Year: 2005

Quoting from Windows Networking:

This article examines how to use Sysprep to create a library of operating system images which you can then use to deploy virtual machines on Microsoft Virtual PC for testing purposes. Such a library can help you save valuable time when creating test networks using Virtual PC.

In two previous articles on Windows Networking, we looked at how to use Microsoft Virtual PC as a testing and learning platform and how to get the best performance when using Virtual PC. This article discusses how you can use Sysprep to build up a library of virtual machine (VM) images that can make testing/learning even easier.

Sysprep (System Preparation tool) is a Microsoft Windows tool used for preparing reference systems for image-based deployment to target systems. Sysprep is found in the Deploy.cab file in the \Support\Tools folder on your Windows product CD, and the latest version of Sysprep for each Windows platform can also be obtained from the Microsoft Download Center by searching for “deployment tools”.

While the primary use for Sysprep is preparing systems for deployment using disk imaging (you also need a third-party disk imaging tool like Ghost to do this however), another use for Sysprep is simplifying the creation of new VMs for testing and learning purposes using Virtual PC. To see how this works, let’s walk through the process of “sysprepping” a VM running Windows XP and then using it to create additional XP VMs with minimal extra work…

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from the PlateSpin official announcement:

PlateSpin, Ltd today announced that it has closed an investment with Insight Venture Partners, a venture capital firm based in New York, N.Y. for Round B financing in the amount of $7.4 million US. The investment follows multiple consecutive quarters of double digit quarter-over-quarter growth and the milestone of surpassing the 500 customer mark. The proceeds of the investment will be used to further accelerate growth in software development, sales, marketing, and customer support. PlateSpin added an additional 162 new customers during the last quarter alone achieving a 95% increase in revenue over the previous quarter, recording the most revenue in any quarter to date and its first profitable quarter overall….

Microsoft already started an aggressive marketing launch for Virtual Server 2005 R2 annoncing a pricelist of $199 for Enterprise Edition and $99 for Standard Edition.

Now they go even further launching a new promotion, valid till 30th June, for having Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise Edition at $99, as reported by Redmondmag.com.

The product already available for download in evaluation form and for Volume License and Software Assurance customers, will be made available for the general public in February.

Steven Bink reports the long awaited Virtual Server 2005 R2 is finally available for download in 180-days evaluation form: x86 Enteprise Edition.

Volume License and Software Assurance customers can also download it here.

Remember to also download the Updated Additions to better performances for Windows Server 2003 SP1.

MSDN versions should follow at short (Microsoft reported it should be available for middle December).

Beta testers should soon receive a letter with their Enterprise free copy as Microsoft promised.

Update: Microsoft just informed me that the evaluation product changed download location. I already updated the link.

As you can notice they removed the x64 Enteprise Edition trial availability.

Along with the new Xen 3.0, its creator company starts offering commercial products.

First of all they start supporting the technology with a 3-tier architecture: support engineers (within 3 levels of agreements), classroom instructors and professional services consultants.
Then XenSource officially launched a commercial add-on to Xen for simplyfing enterprise-wide virtual environments: XenOptimizer.

XenOptimizer has the following features:

• Automated installation of Xen on servers with existing Linux installations (physical to virtual conversion of existing servers)
• Auto discovery of physical and virtual assets
• Web-based GUI dashboard
• Fine-grained, real-time control of computing resources including CPU, memory, network, and storage Live performance monitoring
• Unified guest operating system images across the virtualized infrastructure

Along with the new Xen 3.0, a new CD appeared called Xen 3.0 Test CD:

You can help the Xen project by testing Xen 3.0 on x86-based hardware and sending us the results. Community testing is the only way that we can test Xen on a wide range of hardware platforms, and the more test results we get, the better Xen will get.

To test Xen 3.0, all you need to do is download the Xen 3.0 Testing CD (ISO image), burn it onto a CD, and boot your system from it. The tests run automatically, and will not make any changes to your existing system installation except to write a file of test results to a safe place on a local drive or a USB stick. When the tests are done, the CD will try to upload the results to our website via http. If you don’t have an internet connection on the test machine, you can copy the file and upload it to us via our test feedback web form.

So download it here and help this great project!

