Year: 2006

Quoting from the AMD official annoucement:

AMD today announced the broad availability of its I/O virtualization technology specification. Demonstrating continued leadership in evolving the industry-standard x86 processor architecture, AMD is making this technology available through royalty-free licenses that are designed to encourage its widespread adoption by hardware and software developers. By defining a set of technologies that can be directly built into a computer’s I/O bridges, AMD’s I/O virtualization technology is designed to extend the benefits of CPU-assisted virtualization by addressing the performance bottlenecks and security issues that can be encountered when virtualizing I/O devices in x86-based servers, desktops, and notebook computers.
…
AMD’s I/O virtualization technology is expected to be supported by all AMD processors in mid-2006, and is also anticipated to be implemented in chipsets and core logic designed for AMD64-based platforms in 2006. The AMD I/O virtualization technology specification download, together with technology overviews and guidance to software developers who are designing virtualization solutions for 64-bit technology, can be found at http://developer.amd.com.

In November I already pointed out AMD official slides reporting part of the virtualization strategy roadmap.
On this AnandTech article you can find a much more detailed roadmap providing raw dates, socket details (the reported M2 socket is now known as AM2), and processors codenames.

Meanwhile AMD collected a nice amount of Pacifica material on the dedicated website:

• AMD Pacifica Virtualization Technology overview
• AMD: WebBench Virtualization Performance Study
• Virtualization with AMD & VMware paper

I also remind you that Pacifica specifications are available here.

Quoting from eWeek:

Users with servers powered by Intel’s “Paxville” Xeon MP processor can now activate the chip’s virtualization capabilities.

Speaking at a conference here on virtualization, Diane Bryant, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Server Platforms Group, said that users can now contact systems makers Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM to help them upgrade the BIOS on the chip to enable the activation of the Intel Virtualization Technology.

The technology was in the chip when it started shipping last year, but it was disabled until now.

“You can now enable virtualization technology in your servers and start running it in your testing and development environments,” Bryant told the conference attendees.

She also noted support from Red Hat and Novell’s SuSE Linux unit for the open-source Xen virtualization technology, and announced virtualization software vendor VMware’s release Feb. 6 of its free VMware Server product…

Read the whole article at source.

On the end of January a new presentation took place at Stanford University.
It unusually includes a lot of marketing slides but also provides an overview of how Xen 3.x works and how is using Intel VT (and upcoming AMD codename Pacifica).

On the end there are slided referring to XenSource VM Relocation feature (something VMware called VMotion).

You can see it here.

To counterattack its database competitors (Microsoft, Oracle) already offering similar products IBM last week launched a free DB2 edition for Linux and Windows: DB2 Universal Database Express.

To spread the new product as much as possible IBM jumped on the VMware Community Virtual Machines wagon and released 2 VMware images with pre-installed Novell SuSE and DB2 Universal Database Express.

Check it out here (instructions refers to VMware Workstation use only, but you can use them with Player as well).

Quoting from the Softricity official announcement:

Softricity, the on-demand application virtualization company, today announced the immediate availability of its SoftGrid™ virtualization platform within Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003. Now, Microsoft SMS 2003 customers can take advantage of the most advanced application virtualization platform on the market to reduce the overall cost of application management. Softricity’s new product, SoftGrid for Microsoft SMS 2003, helps IT administrators instantly gain all the benefits of the SoftGrid platform – including application virtualization, on-demand streaming and self-provisioning – from within the SMS infrastructure.
…
Key Features
SoftGrid for Microsoft SMS delivers all the functionality of the SoftGrid platform from within SMS, plus extensive integration capabilities:

• SMS Management Console Integration
  Softricity SMS Management Console snap-in allows for management of virtual applications within SMS
• Multiple Delivery Options
  Ability for virtual applications to be delivered in multiple ways:
• “Push” delivery where virtualized applications are turned into SMS packages deployed using standard SMS delivery methods
• “Pull/On-Demand” via Softricity’s streaming delivery technology, where only the necessary portions of the virtualized application code are deployed in real-time based on user requests
• Native SMS Inventory and Metering Integration
  Virtual applications can be tracked by SMS asset management discovery and metering systems. Reports can be created for both virtualized and installed applications

Steven Bink has some more details about this.

This post contains sparse informations not appeared elsewhere or not large enough to be mentioned on a dedicated post.
I possibly will update it several times so check back from times to times.

Today (09.00 PST) Diane Greene, VMware President, officially presented the free Server product in a web conference for press and analysts.
I attended the event and will published a dedicated report as soon as possible.
Meanwhile I’d like to post just one slide shoot, synthetizing the ongoing VMware strategy:

Here you can find a clear (could be clearer) comparison table between Server and ESX Server: www.vmware.com/products/server_comp.html

Christian Hammond, a VMware employee, published on his blog a sound explaination of what Server is and what it is not. I feel is particularly important the “what it is not” part.

