Year: 2006

Summary
A virtual evolution in IT organizations throughout the world has begun. It is estimated that currently 3% of all servers run virtually and that number is expected to grow rapidly over the next 5 years. Server Sprawl and escalating IT costs have managers and system administrators scrambling to find ways to cut costs and reduce Total Cost of Ownership of their physical infrastructure. Combining software applications onto a single server, even if those applications are from the same software vendor, can be dangerous and problems hard to troubleshoot. Virtual Server allows you to consolidate 15 to 20 or even more servers onto a single physical server reducing hardware, electrical, cooling, and administrative costs. These virtual servers run completely independent of each other so if one crashes the other are not affected. Planning and implementing a server consolidation is a complex process.

This book details the requirements for such a project, includes sample forms and templates, and delivers several physical to virtual migration strategies which will save both time and costs.

Abouth the Author
David Rule Jr. (VMware VCP, VAC, MCP, Citrix CCEA, CCA) is a Senior Consultant for Choice Solutions LLC, an Overland Park, KS-based systems integrator that provides IT design, project management, and support for enterprise computing systems. David’s primary role is in developing virtualization strategies for Choice Solutions’ clients.

Kenneth Majors (MCSE, MCSA, Project+, VMware VCP, Citrix CCEA, CCA, IBM X-Series Expert, Avaya ACA) is a Consultant for Choice Solutions LLC. Choice Solutions is a systems integrator headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas. Kenneth is a key contributor to defining best practices for deployment and implementation of Microsoft technologies including Windows Server, Virtual Server and SharePoint, Citrix Presentation Server, VMware ESX, and development of documentation standards. Kenneth holds a bachelor’s degree from Colorado Technical University.

Matthijs ten Seldam (MCSE, CISSP) is a senior consultant with the infrastructure technologies group at Microsoft Consulting Services. His expertise focuses around virtualization, platform management and deployment, security and networking. One of his specialties is automation of management tasks through various interfaces like WMI and COM using languages like VBScript and C#. He has developed a technical training on Virtual Server 2005 R2 and delivers this to customers and partners. He currently provides consulting to enterprise customers, delivers technical workshops and runs early adoption programs of products like ISA2006 and Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1.

Twan Grotenhuis (MCT, MCSE NT4, 2000 and 2003, MCSE+messaging 2000 and 2003, CCNA) is a consultant with Sylis Netherlands. He currently provides strategic and technical consulting to several of the Sylis customers in the Netherlands. His specialties include Microsoft Exchange and ISA architecture, design, implementation, troubleshooting and optimization. Twan has done several Virtual Server 2005 projects where virtualization of physical servers was his main focus.

VMware continues to issue maintainance updated for its ESX 2.x branch since the large amount of customers still unconvinced to move on the new VMware Infrastructure 3.

This new build (32233) introduces support for 5 new guest operating systems:

• FreeBSD 4.11
• Novell Open Enterprise Server Support Pack 2
• Red Hat Linux Enterprise Server 3.0 Update 8
• Red Hat Linux Enterprise Server 4.0 Update 4
• Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 with Update Roll-up

and widens support for systems, devices and management agents.

Read complete Release Notes here. Download it here.

Quoting from the EqualLogic official announcement:

EqualLogic, a leading provider of enterprise-class iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions, today announced that EqualLogic’s PS Series storage has been qualified with VMware Infrastructure 3. Based on the completion of interoperability testing, EqualLogic PS Series will now be included in the Storage / SAN Compatibility Guide for VMware ESX Server 3, now part of VMware Infrastructure 3, as a supported storage platform.
…
The compatibility between the EqualLogic PS Series and VMware Infrastructure 3, as noted in the Storage / SAN Compatibility Guide for VMware ESX Server 3, includes iSCSI base connectivity, storage processor failover, boot from SAN, network interface card failover and host bus adapter failover. In addition, the PS Series is compatible with VMware Infrastructure 3’s advanced features including VMware VMotion technology for eliminating downtime, VMware High Availability to ensure uptime of virtual machines and VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler for automated workload distribution…

At the end of August Amazon beta-launched the first rentable virtual datacenter based on the Xen hypervisor: the Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2).

It’s possibly the largest Xen implementation available to customers and is a notable opportunity for Xen development team (and several commercial companies surrounding it) to demonstrate reliability of the project.

Unfortunately after just 1 month since launch Amazon is hit by the a severe security warning on the system (not depending on Xen in itself): data leakage.

Samuel T. Cossette detailed on his blog how it’s easy access other EC2 customers data, after they released used Xen virtual machines:

…If you plan to give it a try (and you definitely should), don’t forget to use an encrypted partition or wipe your instances’ hard drives, since Amazon won’t do it for you. In fact, when you terminate an instance, Amazon simply shuts the machine down. Then, if the same physical machine is allocated to somebody else, a hamster goes to that machine, powers it up, formats the hard drives and reinstalls a brand new operating system. Herein lies the problem – the hard drives are only repartitioned and formated, not initialized. This means that all the data is still physically on the hard drives, even though it is not readily accessible!

I have looked at a couple of hard drives and found some sensible data in the form of “private” source code, OpenVPN (complete with key and certificate) configurations, S3 access keys, EC2 keys and certificates, logins and passwords to domain name administration interfaces, etc. It was easy to find out who the owners were – they ranged from individuals to profitable startups (according to their pictures on flickr).

