Year: 2007

TheStreet reports VMware just raised starting price of its stock right before next week IPO. Previous price was expected between $23 and $25. It’s now set between $27 and $29 .

With maximum secrecy VMware is preparing next minor version of its flagship platform: VMware Infrastructure 3.1.

Despite numbering this release will bring on the table remarkable features to further increase the gap between virtualization leader and its competitors.

virtualization.info has discovered the whole feature set:

• AMD Rapid Virtualization Indexing (formerly Nested Page Tables or NPT) support
  ESX Server 3.1 will be first virtualization product on the market to introduce support for a nested page tables (NPT) technology, which is recognized as second generation CPUs virtualization extensions.
  VMware will start supporting new AMD Rapid Virtualization Indexing, included in new quad-core codenamed Barcellona.
• Solid State Drive (SSD) boot support
  As initially discovered last month, VMware will make available a special version of ESX Server (mentioned with terms like ESX Lite and Embedded ESX) for OEM vendors, to be installed into bootable Solid State storage devices (flash drives, etc.). This option will allow creation of ESX Server hardware appliances for easy jumpstart, granting smaller form-factors and improved reliability.
  Dell, IBM and possibly other vendors will offer this option at announcement time in Q3 2007.
• Storage VMotion (formerly DMotion)
  Unofficially introduced with ESX Server 3.0.1, in its first version DMotion is a special VMotion operation only capable of moving running virtual machines from an ESX Server 2.5.x host to a new ESX Server 3.x., without shared SAN LUN mandatory requirement.
  In ESX Server 3.1 this capability will be extended, allowing hot migration of running virtual machines between ESX 3.1 hosts through the Ethernet cable.
• Patch management system for host and virtual machines (Update Manager 1.0)
  ESX Server 3.1 will finally introduce an automated patch management system called Update Manager. This solution will be able to update both host itself and virtual machines (both Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux).
  Update Manager will look for available updates from Shavlik Technologies website (a possible acquisition after IPO), and will allow VI administrators to decide which patches to deliver to virtual machines.
  Before applying them, Update Manager will take a snapshot and will even rollback automatically if something goes wrong.

  (this product was originally codenamed VM Integrity and its developement started more than one year ago, when virtualization.info discovered it in June 2006)

• VMware Consolidate Backup (VCB) and VMware Converter 4.0 integration
  VirtualCenter 2.1 will now allow restoring VCB images with an integrated version of VMware Converter, which reaches 4.0 release number.
• Server consolidation advisor
  VirtualCenter 2.1 will expose a server consolidation assistant able to analyze which physical machines should be converted in virtual ones, and where to move existing VMs among available hosts.
  (note that with this feature VMware is further extending competition with PlateSpin, covering both features with PowerRecon and PowerConvert)
• Guest OS disaster recovery capability
  VirtualCenter 2.1 will be able to recognize a failure inside a virtual machine and restart it through VMware HA module.
• Support for VMware Server 2.0
  VirtualCenter 2.1 will be finally able to seamless manage both ESX Server and VMware Server 2.0 hosts.
• Lockdown Mode
  ESX Server 3.1 will expose a new security feature to completely disable local administrative account after a VirtualCenter 2.1 takes remote control.
• Power saving capability (Distributed Power Management)
  VirtualCenter 2.1 will introduce a new resources utilization analysis feature, able to verify when a physical host can be powered off, VMotion-ing its virtual machines on other hosts without impacting performances.
• Support for Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP)
  VirtualCenter 2.1 will be able to recognize and use CDP to discover physical and virtual network topologies.
  It stays unconfirmed if ESX Server 3.1 will already expose new virtual network architecture, allowing 3rd party virtual switches, as it will be announced by Cisco CEO at VMworld 2007.
• Support for InfiniBand network cards
• Support for 10Gbit Ethernet network cards
• Support for TCP/IP Offload Engine (TOE) network cards
• Support for network load balancing algorithms
• Support for 200 hosts and 2000 virtual machines
• Support for 128GB RAM per host and for 64GB RAM per virtual machine
• Support for SATA storage devices
• Support for N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV)
• Support for VCB over iSCSI SANs
• Support for IPv6 in virtual networking
• Support for Para-virtualization guest OSes

Beta program is currently private and available only for selected VMware customers. Enrollment form is available here.

With this release VMware will start addressing many problems early virtualization adopters are facing today. Mainly in Capacity Planning and Scalability areas.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Challenges report has been updated accordingly.

Stay tuned for further updates on this post.

Joanna Rutkowska received severe critics to its Blue Pill rootkit prototype in more than one year from security community and top representatives of virtualization community (see virtualization.info interview with Xen hacker Anthony Liguori and VMware/XenSource/Stanford/Carnegie Mellon whitepaper VMM Detection Myths and Realities).

Despite that security reseacher is still firmly resolute to demonstrate VMM undetectability is achievable.

To prove so Rutkowska started a new prototype from scratch with a new architecture and new features. Project is still in very early development phase and has some serious limitations:

• No support for VT-x (HVM implements only SVM specific functions)
• RDTSC cheating uses a very simple (too simple) cycle emulation
• Blue Chicken TimeBomb setting algorithm seems to contain a mysterious race condition that causes a BSoD from time to time after the timeboms is set
• Virtual PC 2007 (with enabled h/w virtualization) currently crashes when run inside a blue pilled machine
• BP knock feature might casue a crash in a nested scenerio due to CPUID interception.
• No support for “exotic” CPU modes
• No support for intercepting “exotic” high-precision local timers

Download the rootkit prototype and documentation here.

Quoting from the IBM official announcement:

In a showcase technology forum here today, IBM highlighted a breakthrough virtualization technique behind IBM’s POWER6 microprocessor with a demonstration of Live Partition Mobility, a feature that will enable the movement of computer workloads from one IBM UNIX system to another while both systems are running.

…

Live Partition Mobility, currently in beta testing with general availability planned later this year, is a continuous availability feature that will enable POWER6-based servers, such as the System p 570, to move live logical partitions — including the entire operating system and all its running applications — from one server to another while the systems are running.

…

Because Live Partition Mobility is implemented in the POWER6 chip, hardware and its associated firmware, the feature is operating system independent, allowing the movement of AIX or Linux operating systems and associated running workloads. For instance, using Live Partition Mobility customers will be able to dynamically consolidate UNIX or Linux workloads — without interruption — onto fewer servers during off-peak times, allowing them to turn off computers and save energy.

…

Live Partition Mobility works by replicating memory pages from one partition to another in a way that is transparent to the operating system and applications running in the partition. It can thus be used to migrate workloads running on AIX or Linux operating systems on any POWER6 partition and includes support for AIX 5.2, AIX 5.3, AIX 6 and for both Red Hat and Novell SUSE Linux.

The virtualization process begins with a warm-up period during which the bulk of the memory is replicated between the source server and destination partitions. A guest operating system can then be migrated from one host to another in less than two seconds without losing transactions, even when running applications with high utilization of CPU and I/O resources, such as a large database several hundreds of gigabytes in size processing thousands of transactions per minute…

Quoting from the HP official announcement:

…

HP’s addition of Xen and guest operating system support for Debian to the HP Partner Virtualization Program enables independent software vendors to build and verify applications in a secure, virtualized environment. Through the program, partners have access to HP’s entire server portfolio using HP Integrity, ProLiant and BladeSystem platforms running a broad range of operating systems and virtual machines…

On its corporate blog the Microsoft Windows Virtualization Product Group informally releases some details about Virtual Server 2005 R2 (with and without SP1) configuration limits:

• