Year: 2006

Current informations actually reveal Intel will introduce I/O virtualization with VT-d on codename Bearlake, the chipset aimed to work with quad-core processor called codename Kentsfield.
After Bearlake release, aimed to servers, another chipset, this time aimed to desktops, will feature VT-d: Intel Seaburg.

Daily Tech reports Seaburg will be a part of a platform known as Stoakley, which is expected to appear in Q4 2007.
No informations are available about the CPU planned in this new platform.

Quoting from Real World Technologies:

At the MicroProcessor Forum, Dr. Brad McCredie of IBM continued to tease out particulars regarding the POWER6. The presentation discussed a lot of general microarchitecture features, but did not reveal many specific details; a full revelation of the microarchitecture will likely have to wait till ISSCC, next February. However, from the details that were revealed, it is clear that the POWER6 inherited many characteristics from its predecessors, yet made substantial improvements in others.
…
On the management side, IBM is also improving their virtualization capabilities in the POWER6. In particular products, a single processor may be able to host 2-300 virtual instances, although theoretically up to 1024 VMs are possible. Memory partitioning and migration have been added as well, which reduces system down time for repairs…

Read the whole article at source.

Ben Armstrong published another useful WMI script. This one is aimed to control usage of virtual machines virtual disks at host level, in a Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 environment:

Set vsWMIObj = GetObject(“winmgmts:\\.\root\vm\virtualserver”)
Set vms = vsWMIObj.ExecQuery(“SELECT * FROM VirtualMachine”,,48)
For Each vm in vms
Wscript.Echo “==============================================”
Wscript.Echo “Virtual machine: ” & vm.Name
Wscript.Echo “MiB read from disk: ” & vm.DiskBytesRead / 1048576
Wscript.Echo “MiB written to disk: ” & vm.DiskBytesWritten / 1048576
Next

Be sure to read the original post for updates and comments.

Quoting from eWeek:

Microsoft’s twice-yearly BlueHat hacker summit, running Oct. 19-20, will kick off later this week with a demo of a virtual machine rootkit that can potentially be used to defeat the controversial PatchGuard technology.

Dino Dai Zovi, a principal at penetration-testing outfit Matasano Security, has been invited to Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., campus to showcase a hardware VM-based rootkit called Vitriol that piggybacks on Intel’s VT-x virtualization extension.
…
Zovi, in a blog entry, claimed that hypervisors can also be used to bypass PatchGuard on 64-bit systems, but Stephen Toulouse, a security program manager for Microsoft, explained that PatchGuard prevents modification of the data tables and is not meant to detect hypervisors.

“In this case, there is nothing [from Zovi] to indicate the attack is even trying to modify the kernel itself, and I confirmed with Matasano that’s true,” Toulouse said in an e-mail sent to eWEEK. “Vitriol doesn’t ‘defeat’ kernel patch protection,” he added.

In response, Zovi cited “confusion” around how or whether hypervisors can bypass PatchGuard and stressed that Vitriol is not an attack against [a weakness in] PatchGuard itself. “[It] is more a demonstration of how a hypervisor controls the entire universe in which an operating system runs and can mislead or lie to any operating system running inside it, thus defeating security defenses running on the guest VM,” he explained…

Read the whole article at source.

virtualization.info published an interview with Anthony Liguori, Xen developer, about the use of virtualization by rootkits. You may want to read it here.

Quoting from the VMLogix official announcement:

VMLogix, a global provider of virtual infrastructure management technology to simplify the software lifecycle, today announced that it secured Series A funding from Bain Capital Ventures, one of the world’s leading private investment firms, for $3.5 million.
…
“Funding from Bain Capital allows VMLogix to further its vision of bringing enterprise virtualization technology to all phases of the software lifecycle,” said Gururaj. “VMLogix will use this capital to support ongoing product development and its U.S. go-to-market initiative…

Quoting from the Microsoft official announcement:

…Microsoft announced it will offer a set of software tools designed to take the sting out today’s biggest pain points that enterprises deal with when deploying and managing applications and desktops. The Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance marries four different tools:

• Microsoft SoftGrid “virtualizes” applications, meaning they can run on multiple PCs and other licensed desktops running Microsoft Windows without being locally installed. Instead, they run as individual networked services, enabling central deployment and management, minimizing compatibility problems and providing employees more ways to access applications
• Microsoft Asset Inventory Services is designed to analyze all programs on employee PCs, and provide the most current, accurate inventory
• Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management increases control over Group Policy Objects (GPOs) – the component rules within Windows’ administrative management system – and is intended to allow IT administrators to delegate or assign administrative control of specific tasks based on employees’ titles or roles
• Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset makes it possible for the IT department to quickly pinpoint the causes of PC troubles, recover lost data and prevent future downtime with post-crash analysis

Beginning in January 2007, Microsoft plans to offer the optimization pack worldwide as an add-on subscription for companies with Software Assurance agreements. Customers with Open Value, Select, Enterprise Agreement (EA), EA Subscription and Campus and School agreements can subscribe through volume licensing, for an estimated retail price of US$10 a year per desktop…

While the product changed name in Microsoft SoftGrid, it still has to be completely integrated in Microsoft solutions portfolio, probably inside an R2 edition of System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (formerly System Management Server or SMS).