Philip Langdale, another VMware employee, pointed out on his blog an important news: VMware Server can cohexist with Player and both products will be shipped together (as happened for Workstation 5.5).

VMware Server lost support GSX used to have for VirtualCenter agents. It’s actually unclear if the product will be centrally manageable out of beta.

VMware Server has some support limits:

• 8 physical CPUs (or 16 HyperThreaded) x the number of cores (VMware sent out emails to GSX customers claiming unlimited support)
• 24 virtual machines creation (the same limit of Workstation. This limit will be increased in beta 2)

Steve Herrod, Vice President of Research and Development (R&D), VMware, just started his blog, Virtually There, on VMTN Blog pages.

In his first post he’s kind enough to details us how the VMware R&D department is composed:

• The monitor group
• The vmkernel group
• The service console group
• The performance group
• The partner engineering group
• The community source group

and to point out 4 interesting papers from his engineers:

• Fast Transparent Migration for Virtual Machines
• Memory Resource Management in VMware ESX Server
• Virtualizing I/O Devices on VMware Workstation’s Hosted Virtual Machine Monitor
• An Analysis of Disk Performance in VMware ESX Server Virtual Machines

Quoting from the official VMware announcement email:

As part of our strategy to make server virtualization universally accessible, VMware is introducing VMware Server – a free virtualization product for Windows and Linux servers.

VMware Server is the next generation of VMware hosted server virtualization offering
VMware Server is VMware’s next generation hosted server virtualization product with support for two-way Virtual SMP, 64-bit guest operating systems and Intel Virtualization Technology. VMware Server is an unlimited CPU license and is available for immediate download as a beta version.

VMware Server is an upgrade to GSX 3.2 and replaces GSX Server on the market
The free VMware Server represents the upgrade path for all GSX Server customers. Once VMware Server is generally available, which is currently planned for Q2 2006, it will replace GSX Server as VMware’s hosted server virtualization offering and VMware will no longer market and sell VMware GSX Server. The free VMware Server represents the upgrade path for GSX Server customers.

GSX Server will be fully supported by VMware for two years
VMware is fully committed to GSX Server customers’ continued success. Accordingly, notwithstanding our Support and Subscription agreement terms, GSX Server will be fully supported by VMware for 24 months (two years) after VMware Server becomes generally available and replaces GSX Server.

When VMware Server becomes generally available, VMware will introduce paid Support and Subscription services for VMware Server. Since VMware Server replaces GSX Server on the market, GSX Server customers with valid Support and Subscription contracts will receive technical support for VMware Server as part of their existing contracts.

GSX Server customers can upgrade to the free VMware Server or to VMware Virtual Infrastructure
GSX Server customers can continue to expand their deployments by deploying the free VMware Server in addition to GSX Server, or by migrating the entire GSX Server deployment to VMware Server.

VMware also offers the option of upgrading from GSX Server to VMware Virtual Infrastructure products ESX Server with Virtual SMP and VirtualCenter with VMotion.

Read more at the GSX Server FAQs page.

Quoting from the VMware official announcement:

VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems, today introduced VMware Server, a free new entry-level hosted virtualization product for Linux and Windows servers. The product is available as a beta download at www.vmware.com/products/server/.

“Virtualization and VMware have become mainstream in the past year, and many customers have deployed thousands of VMware server environments across their enterprises. With VMware Server, we are ensuring that every company interested in, considering or evaluating server virtualization for the first time has access to the industry-leading virtualization technology,” said Diane Greene, VMware President. “VMware Server makes it easy and compelling for companies new to virtualization to take the first step toward enterprise-wide virtual infrastructure.”

VMware Server, the successor to VMware GSX Server, enables users to quickly provision new server capacity by partitioning a physical server into multiple virtual machines, bringing the powerful benefits of virtualization to every server.

VMware Server is feature-packed with the following market-leading capabilities:

• Support for any standard x86 hardware
• Support for a wide variety of Linux and Windows host operating systems, including 64-bit operating systems
• Support for a wide variety of Linux, NetWare, Solaris x86 and Windows guest operating systems, including 64-bit operating systems
• Support for Virtual SMP, enabling a single virtual machine to span multiple physical processors
• Quick and easy, wizard-driven installation similar to any desktop software
• Quick and easy virtual machine creation with a virtual machine wizard
• Virtual machine monitoring and management with an intuitive, user friendly remote console

…

Availability

VMware Server beta is available for immediate download at www.vmware.com/products/server/. The product is expected to be generally available later in the first half of 2006. Support and subscription services for VMware Server will be available for purchase upon general availability.