Year: 2004

“Using the system running on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, Surgient allows us to reach more customers, with a more compelling user experience, at a lower cost per user trial,” said Anthony Tsim, program manager, Microsoft US E-Marketing. “In just one month since our launch, Microsoft has delivered over 10,000 TechNet Virtual Lab experiences using the Surgient VDMS system. Surgient allows our customers to experience, learn, and evaluate Microsoft products and technologies through self-guided, hands-on tutorials and labs using the actual software. Because customers can access the labs with just a web browser, we eliminate the excessive amount of time customers would spend setting up and installing trial software on one or more test systems in order to evaluate our solutions.”

Surgient’s Virtual Demo Management System enables live, full-featured software evaluations to be delivered to anyone, anytime, anywhere. Surgient’s centralized control of virtual resources and applications, brought together through automated scheduling and workflow, enables the delivery of cost- effective evaluations regardless of product complexity or the number of users. With Surgient VDMS, hands-on software evaluations can be developed, managed, and deployed to customers in an automated fashion, without the need for manual set-up and tear-down of physical hardware and software environments. In addition, for customers that don’t have IT resources available, Surgient offers a hosted solution enabling rapid deployment and faster time-to-results.

Leostream is a leading developer of virtual machine management and physical to virtual (P2V) conversion software. The Leostream Virtual Machine Controller is a software application that provides centralized management and control of “virtual machine” software available from Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 and VMware, Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., an EMC company.

Virtual Machine software carves up large multi-processor servers and divides it into individual and multiple computing units, or “virtual” servers, hence allowing multiple copies of Windows(R) operating systems to be run simultaneously, and independently, on the same Intel-powered server.

“Only companies that have demonstrated high levels of customer service, proved their experience and attained advanced certification receive the designation of Microsoft Certified Partner,” said Allison Watson, vice president of the Worldwide Partner Sales and Marketing Group at Microsoft. “Today, Microsoft recognizes Leostream for its skills and expertise in providing customer satisfaction with Microsoft products and technology.”

“We are extremely pleased to have our management agent for Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 and VMware accorded certified status in the Microsoft Partner Program. This allows us to clearly promote our expertise and relationship with Microsoft to our customers,” said David Crosbie, Leostream’s CEO. “The benefits provided through our certified membership will allow us to enhance our support for server virtualization on the Windows platform.”

“Our customers are looking for ways to cut infrastructure costs and make better use of their IT and development teams. They want to streamline application testing and development, consolidate to fewer servers and move legacy applications to new hardware running on the Windows Server 2003 platform,” said Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Windows Server Division at Microsoft. “Virtual Server 2005 meets these needs and provides easy, automated deployment and configuration. This improved efficiency and simplicity represents progress toward our Dynamic Systems Initiative vision of reducing IT complexity.”

As part of Windows Server System, Microsoft’s comprehensive family of server software, Virtual Server 2005 helps customers increase operational efficiencies associated with testing and deploying their solutions built on Windows Server 2003. With Virtual Server 2005, early adopter customers have been able to decrease their server provisioning time by 50 percent to 95 percent, while reducing physical server counts by 50 percent to 80 percent through consolidation.

“Virtual Server 2005 will allow us to get out of the one-application, one-server paradigm when dealing with applications with low system requirements,” said Eric Hart, senior network engineer at PING Golf. “We will be able to consolidate 77 percent of these applications in our datacenter. Now we have the ability to provide a scalable, fault-tolerant and hardware-independent solution for deploying single-server applications in a cost-effective manner.”

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 includes simple installation and convenient Web-based management of virtual machines, as well as robust storage and networking features. In addition, physical server management tools from Microsoft and third-party management vendors have been updated to provide administrators with a seamless one-to-many management experience across a combination of physical and virtual servers. For example, a Virtual Server 2005 Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 will enable centralized monitoring and performance management of multiple virtual and physical servers.

Hardware vendors such as AMD, Dell, Fujitsu Siemens, HP, IBM, Intel, NEC and Unisys; systems integrators such as Accenture, Avanade, EDS, HP Services and IBM Global Services; and management software vendors including CA, HP and VERITAS, are offering a broad choice of tools, solutions and guidance to help customers more easily deploy and manage Virtual Server 2005 on Windows Server 2003.

“Gartner predicts that enterprises that don’t leverage virtualization technologies will spend as much as 25 percent more for their x86 servers,” said Tom Bittman, research vice president at Gartner Inc. “Server virtualization software can help enterprises reduce the time, effort and costs associated with the consolidation of servers and applications.”

