Year: 2006

ZDNet published an interview with VMware President, Diane Greene, about several hot topics, including standard virtualization efforts and relationship with Xen, open source, virtual appliances, EMC relationship, previsions for market trends and more.

Unexpectedly Ms. Greene seemed a bit in difficulties addressing in a solid way some interviewers questions, resulting in a very interesting interview it’s worth to listed to.

Listen the podcast at source.

Quoting from the Ardence official announcement:

Ardence Inc., the leader in developing software platforms for the on-demand world, today announced that industry analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) has praised Ardence’s Software-Streaming Platform in a non-commissioned report that reviews current industry perspectives on virtualization. The report, titled “Virtualization: Exposing the Intangible Enterprise,” cites Ardence’s approach as one that is creating a new paradigm for dynamic, cost-effective software deployment.
…
The report goes on to state that “unlike most other vendors in the virtualization arena, Ardence provides a full provisioning capability from bare metal to applications and data. This differs from pure-play server, operating system, and application virtualization by providing a complete package that can be booted from the network to completely provision an operating environment.”…

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

After the yesterday announcement of VMware, reading a virtualization product for Intel based Mac OS desktops, and Microsoft, dismissing Virtual PC for Mac development, and without native virtualization announced for Leopard, Parallels doesn’t intend to loose Mac users loyalty and the new opportunity, and immediately announces a new beta cycle for its acclaimed Desktop.

The updated aims to fill some functionality holes which VMware will use to gain market share. Apart bug fixes it will includes among others:

• USB improvement, including USB support for Windows Mobile 5, web cameras, and a much broader list of supported devices.
• The Mac hard disk cache can be now switched off for a virtual machine, which can substantially improve OS X performance while using Parallels Desktop.
• Improved graphic performance
• Complete keyboard support, including the “eject CD” button and right & left shift mapping for non-English layouts
• Unicode path support lets users name files and paths in any language
• Improved shared folders performance

Enroll the beta program here.

If this is not enough Parallels revealed virtualization.info upcoming features planned for the near future:

• A groundbreaking new user interface that will make running Windows on a Mac easier and more productive than ever before
• Never before seen security and management tools
• Capability to burn CDs and DVDs inside virtual machines
• Fast 3D graphics support
• The ability to run Microsoft Windows Vista

and most of all:

• Paralles Server for Mac OS X

Opening WWDC conference, yesterday Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs introduced for the first time the next update of Mac OS X: Leopard.

In his keynote Jobs showed some improvements but no one was about virtualization. Anyway the company CEO explicitly said most important features will remain unveiled, joking on the fact competitors (Microsoft) could start copying them too soon

The hope to have native virtualization in Leopard then is still alive but, while waiting, Mac community will have to use Parallels Desktop or upcoming VMware product for Mac OS X.

Initially announcing it at WinHEC 2006 conference, Microsoft has finally made available beta bits of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2007, the tool aimed to satisfy virtualization management need in Virtual Server 2005 and upcoming Windows Server Virtualization infrastructures.

The tool also directly addresses competition with VMware VirtualCenter, able to perform highly complex tasks on ESX Server datacenters.

Virtual Machine Manager brings in its first beta several notable features:

• Hosts management by groups (including resources reservetion, permissions assignment and tasks issuing)
• Virtual machines scripts, templates and profile repository (Virtual Machine Manager library)
• Virtual machines automated creation and management by advanced scripting (with Windows PowerShell)
• Virtual machines assisted placement among available hosts (with automated rating system)
• Virtual machines centralized backup managment (with checkpoints)
• Virtual machines assisted provisioning by web interface and pre-defined policies (Self-Service Portal)
• Fibre Channel (FC) Storage Area Networks (SANs) integration (including virtual machines host-to-host migration)

In this build some much wanted features are not available:

• physical to virtual (P2V) migration
• clustered hosts support
• virtual machines automatic migration between hosts
• command line management

All of these are expected for beta 2.

A note about security: Virtual Machine Manager, like most Microsoft back end servers, needs an Active Directory domain for itself and controlled host OSes, creating serious problems in all scenarios where Virtual Server 2005 has been deployed in DMZ with a hardened configuration.
Hopefully Microsoft will reconsider the choice proposing a version for untrusted networks (like it’s doing with Exchange Server 2007).

The beta program is public: register for it here.

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

Quoting from BetaNews:

In a statement provided to BetaNews Monday, the company said its Macintosh Business Unit has decided not to go forward with a version of the software native to the Intel platform.

“Developing a high-quality virtualization solution, such as Virtual PC, for the Intel-based Mac is similar to creating a version 1.0 release due to how closely the product integrates with Mac hardware,” a Microsoft spokesperson said…

Read the whole article at source.

So, while Parallels is dominating virtualization on Apple market and VMware is approaching, Microsoft gives up lamenting porting the product is like writing it from scratch.

Apple has been able to port on Intel the whole software offering, including operating system, in 210 days, and Redmond giant has problems to port a single product on an architecture it mastered for more than 20 years. This while is spendind millions in the Windows virtualization strategy.

Microsoft could find in virtualization a new unexpected help to put Windows on every computer on the planet, but it’s wasting the opportunity not producing virtualization solutions for other operating systems, including Linux, MacOS, Solaris, BSD.

This year LinuxWorld conference dedicates a whole track to high performance computing and virtualization, with notable speakers, including presenters from IBM, Intel, Microsoft, SWsoft, Virtual Iron, VMware, XenSource.

• HPC101: Building Blocks and Standards
  Gary Tyreman, noted Grid technology expert, makes an exciting announcement about a new standard that will shake up HPC and grid technology as we know it.
• Grids: Computing Infrastructure for Today’s Applications
  Dynamic environments, enabled by various virtualization mechanisms, date back to the early days of mainframe computing. As enterprises increasingly leverage virtualization techniques (IDC is reporting more than 60% growth from last year), IT professionals need to better understand how virtualization and Grid relate to one another. Virtualization is not a complete resource management solution. However, it does provide useful capabilities for isolating operating system environments from each other and allowing them to be moved among different hardware resources. Like Grid, virtualization is a trend that’s being driven by economics: Grid infrastructure addresses the operating costs associated with managing multiple IT resource islands within the enterprise, while virtualization allows companies to improve utilization of existing hardware rather than having to overprovision to meet peak demands. This session will present how Grid infrastructure technologies are used to enable effective management of shared resources and address how organizations can create a dynamic IT environment.
• Linux Virtualization in the Datacenter
  With over 20,000 enterprise customers, VMware has a unique view into how Linux virtualization is being deployed and managed in production datacenters. In this session, we will discuss the variety of virtualization-based solutions that have been implemented using VMware Infrastructure, including server consolidation, business continuity, test and development, and virtual desktops. We will also explore Linux-specific requirements for virtualization platforms and management, and the ways in which paravirtualization and the OS-hypervisor interface can evolve to meet those needs.
• Xen: Success Stories for Enterprise Open Source Virtualization
  At XenSource we have been working with enterprise users of Xen 3.0 for over a year. Many large enterprise users are beginning to experience the benefits of Xen 3.0 for Linux deployments as a cost effective, very high performance virtualization infrastructure solution. This talk will present some use cases for XenSource’s flagship product in the enterprise, based on our experience with Linux users’™ virtualization needs, both in the hypervisor and control and automation tools. We will discuss the key issue of integration with storage virtualization, which enables provisioning of any virtual server on any box, any time, as well as snapshotting and cloning of virtual machines. We will draw on specific use cases and best practice that we have accumulated working with our customers.
• Virtualization and the Next Generation Data Center
  Virtualization holds great promise, but many first and second generation virtualization technologies compound the problem by adding cost and complexity in the form of virtual server sprawl, new management requirements and performance overhead. Emerging virtualization technologies are addressing these shortcomings and enabling leading enterprises to take virtualization to the next level. Virtualization has become a key strategy to reduce the complexity and cost involved with managing and operating data centers. This panel session will discuss these emerging technologies and examine how they can be leveraged to make the data center more efficient, flexible and agile while dramatically reducing cost and complexity.
• Are SaaS and Web 2.0 Defining the Future of the Datacenter?
  The rapid growth of SaaS and Web 2.0 is influencing data center infrastructure providers. Despite their relative youth, these demanding users have unique requirments because of their rapid growth and constant change, and they’re avid users of virtualization. The panel will discuss SaaS and Web 2.0 needs, how they’re using current virtualization offerings, and the effect these young companies are having on the product roadmaps of data center infrastructure vendors.
• Real World Consolidation Through Server Virtualization
  Under-utilized server resources didn’t seem like such a big deal until the recent economic slump forced a harder look at technology budgets. Now the focus is on consolidating workloads (applications, servers, etc.) to do more with less. This session will look at a case-study example of real-world scenarios dealing with issues such as server consolidation, disaster recovery, application management and routine task automation and how they help ensure the high availability, high performance and low cost that virtualization promises.

  Arvato mobile, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann AG, is the leading mobile entertainment provider in Europe. The company initially used an open source virtualization solution, but outgrew it as the number of servers increased and management became cumbersome. To fix the issue, arvato mobile chose an OS-level virtualization approach offering higher performance, near-zero overhead, and the comprehensive management toolset the company needed.

