Year: 2006

OpenVZ, the SWsoft Virtuozzo open source subset, already adopts GPL for its kernel part.

Now also the user-level tools vzctl, vzquota and vzpkg dropped QPL license and adopted GPL.

Read the official announcement.

KernelTrap interviewed Andrey Savochkin, devepment lead of the kernel portion of OpenVZ, the open source subset of SWsoft Virtuozzo, a OS partitioning platform:

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KT: Is there any plan to try and get OpenVZ merged into the mainline Linux kernel?

AS: Yes, we’d like to get it merged into the mainstream Linux and are working in that direction. Virtualization makes the next step in the direction of better utilization of hardware and better management, the step that is comparable with the step between single-user and multi-user systems. Virtualization will become more demanded with the growth of hardware capabilities, such as multi-core systems that are currently in the Intel roadmap. So, I believe that when OpenVZ is merged into the mainstream, Linux will instantly become more attractive and more convenient in many usage scenarios. That’s why I think OpenVZ project is so interesting project, and that’s why I’ve invested so much of my time into it.

KT: How large are the changes required in the Linux kernel to support OpenVZ? Can they be broken into small logical pieces?

AS: The current size of the OpenVZ kernel patch is about 2MB (70,000 lines). This size is not small, but it is less than 10% of the average size of the changes between minor versions in 2.6 kernel branch (e.g., 2.6.12 to 2.6.13). OpenVZ patch split into major parts is presented here. OpenVZ code can also be viewed and downloaded from GIT repository at http://git.openvz.org/. One of the large parts (about 25%) is various stability fixes, which we are submitting to the mainstream. Then comes virtualization itself, general management of resources, CPU scheduler, and so on.

KT: What efforts have been made so far to try and get OpenVZ merged into the kernel?

AS: OpenVZ patch was split into smaller pieces, easier for us to explain and for the community to accept. Then, in the last couple of months, some virtualization pieces have been send to the linux-kernel mailing list and actively discussed there.

The biggest argument was whether we want “partial” virtualization, when VPSs can have, for example, isolated network but common filesystem space. In my personal opinion, in some perfect world such partial virtualization would be ok. But in real life, subsystems of Linux kernel have a lot of dependencies on each other: every subsystem interacts with proc filesystem, for example. Virtualization is cheap, so its easier to to have complete isolation, both from the implementation point of view and then for use and management of VPSs by users.

The process of submitting OpenVZ patches into the mainstream keeps going. Also, we are working with SuSE, RedHat (RHEL and Fedora Core), Xandros, and Mandriva to include OpenVZ in their distributions and make it available and well supported for maximum number of users…

Read the whole interview at source.

Quoting from Enterprise Network & Servers:

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Driven by the compelling value proposition, a number of IT organizations have started pilot implementations of virtualization technology in an attempt to realize higher infrastructure ROI. Virtualization is still an emerging technology and the industry has not yet reached a level of maturity, with deep experience in the system, processes and tools, to tackle the challenges of managing wide-scale virtual infrastructures. As a result, some organizations are hesitant to move from pilot to the production stage because of a lack of technical expertise and process maturity, inadequate integration of virtual infrastructure management with standard operating processes, poor visibility and inconsistent performance monitoring practices. Virtualization represents an organizational and operational paradigm shift where IT administration is required to deal with near real-time changes in the infrastructure driven by application demands and powered by the fluidity of virtualized platform. IT administration, accustomed to managing the more static “physical” infrastructure, can perceive the dynamic nature of virtualization technology as a source of uncertainty.

To date, the challenge of managing virtualized infrastructure has been to cost-effectively meet application service level objectives (SLOs) in an environment where an increasing number of business-critical applications are competing for the shared infrastructure. A service-centric performance management solution can tackle a number of these challenges to help facilitate this transition from pilot to production stage. The key service-centric capabilities include: Performance Management, Automation, Capacity Planning, Predictive Analysis and Change Management. These capabilities can be applied across the entire management lifecycle to realize the full potential of virtualization…

Read the whole article at source.

Altiris created a 1-hour webcast to introduce its new Software Virtualization Solution technology and demo the product.

After the live broadcast of 5th April, the recording is now available here.