Virtual Server 2005 Standard Edition supports up to four processors, with an estimated retail price of $499 (U.S.). Virtual Server 2005 Enterprise Edition supports up to 32 processors, with an estimated retail price of $999 (U.S.). Both versions will be available within 30 days through retail and volume licensing and will be licensed on a per-physical server basis.

The NEC Express5800/340Hb FT is also one of several manufactures pledging support for the upcoming Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. NEC’s base unit starts at $149,999 and comes standard with four Intel Xeon MP processors running at 2.8 gigahertz apiece with 2 gigabytes of memory, two 18GB HDDs (hard disk drive) and a choice of either Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition or Virtual Server.

The expandable mid-range server features a 10U rack-optimized form factor and uses blade server architecture by separating processing/memory and I/O onto separate modules and features hot-swappable functionality. “[We are] providing customers with the industry’s most reliable and secure platform for server virtualization and consolidation available today,” Larry Sheffield, NEC’s senior vice president of the company’s Solutions Platform Group in America, said in a statement.

NEC has got its work cut out for it, because at least a half dozen other server manufacturers are also targeting the need for so-called “fault tolerant” servers. The Rancho Cordova, Calif-based American version of Tokyo-based NEC must go head-to-head with computer-makers like IBM (Quote, Chart), HP (Quote, Chart), Fujitsu, and Sun Microsystems (Quote, Chart) who are specialists at servers that promise 99.999 percent uptime. The competition has also had the added threat of developing their own versions of virtualization software.

NEC said it has a leg up on its rivals because it has a history (ala the Earth Simulator) of developing computers that just won’t give up. The company said its new Express5800/340Hb FT also has an aversion to the traditional problems associated with traditional server architectures and cluster-based solutions.

“NEC is the only major enterprise manufacturer to offer a four-way high-availability server delivering up to 99.999 percent continuous availability, averaging less than five minutes of unplanned downtime per year,” Sheffield said.

For example, Sheffield said pharmaceutical corporations could use the server’s high-availability functionality to run uninterrupted molecular model tests for the development of new drugs, saving both time and resources. The server could also give retail corporations and e-commerce sites round-the-clock operations with full access to inventory and sales records, he said.

The company is also banking on IT decision-makers that want to plug Microsoft’s server software in their systems.

SMS 2003 SP1 supports the Advanced Client running on the host operating system. SMS offers unrestricted support for computers acting as a host operating system. Computers running Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 or Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 can fill any SMS client or server role.

Virtual PC requires Windows 2000 Professional or Window XP. Therefore, the host operating system supports the Advanced Client. The host operating system can support the SMS 2003 Administrator console.

Virtual Server requires a Windows Server 2003 operating system. Therefore, Virtual Server can host operating systems that support the Advanced Client. The host operating system can also support:

? An SMS site server
? The SMS site database, stored in Microsoft SQL ServerTM
? A management point
? A client access point (CAP)
? Distribution points, with or without Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)
? A reporting point

No interaction occurs between the Virtual PC host operating system and other applications running on the same computer. Similarly, no interaction occurs between the Virtual Server host operating system and other applications running on the same computer.

– Managing Guest Operating Systems

SMS 2003 SP1 supports the Legacy Client or Advanced Client running on the guest operating system, provided that the guest operating system meets the operating system and dependency requirements for the particular SMS client. SMS server roles are not supported on guest operating systems. SMS supports the following client operating systems as guest operating systems on both Virtual PC and Virtual Server:

? Legacy Client

Windows 98
Windows NT 4.0 SP6a

? Advanced Client

Windows 2000 Professional with SP2, SP3, or SP4
Windows 2000 Server with SP2, SP3, or SP4
Windows 2000 Advanced Server with SP2, SP3, or SP4
Windows 2000 Enterprise Server with SP2, SP3, or SP4
Windows XP Professional with no service pack or SP1
Windows XP Tablet Edition with no service pack or SP1
Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition
Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition

– Distinguishing Guest vs. Host Operating Systems

SMS distinguishes the guest operating system from the host operating system through hardware inventory on Virtual Server and Virtual PC. SMS looks for registry key information gathered from inventory to distinguish a virtual operating system by identifying its host machine. Though SMS 2003 SP1 does not include specific reports to expose a virtual operating system, you can still determine actual and virtual machines from the gathered inventory information.

In SMS 2003 SP1, the SMS_Def.mof file has been updated to collect information from the following registry keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Virtual Machine\Guest\Parameters|PhysicalHostName

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\Microsoft\Virtual Machine\Guest\Parameters|PhysicalHostNameFullyQualified

By collecting this data, it is available in the SMS Resource Explorer.

