Year: 2006

Quoting from the Gestio official announcement:

AK Computer Services Ltd, today announced it has released Gestio Virtual Infrastructure Protection for Microsoft Virtual Server (VIP for MSVS).

Following the success of our AppManager module for VMware AK Computer Services has now launched Gestio VIP for Microsoft Virtual Server. Gestio VIP for MSVS allows you to monitor all aspects of Microsoft Virtual Server and its associated Virtual Machines using NetIQ AppManager. Gestio VIP for MSVS monitors and protects a Microsoft Virtual Infrastructure using your production systems management application.
This enables you to apply the same levels of control, escalation, reporting and service level agreements (SLA’s) to your virtual infrastructure as you apply to your production infrastructure, allowing you to confidently use Microsoft Virtual Infrastructure for production scale applications.
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Gestio VIP for MSVS includes comprehensive reporting in addition to the monitoring and alerting capabilities. Now not only can you be alerted about changes to the infrastructure, but you can get information to help you decide on the best location for a new VM. Using AppManager and Gestio Modules you can now monitor and visualize both VMware and Microsoft Virtual Infrastructures within a single business view, providing you with the only comprehensive Systems Management Solution for the monitoring and management of Virtualized servers.
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The suggested list price for VIP for Microsoft Virtual Server is $2,500 per Virtual Server…

SearchOpenSource published an interesting interview with Scott Herold and Ron Oglesby, co-authors of the book VMware ESX Server: Advanced Technical Design Guide, about current VMware ESX Server leadership over Xen and Microsoft Virtual Server.

Read it here.

Quoting from Network World:

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Microsoft will bring SoftGrid’s capabilities under its Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), which is a plan to create a management platform for Windows.

The company has a three-tiered virtualization plan that covers servers, applications and system services. While the server strategy is nearly in full-flight, Microsoft has said nothing about application virtualization until last month and says it won’t dive into system service virtualization, which is designed to help hosted platforms, until after 2007.

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from the Jaluna official announcement:

Jaluna Inc., the Real-Time Virtualization™ company demonstrates advanced technology for real-time embedded devices on Intel® Core™ microarchitecture at GLOBALCOMM 2006 in Chicago.

Jaluna is working with Intel to introduce the multi-core virtualization solution by tightly integrating Jaluna OSware™ Real-Time Virtualization™ software with Intel® Virtualization Technology hardware.

The demonstration shows how customers can migrate seamlessly to multi-core CPUs and allow the RTOS and Linux operating systems (OS’s) to run unmodified on the Intel Core microarchitecture, which is an industry first.
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This demonstration consolidates numerous single processor RTOS’s and Linux on two Dual Core Intel® Xeon® processors LV 2.0 GHz, each executing mobile phone infrastructure applications on a shared database. This establishes that legacy software stacks do not need to be re-architected in order to take advantage of Intel multi-core CPUs, while maintaining real-time performance bounds.

As already anticipated in a previous post Sun is heavily working on several virtualization aspects in Solaris 10 (and related OpenSolaris). Among them an interesting one is the network virtualization, driven by the codename Crossbow project:

Crossbow provides the building blocks for network virtualization and resource control by virtualizing the stack and NIC around any service (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, NFS, etc.), protocol or Virtual machine.

Each virtual stack can be assigned its own priority and bandwidth on a shared NIC without causing any performance degradation. The architecture dynamically manages priority and bandwidth resources, and can provide better defense against denial-of-service attacks directed at a particular service or virtual machine by isolating the impact just to that entity. The virtual stacks are separated by means of H/W classification engine such that traffic for one stack does not impact other virtual stacks.

Project Crossbow is next step in the evolution of Solaris networking stack and brings bandwidth resource control and virtualization as part of the architecture itself instead of the usual add-on layers which have heavy overheads and complexity…

Read more on the project homepage.

Windows Vista beta 2 has been publicly released.
As a long time, experienced beta tester I know the only way to seriously test something is to use it in production. It’s the only way to really understand limits and improvemens of a new technology.

Anyway the beta tester role can be very risky, mostly when you are working with a new operating system, so I highly suggest you first P2V migrate your existing environment in a virtual machine. It’s not just because you’ll have a chance to revert back with a V2P migration (something you could probably do much easier with a hard disk clone operation), but mostly because the previous system will be always available side by side with Vista, and you’ll be able to do meaningful comparisons.

The free Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 could be the solution but it actually doesn’t install on a Windows Vista host OS.
It depends on the missing components in IIS and the privileges limitations enforced by UAC.

Luckily Ben Armstrong published a great article helping everybody to workaround problems and go for a flawless installation.

Read it here.

Quoting from the Akimbi official announcement:

Akimbi Systems, a global leader in Virtual Lab Automation software, today announced its support for IBM Rational Release 7, Team products including out-of-the-box integration of Akimbi Slingshot with IBM Rational ClearQuestTM and Rational test automation products.

Through Akimbi Slingshot, which has achieved Ready for IBM Rational software validation, users are able to reduce test setup time by 40% or more, as well as instantly capture and reproduce software defects – all of which substantially streamlines processes across globally distributed application development and test organizations.
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The integrated solution announced today creates a closed loop system that automatically launches the correct test configuration for an IBM Rational ClearQuest test case. Once a virtual test configuration is deployed – which takes less than a minute – users may execute tests against it using Rational test products. When tests fail, users can capture a snapshot of the test environment at the time of failure, and embed an Akimbi LiveLinkTM URL in the ClearQuest defect report.
When the developer reads the report, he simply clicks on the URL to view the defect in its “live” failed state, bypassing the multi-hour exercise of reproducing it…

Akimbi released the new release of its flagship product: Slingshot.

In the new 2.3 version a major feature has been introduced: VMware ESX Server 2.5 support (which enlarge company offering with the Slingshot Enterprise Edition).

Download it here.

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

Virtual Strategy Magazine interviewed Cadman Chui, Vice President Marketing at PlateSpin, about their new product PowerRecon 2.0.

Read all here.

Quoting from CRN:

VMware CEO Diane Greene said Monday that the virtualization software company isn’t worried about battling Microsoft and Linux distributors but will fight to ensure that the interfaces between the operating system and hypervisor are open.

At VMware’s Virtual Infrastructure 3 launch in Cambridge, Mass., Greene said VMware won’t fall victim to Microsoft or Linux distributors that incorporate the Xen hypervisor because VMware’s platform is far too mature and advanced for rivals to catch up and because customers value virtualization’s independence from the operating system.
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Microsoft’s planned hypervisor won’t be available for another two years, but Greene said VMware vows that Microsoft will not be permitted to use its integration strategy with the operating system to lock customers into its proprietary virtualization API or technology…

Read the whole article at source.