Year: 2004

Releases: VMware Workstation 4.5.1 released!

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It seems VMware folks wanna really impress their customers with two new releases in a week.

Sincerely we was waiting for 4.5.0 release but seems an immediate minor upgrade was necessary so here the WS 4.5.1 and the new features available:

New in Version 4.5.1

– Updates to the EULA
The End User License Agreement in version 4.5.1 reflects support policies for customers who acquired version 4.5.1 as an upgrade to a previous version of VMware Workstation.

– Updates to resolve several reported problems
Updates in version 4.5.1 include the following:

A more reliable SCSI implementation that makes it easier to move virtual machines created on other VMware products to Workstation.
Additional improvements in support for Linux guest operating systems using kernels in the 2.6 series.
Support for Windows 95 guest operating systems on host computers with high-speed processors — such as Pentium 4 processors with speeds of 3GHz and higher.

New in Version 4.5

– Increased memory size for virtual machines
This means you can create individual virtual machines with up to 3,600MB of memory and use up to 4GB of memory for all running virtual machines.

– Experimental support for Longhorn
This means you can install and run beta versions of the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn. Because Longhorn is still in the beta stage of development, you should expect it to install and run more slowly than other guest operating systems.

– Improved support for guests using Linux kernels in the 2.6 series
This means better performance for virtual machines running manually installed 2.6 kernels and also for virtual machines using some of the later releases of Red Hat Linux 9, which incorporate some components from the 2.6 kernel.

– Support for PXE
This means that if you use a preboot execution environment (commonly known as PXE) to boot and install operating systems into new virtual machines, you can do so without any add-on software.

– Tip of the day
A pop-up tip introduces you to a key feature of VMware Workstation each time you launch the program. You can turn the tips off if you prefer not to see them.

– USB device installation for nonadministrators
Any user on a Windows host can connect USB devices for use in a virtual machine. You no longer need administrative privileges on the host to connect a USB device to a virtual machine.

– Automatic check for product updates
VMware Workstation now checks automatically to see if updates for the product are available. You can adjust the interval between the automatic checks or turn off automatic checking.

– New Operating System Support
Version 4.5 provides support for the following additional operating systems:

Novell NetWare 5.1, 6 and 6.5
SUSE LINUX 9.0

Don’t wait and run to get it here!

VMware ESX Server backup script

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Oh yeah: everybody here doing great things with virtualization softwares sooner or later needs to think about backupping (that great things), but VMware doesn’t provide a complete backup support or strategy. So many customers tried to find effective solutions with 3rd parties softwares or custom scripts.

The best example of this is provided by an italian technology analyst, Massimiliano Daneri, who created a wonderful perl script for ESX backup: vmbk.pl
It’s just released version 2.0 and these are the features:

– Hot Backup (without suspend vm guest)
– Schedule Backup
– Interactive Backup
– NFS support
– SMB support
– FTP support
– Virtual Center support
– vmbhax:y:n:m form support

Great work Massimiliano! Many thanks!

Virtual Server 2004 will support Microsoft Operation Manager

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This is the claim of Paula Rooney, Desktop Pipeline writer, after attending a Microsoft presentation, in occasion of beta release for 30 partners two weeks ago.
I hope MS is talking about upcoming MOM2004.

Microsoft also said that Virtual Server 2004 will support Active Directory 2000/2003, according to Paula’s article, so we can imagine will be possible assign VMs to Organizational Units by GPO.
Would be great!

Dell expands relationship with VMware

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Taken from Information Week:

Dell on Monday began revealing its plans for the enterprise virtualization market, disclosing an expanded partnership with VMware Inc.
Dell will use VMware software to enable single physical servers to act as two or more separate or “virtual” systems. The platform will be deployed on Dell two- and four-processor servers.
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The partnership with VMware will enable Dell to expand on its strategy of creating two- and four-processor server offerings that can scale up to meet performance demands of customers, as opposed to solutions by competitors that are geared to scaling up to higher performance with associated higher cost.
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The Dell-VMware virtual infrastructure configurations, tested and supported by Dell, include its PowerEdge 6650 servers running VMware ESX Server 2.0.1, Virtual Center, and VMotion; the Dell/EMC CX300 and CX500 storage systems to enable VMotion capability; and a single PowerEdge 1750 running the VMware Virtual Center Management Server.
The configurations are available now; pricing starts at $30,579.

Now it’s evident that EMC prefers to push on the low-cost SAN solutions by DELL, instead of producing them with its own brand alone. And it’s also evident that EMC-DELL-VMware group will converge in a single all-in-one solution very soon.
Now I expect to see a new Legato (just acquired by EMC) NetWorker version specific for VMs backup with native VMware support…

Microsoft Virtual Server will merge Automated Deployment Services

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Automated Deployment Services (ADS) is the new Microsoft free solution to deploy a Windows image onto large bare-metal server farms (like Symantec Ghost and Drive Image do).

One thing every virtualization technologies enthusiast tried to do is to use ADS to achieve (today quite expensive) Physical to Virtual (P2V) migration. But actual ADS 1.0 cannot do that (usual HAL problems prevent successful migration).

But Microsoft now announced a new strategy for advanced server deployment and management called Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), where, among other things, ADS and Virtual Server cooperate achieving eventually free P2V migration and server consolidation.

A new virtualization online magazine is born: VirtualStrategyMagazine

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The new virtualization portal VirtualStrategyMagazine, after a beta phase, seems to be ready for community.

You’ll find inside news, articles, webcast and web forums about some virtual products (by Microsoft / VMware / Leostream for now). This last one is good since doesn’t exist an official web forum about Leostream: now we have an unofficial one.
An “Event” empty column also suggests someday they could organize conferences about virtualization: hope to see them soon.

VMware is taking care of customers

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VMware just asked GSX Server customers to fill an anonymous survey. This is strange now that GSX 3.0 is just arrived…
I think during last product development phase many wanted features are emerged (but not included) and VMware folks are trying to priorize them for next minor releases inclusion.

SQLIO released: Microsoft I/O Subsystem stress test tool

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Microsoft just released a non-commercial, non-supported tool to stress test I/O subsystems.SQLIO states for “SQL SERVER I/O GENERATION PROGRAM ” and in fact it simulates a typical SQL I/O workload.
Together with the MSI package you’ll receive a raw how-to for SAN and DAS configurations, but you can use SQLIO to benchmark any kind of system.

I usually don’t post any news about benchmarking tools but this one comes directly from MS and could be really useful to benckmark and fine tune your Microsoft Virtual Server or VMare GSX Server environments.
Grab it for free here.