Quoting from the Microsoft official announcement:

Microsoft Corp. today announced at the Interoperability Summit in Brussels that its virtualization format technology will now be available under its Open Specification Promise (OSP), an irrevocable promise from Microsoft to every individual and organization in the world to make use of this patented technology for free, now and forever when implementing specified open standards. Microsoft first announced the availability of an OSP for Web services specifications in September 2006 and now is expanding its customer-focused commitment to interoperability by applying the OSP to Microsoft’s Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) Image Format specification.
…
As a common virtualization file format, VHD has been adopted by more than 60 vendors, enabling partners such as Brocade Communications Systems Inc., BMC Software Inc., Diskeeper Corp., Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Network Appliance Inc., Virtual Iron and XenSource to help provide more seamless manageability, security features, reliability and cost efficiency for customers. Customers and partners realize the value of standardizing on the Microsoft VHD format because it is the Microsoft virtualization file format and offers migration across Microsoft Virtual Server, Virtual PC, and Windows Server virtualization with Windows Server “Longhorn.” The OSP will help further broad adoption of the VHD format.

The Microsoft site dedicated to interoperability with open source technologies, Port 25, published an interview with Simon Crosby, CTO at XenSource, about the licensing change in VHD. Listen to it here.

Download the Microsoft VHD specifications here (requires registration but advices when new updates are published) or here (no registrations and no updates).

(not too much) Suprisingly there are no comments from VMware. It will be interesting see if and how VMware will interact with VHD now the license is not commercial anymore.

Sun surely believes in virtualization.

It offers its own OS partitioning solution, Solaris Containers (aka Zones), for free in its free enteprise grade operating system Solaris 10.

It has been the first company launching a rentable general-purpose grid service, Sun Grid, based on Solaris Containers.

It is going to allow execution of other operating systems binaries on Solaris, with the Solaris Containers for Linux Applications (formerly BrandZ).

It will port Xen open source hypervisor capabilities in its operating system, allowing to run a whole operating system inside a virtual environment, not only a binary.

It will introduce network virtualization in future updates of Solaris 10, with Project Crossbow.

Now Sun goes further with a new OS partitioning feature called Logical Domains (LDoms) and available only for Niagara processors (powering Sun Fire T1000 and T2000) since early 2007.

LDoms, which is planned to be a complement of Solaris Containers (working with all others SPARC and x86 processors), will allow to run up to 32 containers of Solaris 10 on a single Sun T server.

Citrix, possibly the most damaged company from the new VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) initiative, decided to enter the new market instead of competing with it and will launch a new product called Desktop Broker, as already known since August.

Credit Suisse published an interesting 21-pages analysis of this solution:

…
As a first step to begin to address the concept of a Virtual Desktop Utility, we have learned that Citrix Systems will release a new solution, dubbed Remote Desktop Broker (RDB), within the next few weeks. The Remote Desktop Broker application provides a mechanism to manage connections to Windows desktop images on virtual machines or PC blades and feeds parameters into Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) client, which is installed on Presentation Server.

Remote Desktop Broker combines Citrix Systems’ existing technologies (e.g., Presentation Server, Web Interface, and Citrix Access Gateway) with partner solutions (e.g., Microsoft Virtual Server, VMware ESX, etc.)-enabling two of the three virtualization technologies that we presented in the previous section (i.e., operating system virtualization and user interface virtualization) to provide a centrally-managed, virtual desktop image to end users.

The ability to pool desktop computing resources to eliminate the one user per Windows image paradigm represents one of Remote Desktop Broker’s key differentiators.
Decoupling the user from a specific desktop environment requires the infrastructure to figure out which VM server has capacity for a new end user attempting to log in; discover the user’s virtual disk files; start up a VM using those files; and then connect the user to that VM desktop image…

Read the whole paper at source.

ZDNet now reports Citrix will unveil Remote Desktop Broker (or Desktop Broker) on its annual conference, the iForum Global, on October 22th.

Citrix is the last company announcing a VDI solution and will join an already numerous group where appear Provision Networks, 2X, Leostream, Dunes and others.

Update: Citrix published the Desktop Broker Administration Guide. Read it here.

Thanks to Thincomputing.net for the news.

Quoting from ZDNet:

Vernon Turner, group vice president and general manager of enterprise computing at analyst company IDC, said virtualization must move beyond its current primary role in hardware consolidation.

While virtualization has allowed organizations to maximize the use of their computing hardware, he added that the technology must now evolve into “virtualization 2.0”, what he describes as the next phase of development which includes mobility and portability.

According to Turner, the challenge–before virtualization 2.0 can materialize–is that most people think of mobility and portability as features demonstrated by cellphones.

“But that’s not the case,” he said. “What we mean by mobility is that applications can run on any kind of hardware, have adequate security, and their performance shouldn’t change.”…

Read the whole article at source.

I completely disagree on this analysis.

Current server virtualization offering still lack of mandatory and reliable components for reliable business continuity, efficient provisioning, robust security, simplified and rational management.
The market is everywhere but in a 1.0 status.

Even wanting to ignore these notable lacks, the real focus of a Virtualization 2.0 effort should be automation much before portability.
Or we’ll have a endless amount of virtual machines / virtual appliances and no way to manage them. Paying same errors and facing same issues we did with phyical machines for last 10 years.