Year: 2006

Ben Armstrong explains what Code Cache is:

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When we can’t execute code directly on the processor (aka ‘virtualization’) we have to fall back to a binary translation engine (aka ’emulation’) in order to provide the best performance possible this translation engine keeps a ‘code cache’ of recently translated code so that it can be reused (this essentially serves the same purpose as a physical cache on a processor)…

Read the article at source.

As reported in the previous post, Microsoft is starting to evangelize about virtualization for maximum exposure of its upcoming Windows Hypervisor technology (codename Viridian).

This is a truly interesting webcast to follow to better understand where Microsoft is going to provide around virtualization itself:

Self-managing dynamic systems are information technology (IT) infrastructures that abstract, or virtualize, computing resources to help IT professionals deploy business services more nimbly and respond quickly to business requirements. Self-managing dynamic systems can have a powerful effect on how you approach your business. This webcast provides an in-depth analysis of self-managing dynamic systems. Learn how to create highly available, highly reliable server operations by combining key management technologies with virtualization and coupling them with the Microsoft Windows Server operating system.

View the webcast here.

Ryan Rand, from Microsoft Windows Server division, offered on the corporate blog a 3-parts insight on what Microsoft has achieved and is going to achieve with virtualization technologies:

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Working in partnership with Intel and AMD, Microsoft is building a platform-layer virtualization solution, based on the virtualization extensions being developed by both partners and put into chips starting this year. This new virtualization solution will be available in the Longhorn Server timeframe and provide tremendous improvements to virtualization performance. A platform layer virtualization solution makes it possible to deploy virtual servers as the default installation option, which means it’s time to party like it’s 1974!

Providing a common set of management tools that manage OS and application and the virtualization layer itself is a key area where Microsoft is investing today. Microsoft has a vision for Self-Managing Dynamic Systems, which is a marriage of the flexibility inherent in virtualization and the automation of powerful management tools across the stack…

Read the whole article here: part 1, part 2 and part 3.

OSx86 Project reports the hacker already broken Apple security this summer on preliminary MacOS x86 edition, released a new patch, this time working with official MacOS 10.4.4 for Intel x86:

This is a preliminary release of my Patch Solution for the official Mac OS X on the Intel platform. Consider it a work-in-progess for now. Ultimately, it would allow you to run this Mac OS X release on a generic x86 computer (SSE2 required).

There’s still a lot of work to do, like support for SSE2-only CPUs, a proper installation procedure and a PPF patch. However, if you like to play around, this will get you started.

Read the full patch announcement here.

ComputerWorld’s journalist Robert Mitchell interviewed Raghu Raghuram, Vice President Datacenter and Desktop Platform Products, VMWare, about the new Virtual Server free product and upcoming ESX Server 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0 products.

Read it here.

Quoting from the Egenera official announcement:

Egenera Inc., a leader in utility computing, today announced that it has been granted a patent for server failover technology by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Egenera has received U.S. patent number 6,971,044 for software that enables high availability of Egenera servers in a virtualized environment. This technology has been a key contributor to the Egenera BladeFrame system’s value proposition since the product was launched in 2001.

Egenera’s failover approach offers customers quantifiable benefits over traditional schemes, which generally require a one-to-one ratio of production to backup machines. By enabling primary-to-failover ratios as high as 23 to one, the Egenera BladeFrame system consolidates servers, lowers datacenter costs, increases utilization and provides unprecedented flexibility in the allocation of processing resources…

Ben Armstrong published a new script example, this time for automatically adding users to Virtual Server:

Dim ace

set objVs = wscript.CreateObject(“VirtualServer.Application”)
Set objSecurity = WScript.CreateObject(“VirtualServer.VMSecurity”)

set objSecurity = ObjVs.Security

Set ace = objSecurity.AddEntry(“DOMAIN\Username”,vmAccessRights_Allowed)
ace.WriteAccess = True
ace.ReadAccess = True
ace.ExecuteAccess = True
ace.DeleteAccess = True
ace.ReadPermissions = True
ace.ChangePermissions = True

ObjVs.Security = objSecurity

Read the original post for updates and comments from Ben.

Steven Bink reports the news that upcoming Virtual Server update, codename vNext, will not be able to run x64 guest OSes. Microsoft directly confirmed this on January, after several direct requests of the famous Windows blogger.
The good news is that vNext is instead going to support Intel Virtualization Technology and AMD I/O Virtualization Technology.

The product shipment is expected somewhere in the 2H 2006. At today no beta program is available.

Quoting from CNET News:

VMware will begin broadly testing a new version of its premium ESX Server product next week, a move that comes shortly after the EMC subsidiary began offering its basic server software package for free. Product delivery, however, could occur several months later than planned.
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The new ESX Server 3.0 beta continues this higher-end trend. It includes features for balancing computing loads within a group of virtual machines, as well as data backup and cluster management, VMware President Diane Greene said Thursday in a meeting with reporters. The company also said earlier that the version will support virtual machines that span four processors, double that of the current Virtual SMP feature.

However, the final version of the product could arrive later than expected. In 2005, VMware said ESX Server 3.0 would arrive in the first quarter of 2006, but the company now is giving itself until the end of the second quarter, a company representative said.

VMware began a limited beta last year, but starting next week, 2,700 will begin the ESX Server 3.0 trial version, the company said…

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from George Ou ZDNet blog:

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Both VMWare and Microsoft are promising Intel optimized virtualization software that will run any version of Windows, Linux, or BSD with minimal overhead. The down side to this approach is that a licensed copy of Windows is still needed and things like I/O and video graphics are still emulated which severely impact performance and eliminates the possibility of running games. Then there’s the option of running Wine or CrossOver with limited application support but without the need for a licensed copy of windows. But ultimately, perhaps the final goal of Apple is to support true hardware partitioning through paravirtualization.
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The implication of all this is that Apple will be the only companies licensed to run Mac OS X, Windows, and other common x86 operating systems in the world since no one else is licensed to run Mac OS X…

Read the whole article at source.

Thanks to David Marshall for the news.