Quoting from the XenSource official announcement:

XenSource, Inc., the leader in infrastructure virtualization solutions based on the open source Xen hypervisor, today announced the open source community release of Xen 3.0. In its first major release in over a year, the Xen project has delivered a compelling virtualization feature set that is squarely targeted at enterprise infrastructure virtualization needs, focusing on support for symmetric multi-processing (SMP), large server memory configurations and near-native performance, and offering for the first time an ability to virtualize all guest operating systems.
…
Xen 3.0 supports Intel Virtualization Technology, which allows virtualized servers to run natively on the processor, exploiting hardware acceleration for CPU and memory virtualization. This support is key to Xen’s ability to virtualize all operating systems. Xen will also support AMD’s Pacifica hardware virtualization early in 2006.

Xen 3.0 also supports up to 32-way SMP virtualized guests, with an ability to dynamically “hot plug” CPUs to ensure best use of available resources. Used in conjunction with Xen’s ability to dynamically relocate a running guest from one server to another, this capability enables IT managers to optimally place workload on their available server resources. Additionally, Xen 3.0 offers support for two new addressing modes for servers with large memories: Physical Address Extension (PAE) allows 32-bit servers to address more than 4GB memory, and 64-bit addressing for up to 1TB of memory; and, support for Trusted Platform Modules, which provide hardware based security, attestation and trust, as well as security features contributed from IBM’s secure hypervisor initiative. A port of Xen, to Intel’s Itanium Architecture contributed by HP and Intel is also included, and a port of Xen to IBM’s Power PC architecture by IBM is close to completion, signaling broad cross-platform adoption of Xen.
…
“Red Hat recently announced that it will integrate and support Xen 3.0 virtualization in the upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux release, which is expected to ship by the end of 2006”, said Brian Stevens, CTO, Red Hat Inc. “Prior to that, Xen will be available in Fedora Core 5, and we are working closely with the XenSource team to ensure a smooth inclusion in the Red Hat release process….

Notice that there is no direct mention of eventual Xen capability to run Microsoft Windows guest operating systems.

You can download sources and .rpm for SuSE, Red Hat and Fedora Core here:
http://www.xensource.com/xen/downloads

Remember you can also try Xen with no effort downloading and running the new liveCD (called Demo CD)here.

Quoting from the Enomalism official site:

The Enomalism Virtualized Management Console (VMC) is a powerful web-based systems administrator / management tool for XEN hypervisor. Servers with hundreds of multiple isolated Virtual Private Servers (VPS) can be managed like a standalone server with Enomalism tools which include a VPS creation wizard and templates which facilitate VPS configuration, loading applications and centralized software management & deployment.

Enomalism also provides a single interface for managing multiple servers across assorted platforms. The same administrator can monitor and administer both Linux and Windows servers using the same Enomalism interface without having to learn extensive OS skills. Enomalism also eases cross-server and large server farm management. Applications can be deployed and updated on many servers simultaneously. The Enomalism provides a centralized look at server information and software versions across all server resources, facilitating versioning and patch management.

The web interface is developed in Django/Python and served by Twisted (a Python web server). It’s quite identical to the VMware ESX/GSX Server web management console but integrates Nagios also for servers discovery and services availability check.
The project is Open Source and really worth to check.

Thanks to OSNews for the news.

Quoting from Network World:

XenSource, the company founded to provide support and maintenance for the open source Xen virtual-machine monitor, is releasing its first commercial product, a set of tools that the company says will make it easier to virtualize servers.

Called XenOptimizer, the product is in beta for the latest release of Xen, a community-developed program that provides an alternative to commercial offerings from VMware and others.

XenSource is expected to announce this week that XenOptimizer will be generally available in the first quarter of next year, says CTO Simon Crosby. Pricing has not been released…

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from Mulling Security, the Matt Richard’s blog:

Most people are familiar with the traditional overflow exploit methodology – find a condition where more data is sent to a buffer than the buffer can handle and gain control of program execution. With new protections against buffer overflows popping up (Stackguard, propolice, XP SP2) and better OS level protections such as randomized entry points we might be tempted to think that we’re almost at the end of the road.

There’s a new trend in IT that could bring buffer overflows back. Virtualization is really starting to take hold everywhere from enterprise datacenters to the desktop. In and of itself this probably isn’t news to anyone nor is it necessarily very interesting. What is interesting is how virtualization might lead to a new type of buffer overflow attack….

Read the whole article at source.