing how to install and configure a partitioned server using its capabilities.

The Table of Contents include:

Chapter 1. Overview
Chapter 2. Installation
Chapter 3. Logical partition creation
Chapter 4. Advanced configuration
Chapter 5. Maintenance
Appendix A. IVM and HMC feature summary
Appendix B. System requirements

To find out more or to download and read the RedPaper, go here.

Posted by David Marshall on December 24, 2006 08:06 PM

August 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)

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 11, 2006 | Comments: (0)

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

June 22, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Migrating from ESX 2.x to 3.0 and need some help?

If you are one of the people chomping at the bit to get your hands on the latest released version of VMware ESX Server 3.0, you aren't alone. But I ask you, are you prepared for what comes next? I mean, once you get your hands on the media, have you properly planned for your upgrade?

If you haven't really thought about it, you might want to check out the latest guide from Mike Laverick over at RTFM Education. If you've been involved in the server virtualization community for any period of time, you've probably already picked up one or two of his guides along the way. Each one is filled with valuable information, and he does a great job of educating each of us.

His latest guide is self-described as an "upgrade" guide to ESX 3.x and VirtualCenter 2.x. The guide is designed for people who are already very familiar with VMware ESX Server 2.x and VMware VirtualCenter 1.x. And it is based on the "delta" two-day training that can be optionally attended for those people with prior experience.

Mike clearly outlines that this guide is by no means a definitive statement on upgrading. For that, he recommends you read the VMware documentation. It's also not a comprehensive guide but rather a guide that covers most of the primary differences.

You will find information such as the following:

Upgrading Virtual Infrastructure
In Place Upgrade of VirtualCenter
In Place Upgrade of ESX Server
Upgrading Virtual Machines
Networking
Storage (VMFS, SANs, NFS, iSCSI)
Deployment and Migration
Resource Management
Backup and High Availability

You can download Mike's guide, here. And you can read the latest discussion on the guide, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 22, 2006 08:26 PM

June 07, 2006 | Comments: (0)

VMware Offers Technical Resources to Circumvent Confusion

After VMware's announcement of VMware Infrastructure 3, the media and consumers alike went crazy trying to let anyone and everyone know exactly what was going on. Now that the dust has somewhat settled, it's time to sit back and start figuring out exactly what VMware has just offered. To help circumvent any confusion, VMware now offers numerous white papers that cover a wide range of topics. They include:

File/Print/DNS Servers: Getting Started with Virtual Infrastructure - In this white paper, we will discuss the value of adding virtual infrastructure to the organization to support various staple services such as File and Printing services and DNS. Leveraging VMware ESX Server's iSCSI support, virtual file servers reach new capabilities while keeping costs affordable at the same time. The scalability of virtual networking support in VMware ESX Server 3.0 lends itself especially well in high-bandwidth scenarios when coupled with new processor technology from Intel.

Tips and Tricks for Implementing Infrastructure Services on ESX Server - The purpose of this paper is to provide advice on leveraging key features of VMware Infrastructure for deployment of infrastructure services for system administrators who are new to VMware Virtual Infrastructure. Recommendations and examples will illustrate what can be accomplished using the VMware Infrastructure platform.

Automating High Availability (HA) Services with VMware HA - VMware HA, a new capability in VMware Infrastructure 3, helps customers improve service levels for any application by implementing cost-effective virtualization-based high-availability solutions that are both easy to use and easy to configure.

iSCSI Best Practices and Configuration Guide - This paper provides information regarding the configuration and best practices of iSCSI with VMware Infrastructure 3 (ESX Server).

VirtualCenter 2: Template Usage and Best Practices - This document will focus on the use of virtual machine templates in VMware Infrastructure 3. Virtual machine template functionality was redesigned in VMware Infrstructure 3 which includes VirtualCenter 2. New to VirtualCenter 2 is the ability to keep templates current with OS and application updates.

Resource Management with VMware DRS - VMware DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler) dynamically allocates and balances computing capacity and virtual machine placement with resources pooled from multiple ESX Server hosts.

This white paper provides an architectural and conceptual overview of VMware DRS and describes how you can use DRS to simplify provisioning of applications, achieve higher levels of resource utilization, and better align use of IT resources with business priorities.

VMware Infrastructure 3 architecture - This paper describes the architecture of VMware Infrastructure, beginning with the elements that make up its physical topology, followed by the virtual, or logical, view of VMware Infrastructure where the relationships between the virtual architectural elements and the physical world are explored. Lastly, the architectures of two core VMware Infrastructure components are discussed in further detail.

Consolidated Backup in VMware Infrastructure 3 - VMware Consolidated Backup offloads backup tasks from ESX Server systems to one or more dedicated backup proxies, thus reducing the load on the ESX Server systems and improving manageability. It provides highly flexible backup and restore capabilities, from full image backups (for any guest operating system) to full and incremental file-based backups (for Microsoft Windows guest operating systems).

VMware ESX Server 3: 802.1Q VLAN Solutions - This white paper provides an overview of VLAN concepts and benefits and illustrates three possible ESX Server and virtual machine VLAN configurations. It then compares the advantages and disadvantages of the three possible configurations and recommends some best practices. The paper also includes configuration samples for both ESX Server and the external physical switches and concludes with a list of frequently asked questions.

VMware Infrastructure 3: Pricing, Packaging and Licensing Overview - Simplifying how customers purchase, deploy and get support for VMware data center products, the VMware Infrastructure 3 product suite introduces significant changes to pricing, packaging and licensing for all products included in the suite.