Agenda:

• Software Management Issues
• What is Virtualization?
• Software Virtualization Solution
• Overview
• Demo
• A Look Under the Hood
• The Future of Software Virtualization
• Tying it All Together

As virtualization.info readers already know since Saturday.

Quoting from the Vizioncore official announcement:

Vizioncore, Inc., the leader in backup, restoration, and disaster recovery automation for the VMware ESX Server, announced today the release of its free esxBasics starter pack for ESX Server.
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Including free basic versions of both vizioncore’s flagship esxRanger and esxCharter, esxBasics provides a range of dynamic backup and monitoring tools for the ESX Server environment.
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Features of vizioncore’s esxBasics include:

• esxRanger provides full image backup protection (without interfering with ongoing server operations), full restore capabilities and a centralized Windows interface. esxRanger also enables Windows scheduler support in the GUI, allowing users to schedule esxRanger to perform online dynamic backups of guest operating systems on the VMware ESX Server.
• esxCharter provides real-time ESX Server monitoring, enabling ESX administrators to monitor in real-time how much of the CPU the VM occupies, as well as how much memory is being used on an active, swapped, or shared basis. esxCharter also offers the ‘At-a-Glance’ view, providing a real-time snapshot of the current performance and specifications of the user’s VM Server-including important service console information.

Download it here.

Quoting from the Cassatt official announcement:

Cassatt Corporation, an innovator in providing enterprise software and services to enable agile IT infrastructures, today announced general availability of the Cassatt Collage Cross-Virtualization Manager (XVM).
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XVM helps customers rein in the growing problem of “virtual machine sprawl,” using a vendor-neutral architecture to automate control across virtual servers from multiple sources, including VMware, Xen, and Microsoft.
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XVM allows customers to host any combination of virtual machines, including VMware ESX, VMware Server, Xen, and Microsoft Virtual Server. In addition, customers can manage their physical servers from a range of vendors including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Sun Microsystems, and others.
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XVM provides an array of control and automation capabilities including:

• Automated software deployment for both physical and virtual servers – including the ability to run the same software image on either a virtual server or directly on a bare-metal server.
• Automated responses to failures of both physical and virtual servers, enabling high availability for applications.
• Automatic scaling of applications by creating additional virtual servers on physical machines that have available CPU and memory capacity.

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The Cassatt Collage Cross-Virtualization Manager (XVM), with support for VMware ESX and VMware Server is now generally available. Support for Xen will be available in June 2006. Support for Microsoft Virtual Server is planned for the second half of 2006…

InfoWorld reports pricing:

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The XVM software costs $1,250 per physical node. Pricing for the Collage platform starts at $100,000 for a 40-node environment, and the WAM module adds an additional $5,000 per node…

Read the whole article at source.

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The emerging virtualization start-up Vizioncore, offering several products focused on VMware ESX Server simplified management, is expected to launch a free starter pack on Monday.

With this product, actually dubbed esxBasic, Vizioncore hopes to attract the large amount of VMware customers which embraced ESX Server but still have a limited need of advanced management features missing from VMware offering.
Many of them chosen ESX Server for performances but could lack of Linux know-how to work with scripts virtualization community has produced when needs will arise.

esxBasic will be a feature-limited bundle of Vizioncore famous products esxRanger and esxCharter.

After just 3 months the amount of so-called virtual appliances (pre-made virtual machines which anybody can download and run with the free VMware Player and soon with the free VMware Server) is impressive and tracking all of them is a huge effort (this is the reason why virtualization.info doesn’t announce new virtual appliances availability).

Luckily VMware rationalized the list available on the VMTN site and created a special Directory, with advance filtering capabilities.

Quoting from the Double-Take Software (formerly NSI Software) official announcement:

Double-Take Software today showed the continued success of its Double-Take for Virtual Systems product by announcing a complementary solution for joint Double-Take Software and VMware customers.

By using the two products simultaneously, customers achieve real-time data protection for virtual machines at an affordable cost. VMware products allow customers to build a flexible server infrastructure optimized for disaster recovery with the freedom to mix physical and consolidated virtual systems at primary and recovery sites. Double-Take Software solves disaster recovery challenges in this VMware environment by replicating business critical data offsite and providing failover capabilities.
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By purchasing one license of Double-Take for Virtual Systems, customers can deploy up to five instances of Double-Take on the same VMware ESX Server…