Year: 2005

Ben Armstrong reports a wonderful online tool for capacity planning on HP Proliant servers:

The HP ProLiant server sizer for Microsoft Virtual Server is an automated tool that assists the user in selecting the server environment necessary to support Microsoft Virtual Server. The sizing information and algorithms have been developed using testing and performance data on HP ProLiant servers.

The HP ProLiant server sizer for Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 is an automated tool that assists the user in selecting appropriate HP ProLiant servers. This tool provides a quick and consistent methodology to determine a “best-fit” server for your individual needs.

The sizing information and algorithms have been developed using testing and performance data on HP ProLiant servers running the Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise Edition.

You can use it here.

I just discovered a developement project parallel to Xen called XenFS.

Developed by Mark Williamson this aims to be an underlying reliable architecture for file sharing among Xen domains.
The planned features are:

• Super fast coherent filesytem sharing between Xen domains.
• Shared buffer cache functionality for improved sharing performance and reduced memory footprint.
• Application level interdomain memory sharing using standard mmap API.
• Copy-on-write filesystem functionality enabling multiple domains to share a common base filesystem. This will be supported by CoW mechanisms at the memory level.

Mark was kindly enough to give virtualization.info some more details about it:

I’m hoping to get XenFS working fully over the next couple of years, all (with luck) the next few months will see some reasonably usable functionality.

The basic usage model for XenFS is “NFS but better”. Running in a tightly-coupled virtualisation environments gives us loads of opportunities for optimisation that NFS just doesn’t allow. We want to enable things like efficiently sharing data between VMs, running from a XenFS root filesystem, etc. The interdomain memory sharing is a neat party trick that falls out “for free” as a result of my implementation.

Other stuff that’s interesting includes how to handle live-migration: it’ll require a certain amount of cunningness but I think a correctly configured XenFS domain should actually show better migration performance.

Right now I’m working on some other stuff and thinking about a new control plane to fit in the the XenBus. Once that’s done, I’ll get working on the core FS and things should really start moving again.

On a CNet article about new effort of Sun to support PostgreSQL in the near future, Martin LaMonica writes about Sun plans to integrate Xen in Solaris 10 (and obviously OpenSolaris) for September of next year.

If so Solaris 10 is going to become a very powerful platform for virtualization counting at the same time on Sun partition technology, Solaris Zones, and XenSource paravirtualization.
I also need to underline that Solaris 10 is supported on every x86 CPU and will surely support AMD and Intel virtualization extensions, eventually permitting to run Windows virtual machines inside Xen.

At no cost even for commercial use, and with this bright future, Solaris 10 could become the MUST platform for virtualization in the enterprise.

VMTN Blog, the official VMware blog, reports an interesting TechRepublic 4-parts article on how to set up a VMware lab environment to achieve videoconferencing with OpenBSD firewalls and Windows XP calling clients.

• Part 1: Introduction
• Part 2: Creating the OpenBSD virtual machines
• Part 3: Configuring the gateways
• Part 4: Setting it all up with teams

InVirtus VM Optimizer essentially is a virtual machines resizer, able to reduce VMs dimension up to 80%.
The version 2.0 works on every VM created with any VMware or Microsoft virtualization product.

Lorenzo Barbieri published a full review on his blog.

Xen 3.0 is expected to be released this month (and as far as I can see from my top queries statistics people are hammering for downloading).
If you are interested in being documented as fast as possibile you can take a look at the actual Xen 3.0 User’s Manual.

This is an ongoing work so you always should check the Chapters Status to know what’s missing.

Remember you can also test the technical preview simply installing SuSE Linux 10.0.

VMware will announce to its Partner Channel the release of Workstation 5.5 later today, detailing that the product will be available for ordering from December.

Isn’t clear if this means Workstation 5.5 is RTM, but if so my guesses about released date linked to Microsoft Vista beta 2 release could be founded: since Microsoft delayed Vista beta 2 to early 2006, there’s no need to wait for Workstation 5.5 release. So it popped out.

Quoting from the NetIQ official announcement:

NetIQ Corp., a leading provider of integrated systems and security management solutions, today announced it has entered the server virtualization management market with the availability of the NetIQ AppManager for VMware module. NetIQ AppManager for VMware is licensed to NetIQ on an exclusive basis by AK Computer Services Limited, a NetIQ channel and development partner and a technology partner of VMware, Inc.

NetIQ AppManager for VMware allows VMware customers to integrate the management and monitoring of their VMware infrastructure with NetIQ AppManager systems management solutions. Customers using both NetIQ AppManager and VMware ESX Server or GSX Server can monitor multiple elements of their virtual and physical IT infrastructures simultaneously using the same tools, services, procedures and personnel by installing a single agent on the VMware VirtualCenter Server. By incorporating the management of VMware environments into the NetIQ AppManager Suite, NetIQ continues to deliver on its Knowledge-Based Service Assurance strategy of providing management solutions that help its customers decrease the cost and complexity of assuring IT services across their organizations.
…
The standard suggested list price for the VMware module is $4000 per managed host. NetIQ is offering a special introductory suggested list price of $2,500 per virtual host monitored through December 31, 2005.

This is a cool news since NetIQ AppManager is really a great management solution. I also need to underline that Microsoft Operation Manager (MOM) is based on that technology so we eventually we’ll see this module on MOM 2005 too.

Quoting from ZDNet:

IBM on Monday launched a new service for harried banking managers eager to streamline their PC and server operations at a branch level. The program, called IBM Systems Solutions for Branch Banking, is an extension of IBM’s Hosted Client Infrastructure, launched in October.

The new program uses IBM BladeCenter and xSeries servers, and software from VMware and ClearCube, to connect multiple PCs to one blade server instead of a “one blade server per PC” approach.
…

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from the VMware official announcement:

VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems, today announced that VMware Workstation 5, the fifth generation of its powerful desktop virtualization software, has received the Redmond Magazine Editors’ Choice award in the Desktop Virtualization category. This is the fourth major industry award that Workstation 5 has won since becoming generally available in April of this year. Workstation 5 has also won the eWEEK Labs Analyst’s Choice, PC Magazine Editors’ Choice and Redmond Magazine Most Valuable Product awards.
…

This is funny: a well-known magazine about Microsoft technologies and professionals chooses VMware Workstation instead of Microsof Virtual PC as preferred product.
This shouldn’t surprise myself that much: I still see today Microsoft official demos produced with VMware workstation 🙂