The whitepapers can be downloaded from VMware, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 7, 2006 05:19 PM

May 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)

IBM Redbook - A Virtualization Experience: IBM Worldwide Grid

IBM has released a draft document for review - a draft of a soon to be released redbook.

This IBM redbook discusses the IBM Global Account Worldwide Grid (IGA WW Grid), an infrastructure for Grid computing deployed on the IBM intranet. The IGA WW Grid is a global network of heterogeneous resources to enable internal business applications for Grid computing. Using virtualization, the IGA WW Grid is composed of IBM zSeries and pSeries servers distributed across the globe.
In this book, we discuss:

Benefits provided by the IGA WW Grid

Components of the IGA WW Grid

Scheduling workloads on the Grid

Enabling applications to run on the Grid

Table of contents

Chapter 1. Overview
Chapter 2. Grid management center
Chapter 3. Virtual file system
Chapter 4. Grid resource controller
Chapter 5. Grid services
Chapter 6. Installing to virtual file system
Chapter 7. Application deployment on the Grid
Appendix A. Scripts to propagate private keys
Appendix B. Grid daemon scripts
Appendix C. DB2 schema of registration site

The redbook can be downloaded, here.

Posted by David Marshall on May 15, 2006 08:43 PM

May 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Pitfalls of Server Virtualization - Defragmentation

We all know the benefits of server consolidation through the use of server virtualization. We've been there before - reading white papers, articles, marketing material, and even viewing demos, webinars, and seminars. Our systems were being underutilized CPU wise, so if we consolidated multiple machines onto one physical server, the CPU resources would become fully utilized and no longer wasted. Great news, right? Well, yes and no. It is good news, and I am a firm believer in the technology. But, there are costs to pay. One such area is disk I/O. As we add virtual machines to a server, the increased disk read/write access across the controller and across the disks quickly starts to multiply.

One of the problems we encounter on a regular basis in the physical server world is disk fragmentation. And by adding a virtualization layer on top of the physical server, and then including a number of virtual machines within that environment, the problem starts to exponentially grow. As the physical server and its virtual machines become fragmented, all systems begin to suffer from the overall decrease in file system performance.

Diskeeper, a leading provider of disk defragmentation technology, has released a whitepaper describing this very problem, and is offering a solution with its automatic disk defragmentation software product.

The whitepaper does a really good job defining virtualization and disk fragmentation, as well as explaining the overall fragmentation problem and then offering solutions.

Anyone who has a virtualization environment should check out the whitepaper for more information. It can be downloaded, here.

Posted by David Marshall on May 3, 2006 04:32 AM

April 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Storage Subsystem Performance in VMware ESX Server

If you've ever used VMware ESX Server, you probably wondered which virtual SCSI adapter is the right choice. You may have asked, do I accept the default choice that goes along with my guest operating system? Or does the newer virtual LSI Logic adapter offer me better performance than the older virtual BusLogic adapter? These are good and valid questions to ask. When creating a virtual machine, you definitely want to try and create your guest operating system to perform at its peak potential. So what is the answer? You might be interested to know that VMware has released a white paper discussing this very question. In it, they write:

The storage subsystem is a critical determinant of system performance. The key to good storage performance is to identify factors and system configuration settings that affect performance and understand how to set these in order to achieve the best results.
The basic determinants of performance are the operating system, the data transfer size, and the access pattern. In the virtual machine environment, the drivers for the available virtual adapters are also a factor. VMware ESX Server virtual machines can use virtual BusLogic and virtual LSI Logic SCSI adapters. The default driver for a virtual machine depends on the guest operating system. For example, Windows 2000 guests use the Microsoft-supplied BusLogic adapter by default, while Windows Server 2003 guests use the LSI Logic adapter by default.

This document provides a characterization of storage performance for a VMware ESX Server system with an EMC CX500 SAN as the storage back end. The goal is to provide performance data and system resource utilization at various load levels. Throughtput, I/O rate, and response time for various data sizes and access patterns provide sizing guidelines. This baseline data is expected to help debug performance problems and facilitate server consolidation for I/O intensive workloads.

To read how they performed the testing, what performance results and metrics were achieved, and what conclusions were drawn, download the white paper, here.

Posted by David Marshall on April 19, 2006 02:29 PM

April 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Shipping a Data Center Overseas via Drag and Drop

Have you gone through an audit of your data center? Trying to come up with cost saving ideas and sources of efficiency? Want to get the most out of your underutilized hardware? Are you thinking of virtualizing your data center? That is exactly the problem and solution chosen by many companies in the recent months. The question becomes, how do I go about it? Read about how one company did it, AXA Tech, and how they did it with ease with the help of VMware virtualization and PlateSpin PowerConvert.

Quoting from InformationWeek:

"Armed with a complete picture of the data center landscape, AXA Tech chose PlateSpin PowerConvert to automate the process. PowerConvert would remotely migrate the software layer on their dedicated physical servers in Shibuya to the VMware virtual infrastructure in Melbourne and Shirokane. PlateSpin leverages its patent pending OS Portability technology to decouple the software layer (data, applications, and operating systems) from the hardware and stream it over a network to the destination of choice - physical servers, virtual machines, blade servers, or image archives. With a simple drag-and-drop, AXA Tech was able to remotely stream the data, applications, and operating systems from the dedicated hardware in Shibuya, to multi-use VMware ESX servers in Melbourne and Shirokane. On-the-fly, PlateSpin PowerConvert was also used to remotely right-size the destination servers to match resources with the new workload needs."

Read the entire case study, here.

Posted by David Marshall on April 13, 2006 04:55 AM

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