Who’s to blame? Of course, Amazon could (and should) do something about the clean-up process, but organizations storing their intellectual property in plain text is also somewhat of a questionable practice…

Read the whole article at source.

At the moment of writing the author already reported Amazon solved the problem, filling used partitions with random data, anyway this incident helped pointing the attention to some usually uncovered aspects of provisioning.

The more we’ll go towards fully automated virtual infrastructures, the more we’ll need severe (and scalable) controls on the provisioning phase: authorization for requesting, deploying and using new VMs, and strict control on usage and re-allocation of physical resources (RAM and disk space).

After releasing the new technical certification about VMware Infrastructure 3, VCP310, VMware also launched a brand new certification aimed at sales staff employed in its Partners around the world.

The new certification, dubbed VMware Sales Professional or VSP, is a new requirements for partners and can be achieved following 7 mandatory courses, where the last one focus canditates on a very specif area of business among:

• Selling to Testing and Development Environments
• Selling Server Consolidation and Containment Solutions
• Selling Business Continuity Solutions
• Selling Desktion Manageability & Security Solutions

AppStream released the first minor version of its new 5.0 platform.

The most notable feature is capability to interact with Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) 2.0, another application virtualization product highly popular on the market.

The integration announcement follows an article published this week, detailing how this interaction can be done to deliver application virtualization and streaming in a seamless way.

It’s evident both companies are joining forces to counteract upcoming threat of Microsoft, which acquired Softricity earlier this year.

Is this a prelude to a possible merge/acquisition?

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Update: Brian Madden published a 46-minutes podcast with Altiris SVS Product Manager, Scott Jones, and AppStream Director of Product Management, Brian Duckering, about integration between platforms and relation with competitors like Softricity (now acquired by Microsoft).

Listen to it here.

VMware finally released its virtual to virtual (V2V) tool for converting virtual machines formats between different platforms it offers and some 3rd party solutions.

This new version (build 30557), available for free, introduces several new capabilities:

Import from Various Third-Party Formats and VMware Products

• Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server
• Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery images
• VMware Workstation 4.x virtual machine (compatible with VMware GSX Server 3.x)
• VMware Workstation 5.x virtual machine (compatible with VMware Player and VMware Server 1.0)
• VMware ESX Server 3.0
• VMware VirtualCenter 2.0
• VMware ESX Server 2.5.x (when managed by VirtualCenter 2.0)

Export to a Virtual Machine for VMware Workstation and Datacenter Products

• VMware Workstation 4.x virtual machine (compatible with VMware GSX Server 3.x, ESX Server 2.5.x)
• VMware Workstation 5.x virtual machine (compatible with VMware Player and VMware Server 1.0)
• VMware ESX Server 2.5.x (when managed by VirtualCenter 2.0)
• VMware ESX Server 3.0 (when managed by VirtualCenter 2.0)
• VMware ESX Server 3.0 (standalone)

VMware is also working on a new generation of migration tools, with the new VMware Converter, which merges Virtual Machine Importer and P2V Assistant features together.

Download the Virtual Machine Importer 2.0 here.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

VMware released a very minor update for its 1.x VirtualCenter branch, which is aimed to manage ESX Servers 2.x and the new Server 1.x.

This new build (30780) is only for bug fixes.

Download it here.

As expected several new markets segments are opening around virtualization, with a plethora of solutions for automating complex tasks in new virtual datacenters.

The most prominent ones are P2V/V2V migrations, multi-platform virtualization management and finally virtual lab management.
All of them are still pretty immature with few competitors and limited capabilities but will grow in next couple of years and will eventually merge in integrated management solutions for both virtual and physical machines.

The virtual lab management space is becoming more interesting in the last few months, since the acquisition of segment leader Akimbi from VMware.
The previously known Slingshot has been renamed Virtual Lab Manager and will be launched in beta this week.

The only other company in the space, Surgient, just released its new platform version but its focus on hosting services makes it a hard choice for the large majority of customers.

While customers adopting Microsoft or Xen virtualization platform were already loosing hopes to early adopt automation solutions for their QA departments, a new player appeared on the scene: VMLogix.

VMLogix launched in September the first beta of its virtual lab management solution called LabManager.

The new product has several interesting features:

• Full support for virtualization platforms
  (including all VMware products, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 and Xen in the near future)
• Full support for operating systems
  (including all client and server Microsoft platforms and major Linux distributions)
• Capability to abstract from required virtualization platform
  (committing template cloning automatically chooses the supported virtualization product for the required image)
• Capability to manage guest OS licenses
  (binding of correct license to the related guest OS is assisted by a License Manager)
• Capability to automate tasks inside deployed guest OSes
  (execution of complex script and verification of output or injection of files is available without entering the virtual machine)
• Capability to perform application installations on deployed guest OSes
  (binding of application installer is possible selecting them from a central repository)
• Capability to deploy virtualization platforms on bare metal (installation of a virtualization platform on real hardware is possible before performing any provisioning task)
• Support for granular permission system
  (definition of users roles and user teams for any possible task inside the product)

LabManager 2.6 beta 1 is available here. The final version of the product is expected for early November.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

VMLogix has been included in the virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Radar.

After a long testing trial VMware finally released the new edition of its certification exam for becoming VMware Certified Professional (VCP).

The exam called VMware Certified Professional on VI3 (VCP310), long 105 minutes, is available now in English language only through the whole Pearson VUE testing network.