Virtual machines, containers, functions. Market knowledge for IT decision makers since 2003
Management solutions supporting two or more virtualization platorms are multiplying day after day. Last one is BixData which introduces suppoort for both VMware and Xen from its version 2.6.
Howto Forge published a step-by-step for setting up the product in the right way for this task.
Download it here.
The russian startup Veeam updated its free tool for file transfers on VMware ESX Server environments, FastSCP, reaching 1.1.
In this new build introduces the ability to copy complete folders and subfolders, and full support for ESX Server 2.5x.
At the same time the company announced its flagship product, Monitor, is now available also for 64 bits operating systems.
Download both here.
The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.
virtualization.info is happy to introduce you its new Bookstore.
Powered by Amazon, it offers a comprensive catalog of existing books about virtualization in English language, organized in categories (just server and storage virtualization at the moment), with possibility to check editorial and customers reviews for each volume, and an integrated shopping cart.
The Bookstore, which lists books on virtualization.info recommendation basis, is timely updated and avoids you spending time looking for what is available on the market.
Good study with the new virtualization.info Bookstore!
As fast as wind VMware released a minor update for its most popular product, Workstation, mainly to revamp experimental support for Windows Vista, now available as RTM for MSDN subscribers.
The new release (build 34685) also introduces support for several other host and guest OSes:
Host OSes
Guest OSes
Download it here.
Official support for Vista is expected with the release of Workstation 6, planned for early 2007.
Quoting from the Virtual Iron official announcement:
Virtual Iron Software (www.virtualiron.com), a provider of enterprise-class software solutions for creating and managing virtual infrastructure, today reaffirmed its support for advancements in multi-core technology at Intel?s Quad-Core Software Symposium.
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Virtual Iron is among the very first virtualization software solution providers to commercially support the new Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 5300 series.
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Virtual Iron?s comprehensive virtualization and management solution is very complementary to multi-core processing and enables end?users to fully exploit the power of quad-core technology. For example, Virtual Iron provides up to 96 gigabytes of memory per virtual server as well as the ability to do symmetric multi-processing where users can take advantage of up to eight CPUs in a single virtual machine, delivering the industry?s leading performance in a virtualized environment…
SWsoft released a Service Pack 1 for both Virtuozzo 3.5.1 for Windows and 3.0 for Linux.
The update introduces several features:
Service Pack 1 is available now for Virtuozzo 3.0 for Linux, while is expected within 1 month for its counterpart on Windows. Download trial here.
virtualization.info extensively covered Virtuozzo in its review of SWsoft Virtuozzo for Windows 3.5.1.
After introducing the feature in April for unstable branch, OpenVZ team now releases it for kernel 2.6.9 stable.
Quoting from the OpenVZ official announcement:
The OpenVZ project (http://openvz.org) today announced availability of its operating system-level server virtualization software in the form of a kernel based on Linux 2.6.9, including for the first-time in a stable branch, fully-tested and performance-tuned live migration and Virtual Ethernet device features.
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With checkpointing and live migration, the state of a running virtual environment is frozen and the image stored on disk then restored on another server. The function executes between any two servers on a network, so the capability works for any server and any application. OpenVZ delivers this capability without additional requirements, such as a storage area network (SAN).Also, the Virtual Ethernet device function allows for network devices to be created inside virtual environments using designated names and hardware (MAC) addresses that are different from the actual physical device…
Download new kernel patches here.
Quoting from ITPro:
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The survey of 100 IT directors by research company Vanson Bourne found these figures were even higher within financial services organisations with 81 per cent saying they were not using virtualisation technology throughout the business because of the perceived risks involved.
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Others cited concern that virtualisation would cause a degradation in application performance (57 per cent) or that the technology would be too expensive (31 per cent). Almost one third (29 per cent) said they feared that managing a virtualised environment would be too complex. The fear of downtime was the biggest worry for IT directors in the manufacturing (80 per cent) and financial services (71 per cent) sectors…
Read the whole article at source.
virtualization.info will soon publish results of its 1st Virtualization Industry Survey, trying to provide a better picture of ongoing trends and market status. Stay tuned.
HowtoForge posted a useful 3-parts guide on how to install and use Xen-Tools on a Debian system where Xen 3.0.3 is installed:
This guide describes how to install and use xen-tools, xen-shell, and Argo on a Debian system. All three packages provide useful tools for the administration of virtual Xen machines.
Xen-tools is a collection of Perl scripts that allow you to easily create, update, and delete Xen guest domains.
The xen-shell provides a command-line interface to owners of Xen domains so that they can manage their Xen domains without the help of the server administrator.
And with Argo, you can control Xen domains through a web interface or through a menu on the command line. All three packages were developed for Debian systems, but might work on other distributions as well….
Read the whole guide at source.
Richard Garsthagen, Technical Marketing Manager at VMware, posted some interesting articles about the new VMware Infrastructure 3 Perl Toolkit, disclosed in September, the company is developing: