Year: 2006

Howto forge posted a step-by-step procedure for installing Xen 3.0 on a clean Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) installation, with several examples on how to configure guest images options.

It’s worth to check.

Altiris released the first service pack for its application virtualization product: Software Virtualization Solution 2.0.

The update brings several bug fixes and 2 new features:

• the integration with Wise Package Studio 7.
• OnEvent actions

Read the complete release notes and download it here.

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

Achieving a notable record Parallels succeded in deliverying the first virtualization solution for Apple MacOS X on Intel architectures, beating on time market leaders VMware and Microsoft.

The Intel Virtualization Technology (VT) featured by adopted Core Duo CPUs and a highly successful beta testing (100,000 testers in 2,5 months), helped the company in porting their existing Parallels Workstation 2.1 for Windows on the today’s most interesting operating system available.

The product offers Mac OS users virtualization of Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS-DOS, OS/2 and eComStation operating systems, and is able to exchange data with Windows vitual machines through cut & paste.

Parallels has not been afraid of competing with the established virtualization giant VMware and doesn’t seem worried by insistent rumors about next Apple Mac OS version, codename Leopard, which is expected to bring in native virtualization capabilities.

Not happy enough for the obtained supremacy, Parallels further attracted customers with an aggressive pricing and the inclusion of a second tool, Parallels Compressor, which grants a significate reduction of virtual machines dimensions, independently from virtualization platform creation (Windows and Linux users will be able to download Compressor after the official release).

After this release the company is expected for further enhance the corresponding desktop product for Windows and entering in the server side of virtualization market, with the launch of Parallels Server and Enterprise Server, later this year.

Download Parallels Desktop for Mac here.

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

Quoting from the Win4Lin official announcement:

Win4Lin, the leading purveyor of desktop and enterprise Windows-on-Linux solutions for business, announced today the immediate availability of their new Enterprise and SMB product, Win4Lin Virtual Desktop Server (VDS). The product provides the ability to consolidate and serve multiple Windows Desktops from Linux server infrastructure.
…
The features of Win4Lin Virtual Desktop Server include:

• Integrated Virtual Machine hosting of Windows XP/2000 desktop sessions on Linux servers
• Centralized management and provisioning of users
• “Renewable” windows (recover from any malware corrupted session by re-launching the original master copy of Windows with your individual “Documents and Settings”)
• Display either a single application or an entire Windows desktop
• Automatic local printing from the server to the local attached printer
• Consistent user access to personal desktop environment from home, office and other network connected locations
• Support for multiple remote display choices (Win4Lin client, Sun Ray, NoMachine, LTSP, VNC, X, and others)

…

Download it here.

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

Computer Measurement Group (CMG) 2006 conference, scheduled for 3-8th December at Reno, Nevada, could be the most interesting year’s event for virtualization.

CMG is famous for providing a very focused technology event about performances and quality of services and this year the central day, Wednesday 6th, will be completely dedicated to server virtualization.

In a moment of virtualization history when benchmarks are becoming a compelling need, what will emerge in this event could be a critical factor in technology adoption.

At the moment the agenda is not available but you can already register.

Quoting from the Route1 official announcement:

At the VDI Alliance industry panel discussion taking place today, Route1, Inc. (TSX-V:ROI), a trusted provider of secure, identity-managed computing solutions, will unveil its technology roadmap in bringing virtual computing access capabilities to the enterprise market.
…
Route1’s MobiKEY-based VCA strategy, when combined with virtual desktop platforms and Route1’s SAFE (Simplified Access for Emergency) Response solution, will enable organizations to simply and cost-effectively deploy a completely virtualized computing environment…

Note that at time of writing mentioned roadmap is not available anywhere on the company site.

Another book from IBM Redbooks department, this time on grid computing designing issues:

Patterns are great vehicles to capture components with a high degree of commonality among engagements and to express their interrelationships. Although most enterprise grid engagements are typically deployed with solutions that could be categorized as “one-of-a-kind”, there is enough information gathered today to allow us to devise a set of common components among them and to derive enterprise grid patterns. The proposed patterns are based on grid solutions designed for enterprise clients over the past couple of years and are therefore representative of the current use of grid technologies in the enterprise today. They may not address all emerging grid technologies or be representative of research grids.

You can use this redbook as a helping guide for your grid solution design.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1 – Introduction
• Chapter 2 – Execution patterns for grid applications
• Chapter 3 – Enterprise Grid Composite pattern
• Chapter 4 – Patterns for grid access
• Chapter 5 – Patterns for workload virtualization
• Chapter 6 – Patterns for platform virtualization
• Chapter 7 – Patterns for information virtualization
• Chapter 8 – Use cases

Download it here.

Quoting from IT World Canada:

…
“Participants in our round table discussions said they were [unsure] about the hardware savings they would achieve in the short run, but really liked the flexibility virtual machines provide,”
…
The Forrester survey findings are echoed by a Canadian survey of 500 large and mid-sized firms conducted by research firm IDC Canada Ltd. in Toronto.

Twenty per cent of the companies polled had some form of virtualization already in place, while another 20 per cent intended to deploy the technology within the next 12 months.
…
The survey showed 60 per cent of North American companies have adopted virtualization.
…
Eighty-four per cent of the companies said they ran between two to six virtual machines (VMs) per server box. The remainder ran 15 or more VMs per box.
…
68 per cent chose VMware while only nine per cent sided with Microsoft…

Read the whole article at source.

On the nth question about how to redistribute the Windows operating system inside a virtual machine, something actual Microsoft licensing prevents, Ben Armstrong, Virtual Machine Program Manager, answered that the company is looking how to do the thing.

A good sign meaning Microsoft is sensible to the problem and knows how many issues the Windows Product Activation (WPA) raises in the scenario.

Brian Madden published a 1-hour podcast where him and 4 distinguished guests evaluate recent Microsoft acquisition of Softricity.

During the podcast speakers touched several aspects, with an high focus on Citrix as usual:

• What this means for Citrix in the short term
• How the Softricity technology can help Microsoft sell copies of Office
• That Citrix needs to acquire a WAN optimization provider
• How Microsoft can use Softricity to facilitate Windows grid computing
• What Citrix should do with Project Tarpon
• How Citrix is competing with companies like Cisco and Juniper, and how Citrix could be better positioned then them
• What this means for Microsoft SMS and Altiris
• How desktop application deployment and server-based computing technologies are converging

The most interesting thing is that among guests there is Steig Westerberg, CEO of Stream Theory, which filed a lawsuit against Softricity, immediately after the Microsoft acquisition news.

Listen to it here.