– Support Limitations

No Direct Support for Virtual Computers Images
SMS supports only virtual computers that are running. It does not support virtual computers images. For example, SMS cannot patch a virtual machine image unless it is running. If a virtual machine has been patched with a software update and the updated machine image has not been saved, that virtual machine needs to be re-patched after it is restarted. A virtual computer that is targeted for a patch that causes the computer to reboot might enter a continuous reboot cycle.

No Support for Virtual PC for Mac
SMS 2003 SP1 does not support virtual operating systems that are hosted on Virtual PC for Mac.

Read-Only Virtual Machines
SMS cannot distinguish a read-only from a write-enabled virtual machine. A read-only virtual machine loses any changes made to it when it is restarted. For example, if the client receives a patch, receives software, or sends a hardware inventory delta file, a disparity between the actual state of the client and the status of that machine as recorded in the SMS site database after the machine is restarted results. This occurs because SMS is not aware of changes lost on the client.

Meanwhile, Virtual Server support will be announced in HP OpenView and IBM Director as well as in monitoring and storage products from CA and Veritas.

The virtualization software, which was acquired from Connectix in early 2003 and enhanced for the Microsoft environment, is designed to enable server consolidation and simplified management. To that end, Microsoft will also detail key partnerships with hardware vendors Dell, Fujitu-Siemens, HP, IBM, NEC and Unisys on Monday. Top systems integrators Accenture, Avanade, EDS and HP will also unveil services for Microsoft Virtual Server 2005.

Virtual Server 2005 is a key part of Microsoft’s Dynamic Systems Initiative and will plug into leading management products across the board, one Microsoft executive said. The software will ship in two editions and will be widely available by Oct. 1.

“Virtual Server helps customers take steps today to get better utilization out of their hardware environment and allocate those server resources,” said Eric Berg, a group product manager for Windows server at Microsoft, Redmond, Wash.

Virtual Server 2005 offers a Web-based management interface for monitoring virtual machines, and the company has integrated links into its fleet of management products–as well as third-party links–to enable comprehensive management of virtual machines. A third-quarter update to SMS will support Virtual Server. The Service Pack will provide Virtual Server information in hardware inventory checks, track virtual host and guest relationships, and feature a new node called Virtual Machine in the SMS administration console.

The software will also enable companies to do parallel testing and rollout of Active Directory infrastructure. Microsoft designed the software to run infrastructure workloads such as domain controllers, DNS, WINS and DHCP in virtual machines.

In the fourth quarter, Microsoft will roll out MOM 2005 Management Pack for Virtual Server. The MOM Service Pack will allow one-to-many management of host and guest virtual machines, health monitoring and configuration changes and closed loop automation, Microsoft said. Microsoft will also make available a Virtual Server Migration Toolkit to help automate the migration process from physical servers to virtual servers as well as virtual-to-virtual conversions.

Microsoft will end support for NT at the end of the year and promises Virtual Server will help NT and Novell customers migrate their infrastructure. The company also says Virtual Server will help customers facing physical data constraints. Virtual Server 2005 supports NT, Windows 2000, NetWare and Linux workloads in virtual machines, but the software runs on Windows Server 2003 only. The Standard Edition, which supports up to four processors, is priced at $499, while the Enterprise Edition, priced at $999, supports as many as 32 processors.

Virtual Server 2005 is not designed to run hard-core server applications such as SQL Server, Exchange, file and print servers or enterprise applications in virtual machines. Executives also acknowledged that Virtual Server 2005 is aimed at midsize companies and enterprises rather than SMB customers.

At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Intel executives have begun talking about several of their core processor technologies, including Silvervale, the hardware-assisted virtualization technology due to roll out next year. Intel also has an almost identical technology, called “Vanderpool,” which is designed for client platforms.

Both technologies are seen as vital to future development. “We are on record as saying that Vanderpool is the most significant change to PC architecture this decade,” said Martin Reynolds, a PC technology analyst at Gartner Inc., in San Jose, Calif.

Abhi Talwalkar, vice president of Intel’s Enterprise Platforms Group, described the Silvervale technology as a “key system strategy for IT managers” in a keynote address Tuesday. The dual-core “Montecito,” the next-generation Itanium processor, has already successfully booted this technology, he said. “Yonah,” Intel’s dual-core mobile chip due next year, uses the Vanderpool technology.

…

For now, the company is working with existing virtualization companies such as VMware and Microsoft to enable software-based virtualization, Williams said.
“We’re continuing down the path of how do I do server consolidation?virtualization is one way to do that,” he said.

…

Five years ago, the advent of Vanderpool and Silvervale might have commoditized VMware and run it out of business. Now, the technology may serve to emphasize the company’s other offerings, Reynolds said.

Nathan Brookwood, an analyst with Insight64 in Saratoga, Calif., agreed. “It’s not really competitive with VMware,” he said.