Year: 2006

Another book for the much appreciated IBM Redbooks department:

Virtualization is becoming more and more a key technology enabler to streamline and better operate data centers. In it’s simplest form, virtualization refers to the capability of being able to run multiple OS instances, such as Linux and Windows, on a physical server.

Usually the concept of virtualization is usually associated with high-end servers, such as the IBM System x3950 that are able being able to support and consolidate multiple heterogeneous software environments. The System x3950 is a highly scalable x86 platform capable of supporting up to 32 processors and 512 GB of memory and is aimed at customers that wish to consolidating data centers.

Between the server hardware and the operating systems that will run the applications is a virtualization layer of software that manages the entire system. The two main products in this field are VMware ESX Server and Microsoft Virtual Server.

This Redbook discusses the the technology behind virtualization, the x3950 technology, and the two virtualization software products. We also discuss how to properly manage the solution as if they all were a pool of resources with Virtual Machine Manager, a unique and consistent management interface.

Table of contents

• Chapter 1 – Introduction to virtualization
• Chapter 2 – The IBM System x3950 Server
• Chapter 3 – VMware ESX Server
• Chapter 4 – Microsoft Virtual Server
• Chapter 5 – Management with IBM Director

Download it here.

InfoWorld published a brief review of Akimbi Slingshot 2.2, scoring it 7.9/10 and providing this bottom line:

Akimbi Slingshot makes it easy to set up, deploy, copy, and tear down complex multi-server configurations of virtual machines. Its capability to capture snapshots of configurations and play them simultaneously is impressive.
Rough edges, incomplete documentation, and the lack of a reporting module hamper the product, however.

Read it at source.

The new version of QEMU is now available bringing in some notable features like VNC support (as anticipated last week):

• USB tablet support (Brad Campbell, Anthony Liguori)
• win32 host serial support (Kazu)
• PC speaker support (Joachim Henke)
• IDE LBA48 support (Jens Axboe)
• SSE3 support
• Solaris port (Ben Taylor)
• Preliminary SH4 target (Samuel Tardieu)
• VNC server (Anthony Liguori)
• slirp fixes (Ed Swierk et al.)
• USB fixes
• ARM Versatile Platform Baseboard emulation (Paul Brook)

Download it here.

Wise already supports Altiris SVS 2.0 within its Package Studio 6.01, permitting to embed a .MSI package in a wrapper (called Virtual Software Archive or VSA) for layered installation on machines where SVS is present.

In the upcoming Wise Package Studio 7, actually in beta, this support will be further enhanced in VSA manipulation, including among others:

• Virtual Package Editor
  Enables users to create and edit virtual software archive (.VSA) packages
• SetupCapture
  Enables users to create output in the form of virtual software archive (.VSA) packages. In addition, you can now use the software virtualization technology that is part of the Altiris Software Virtualization Solution to capture an application in a virtual software layer. When the capture is complete, you can simply delete or deactivate the virtual software layer to restore the computer to its original state
• Software Manager
  Enables virtual software archive (.VSA) packages to be imported into the Wise Software Repository, so that users can determine if the virtualized applications might be adversely effected by the future deployment of a patch or hot fix
• Test Expert
  You can now use the software virtualization technology that is part of the Altiris Software Virtualization Solution to perform application testing in a virtual software layer. When testing is complete, you can simply delete or deactivate the virtual software layer to restore the computer to its original state

More at Altiris Juice community.

Quoting from the Mellanox official announcement:

Mellanox™ Technologies Ltd, the leader in business and technical computing interconnects, Mellanox™ Technologies Ltd, the leader in business and technical computing interconnects, announced its collaboration with Novell to build an integrated solution that delivers Xen 3.0.2 virtualization in conjunction with Mellanox’s 20Gb/s InfiniBand fabric solutions on top of Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 platform.
…
The Xen hypervisor offers the ability to ensure service levels by guaranteeing guests committed fractions of the total CPU processing power. I/O channel capabilities supported in Mellanox InfiniBand adapters extend the same service level guarantees to the I/O pipe. The Xen hypervisor can also migrate live workloads from one physical server to another. By using high-performance RDMA technologies, such workloads can be migrated much faster, reducing CPU utilization and service downtimes significantly…

VMware and Akimbi present a joined webcast about simplying application development lifecycle with virtualization technologies:

Join VMware and Akimbi as we explore the benefits of virtualizing and automating the test lab, specifically as it relates to the provisioning of the complex configurations required in today’s test/dev organizations.
…
See how these technologies bring IT and test/dev organizations a solution to solve these issues:

• Painfully slow configuration and deployment of test environments
• Difficulty configuring test environments to be “as close as possible to production”
• Challenges in reproducing bugs delays the delivery (or compromises the quality) of your software
• Excessive servers, networking equipment and other resources are sprawled throughout the organization – yet you always seem to need more to support all the environments required to complete testing

Attend the recorded webcast here.

Computer Technology Review published a nice insight from Carla Safigan, Virtuozzo Product Manager at SWsoft, about how OS partitioning (here called OS-level server virtualization) solutions can address some Business Continuity needs in a cheap and reliable way.

Read it at source.

If you get interested in Virtuozzo you could read the virtualization.info review of SWsoft Virtuozzo for Windows 3.5.

The new Solaris Express 4/06 (Nevada build 36) introduces among others the Zone migration feature.

The feature is actually able to move a non-global zone from one host machine to another, requesting a detach and re-attach.
It will possibly be included in upcoming Update 2 (Solaris 10 6/06), which is expected in June.

Download Solaris Express 4/06 here.

Note: If you feel confused about differences between Solaris 10, Solaris Express and OpenSolaris be sure to check this post.

This is a question I heard so many times in last months. On the Altiris Juice community developers try to answer it in a clear way:

Altiris SVS is based on file system redirection technology, a concept that is not unique to Altiris. File system redirection is also used by Microsoft in Vista to provide backward compatibility with legacy apps that do not run in standard user mode (see this), which is a very specific and relatively simple use of the technology.

Altiris has a much broader vision for how redirection can be used. Altiris uses file system redirection to abstract any software-any application, data or patch-from the base operating environment, into prioritized layers that are portable between machines. We also abstract out the user-specific elements of all of these layers, together with user-specific OS settings, which we can then make portable.

The layering concept is unique to Altiris and is the basis for several patent applications. This enables SVS to provide faster, non-intrusive provisioning and deprovisioning, state maintenance and conflict elimination, all leveraging the native Windows security controls. Microsoft specifically states that their legacy app compatibility feature can create conflicts and that it bypasses user-based security. The portability concept also goes well beyond Microsoft’s use of redirection.

It is important not to confuse one special-function use of file system redirection with Altiris’ complete software virtualization strategy.

Diskeeper just released a new whitepaper pushing the need of defragmentation to avoid virtual infrastructures performance bottlenecks:

…
The purpose of defragmentation is to consolidate file fragments into a single extent, increasing access speed, and to reduce free space fragments to a small handful of larger chunks.

Virtualization does have its dangers, as it incurs greater stress on physical resources. While under utilization of CPU may be a driving factor to virtualize servers, other hardware resources may become overtaxed. Given that a host system has limited ability (depends on application) to page memory used by the guest systems, the most recognized bottleneck to address is physical memory (RAM). Options to programmatically alleviate memory bottlenecks incur performance issues when the disk is re-introduced. Another major component and perhaps less acknowledged is the disk subsystem. In many cases, depending the purpose and application of the guest/virtual systems, the disk bottleneck will be the most significant barrier to performance.

The remainder of this paper will discuss the increased importance of disk performance…

Donwload the whitepaper at source.