Year: 2006

A group of researchers at Clarkson University produced an absolutely interesting paper about a rarely analyzed aspect in virtualization technologies comparison: virtual machines isolation:

…how well do different virtualization systems protect VMs from misbehavior or resource hogging on other VMs? In this paper, we present the results of running a variety of different misbehaving applications under three different virtualization environments VMware, Xen, and Solaris containers. These are each examples of a larger class of virtualization techniques namely full virtualization, paravirtualization and generic operating systems with additional isolation layers. To test the isolation properties of these systems, we run six different stress tests – a fork bomb, a test that consumes a large amount of memory, a CPU
intensive test, a test that runs 10 threads of IOzone and two tests that send and receive a large amount of network I/O.

Overall, we find that VMware protects the well-behaved virtual machines under all stress tests, but sometimes shows a greater performance degradation for the misbehaving VM. Xen protects the well-behaved virtual machines for all stress tests except the disk I/O intensive one. For Solaris containers, the well-behaved VMs suffer the same fate as the misbehaving one for all tests.

Read it here.

It’s a real real real pity this wonderful comparison didn’t included Microsoft Virtual Server. This could be a critical point in products comparison, apart any marketing talk.

I hope to see a second version soon.

Dave Jaffe and Todd Muirhead produced a Microsoft .NET C# program (and a related Visual Basic Script) working with VMware VMotion and VirtualCenter technologies to achieve virtual machines fault-tolerance in a virtual environment managed by Dell OpenManage.

Be sure to check it.

I bet this work can be reengineered to work elsewhere as well.

As usual the brillant Ulli Hankeln found out another hack to get rid of VMware Player networking limitations (just 1 network interface):

If you want the same connectivity with VMplayer that you got with Workstation
use a detailed vmx-file:
Add
ethernet0.present = “TRUE”
ethernet0.connectionType = “custom”
ethernet1.present = “TRUE”
ethernet1.connectionType = “custom”
ethernet2.present = “TRUE”
ethernet2.connectionType = “custom”
(ethernet3.present = “TRUE”
ethernet3.connectionType = “custom”)

first and then enter the vmnets like
ethernet0.vnet = “vmnet0”
ethernet1.vnet = “vmnet2”
ethernet2.vnet = “vmnet1”
(ethernet3.vnet = “vmnet8”)

This will show up in the Player’s GUI as connected – BUT none of the Bridged, NAT or Hostonly signs are checked.

You are NOT limited to ONE bridged, or NAT or hostonly-network.

Read the whole thread for updates on VMTN Forums.

Three days ago I stumbled on rBuilder, an impressive online platform for automating Linux distributions creation.

It’s really something unique: you register for free on the site, start a new project, and start assemblying a new distribution, choosing among available packages ones needed.
If a software is not available (let’s say Snort intrusion detection system) anyone can produce it for rBuilder.
The system will solve all packages dependencies and will compile them in a bootable ISO.
And if you are too lazy to start from beginning you can start from an already existing project (of another user) adding softwares you think the distribution is missing.

Not shocking enough rBuilder releases your new distribution directly in a VMware format, ready to be read with VMware Player, if you like.
Just remember to advice VMware guys at Community Virtual Machine center for a free advertising on their site…

Softricity hosted an interesting webcast with Brian Gammage, Gartner Research Vice President, about desktop virtualization:

Virtualization is widely regarded as the most important technology to hit the enterprise in decades. The potential benefits for the desktop are tremendous, with improvements in the manageability, security and flexibility of personal computing. By reducing complexity, virtualization promises to streamline support, accelerate deployments and reduce the cost of personal computing. But virtualization is occurring at more than one level; decoupling hardware, operating systems and applications. So, what are these different levels of virtualization technology and how are they being used by companies today? How mature is the technology? How does application virtualization differ from machine virtualization and what role does streaming technology play?

Join featured Gartner Research Vice President, Brian Gammage, a recognized expert in desktop virtualization, to learn what application virtualization and streaming really are, and how they can impact your approach to managing user access to enterprise applications.

See it here.

Thanks to Thincomputing.net for the news.

As many of you already discovered or read somewhere the upcoming Microsoft Vista operation system features a brand new graphic interface (Aero) with a lot of transparencies, fading effects and other cute things (something usually labelled Glass).

To see Glass in action you’ll need a performant display adapter with a lot of video RAM onboard, which is the opposite of what today’s virtual video cards offer inside virtualization platforms (no matter if they are developed by VMware, Microsoft, Parallels, etc.).
So, for now, you’ll have to run Vista inside a virtual machine without Glass effects. And this won’t change until virtualization softwares will be updated to emulate more video RAM and support enhanced Aero effects.

Meanwhile, since today, there is a sort of workaround.
The just released new build of Vista (February CTP aka build 5308) offers a new Terminal Services technology called Composition Remoting (formerly Avalon Remoting).
This technology delivers rendering informations over Remote Desktop so a remote client can see all available effects locally disabled on a connected server.

So if you have an installed virtual machine with Vista build 5308 and you can install the same build on a host OS you’ll be able to:

• not see Glass effects inside the virtual machine
• see Glass effects inside the host OS (quite obvious)
• see VM’s Glass effects inside Remote Desktop from the host OS

Sincerely, I won’t call this a workaround since the main point of virtualization technologies when applied to betas is avoiding to waste a real physical machine with something unstable, to be deleted in a near feature.
If I’m able to install Vista on the host OS why should I install it also on virtual machines? Well, maybe it could be useful for distributed development and testing but in that case would Glass be necessary?

Mike Kolitz, from the Microsoft Virtualization Team, explains how to work with Composition Remoting here (he refers to Virtual PC / Server virtual machines but the procedure works independently from platform).

Parallels continue to work hardly on its new virtualization solution, and seems no afraid of popular free virtualization products released by VMware in the last quarter.

A second beta for Workstation 2.1 just begun, sporting even better VMs performances, more solid USB support and a revamped GUI.
All other new features introduced since beta 1 are already listed here.

Parallels planned final 2.1 release for early March so stay tuned.

Meanwhile apply for the beta program here.

This one is really interesting…

Quoting from Techworld:

IT professionals are still ignorant about the advantages of virtualization, according to a survey from virtualisation specialist C&C Technology.
…
The survey of 50 IT professionals, from IT directors to network managers, found that 38 per cent of companies taking part had only an ‘average’ knowledge of virtualisation, while 48 per cent felt they were using the technology to their advantage. The biggest barrier to take-up, according to the survey, was the perceived complexity and cost of making the change…

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from Techworld:

When it comes to server sprawl, the big picture is bad.

Analyst firm IDC expects the number of servers in the US to grow from 2.8 million in 2005 to 4.9 million by 2009. Data centres “are becoming more and more swollen,” causing IT costs to rise quickly, IDC analyst Vernon Turner said at the IDC Virtualization Forum, which was held here last week.

The constant need for more horsepower, and the accompanying expense, are leading some IT operations to slowly turn to virtualisation technology…

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from Ben Armstrong blog:

When you move a virtual machine from Virtual PC to Virtual Server (or from Virtual Server to Virtual PC) you will get a warning message stating that the virtual machine was made by a different program and ‘may not work’…

Ben explains in this article why you receive this message and how you should handle it.