• The Coming I/O Crisis – Why Virtualization Technology Needs to Move Beyond Processors and Memor
  Current industry efforts rightly focus on both hardware and software based technologies that virtualize processors and memory for the purpose of increasing the utilization of servers, generally deployed in grids or clusters in the Web-tier of the datacenter. The benefits of consolidating servers and simplifying the management of these resources in the near term are obvious, considering the proliferation of low end hardware in the marketplace. However, there is a coming crisis that the industry should be laying the groundwork to address, and that is the often overlooked I/O capacity of datacenter servers.

  Just as in chip design, the bottleneck to performance is more often the gateway to the processor than it is the processing capability itself. If data cannot efficiently flow into the server, grid or cluster, the benefits of virtualizing processors and memory will be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data trying to flow through I/O systems.

• Virtual Infrastructure Deployment Best Practices
  The presentation discusses practices around deploying a Virtual Infrastructure. This will include some key items from the VMware Virtual Infrastructure Methodology (VIM) that include a ‘best of’ from doing virtualization assessments, to architectural design, to deployment and ongoing management. This will include a high level strategy with technical points for each area as well as examples of both success and failure in deployment from real life customers. Managing and scaling the Virtual Infrastructure for successful integration within the enterprise through the development of a VIM Center of Excellence.
• Xen Technical Insight – SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10
  This session will preview the Xen virtualization technology. Topics covered will include: (a) Xen 3.0 architecture, (b) Xen technical roadmap and (c) Integration of Xen technology in Novell products.
• How Emerging Data Center Architectures are making Virtualization a Reality

Register for it here.

On the VMware homepage a new banner appeared right today, before Apple WWDC conference starts.

It’s linked to a sign up page to stay informed about availability of a new virtualization product for Mac OS later this year.

From description it’s possible to understand it’s Workstation and not just Player (like someone supposed), since VMware advertises the possibility to create new virtual machines.

Some features are notable:

• platform interoperability (create a new VM on Mac OS and use it on Windows or Linux, and vice versa)
• product interoperability (create a new VM on Workstation for Mac OS and run it on Player for Windows or ESX Server on bare metal)
• host-guest OSes drag and drop (move or copu a file from Mac OS inside the virtual machine simply dragging it, and vice versa)

Update: The VMware official announcement doesn’t provide a name for the new product:

VMware, Inc., the global leader in software for industry-standard virtualized desktops and servers, today announced a new product that will enable Intel-based Macs to run x86 operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, NetWare and Solaris, in virtual machines at the same time as Mac OS X…

but a new post on the corporate blog, The Console, from Srinivas Krishnamurti, Director of Developer Products and Market Development, provides details about other features:

Since most Macs now have Intel’s Duo with two cores, we added Virtual SMP capabilities so that you can assign more than a single CPU to any virtual machine to gain additional performance.

One of the cool things that I like about my Apple (albeit an older one with PowerPC chip) is the simplicity of doing any multi-media work. I can record movies or use iChat quite easily without the need to buy additional software. We wanted to make sure you have access to all those devices from your virtual machine as well so we spent a lot of time on making sure devices work well. You can use USB 2 devices like video cameras, etc…

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In a review of Parallels Desktop, InfoWorld Test Center Chief Technologist, Tom Yager, affirmed:

…But it is accepted that client software virtualization is too slow and resource-hungry to be of practical use to professionals. As a result, client virtualization has gone virtually nowhere.

The sentence is there to back the idea performances can go back to normal with paravirtualization.

This couldn’t be more far from truth.

Performances on desktop machines strictly depends on available resources. In the same way it happens on server machines.
VMware Workstation and Server (formerly GSX Server) share same engine and virtualization performances are equal given same available resources and same operating system situation (amount of started services, memory manager settings, swap file, etc.).

It’s not a secret if you try to run a virtual machine on a typical laptop with 256 Mb RAM and an old Centrino processor your system will hang, inable to provide enough memory and processor power for all requests.
It’s not a secret if you try to run a virtual machine on a typical laptop with a default installation of Microsoft Windows XP SP2 you’ll have worst performances of a Windows Server 2003 SP1 with hardening and memory optimization for background services.

Virtual machines requires, in physical desktops, laptops or servers, enough resources. Not having them will translate in slow performances, in all scenarios.
In no cases this depends on virtualization.

It’s true paravirtualization significantly increase performances over traditional virtualization (sometimes called hardware virtualization, others called server virtualization), but it still needs enough resources.

Another 2 important points:

• a professional in need of virtualization doesn’t run a typical laptop with 256 Mb RAM and an old Centrino processor. If he does, he didn’t understand how virtualization works.
• client virtualization has gone everywhere.
  In my experience, at today, there is no high level professional, in every field except graphic (due to actual technology limitations), which has not adopted virtualization on his desktop.
  Software developerd, system or network engineers, security professionals, sales agents, marketing manager, accounting staff, conference speaker, classroom teachers. Everybody. Literally.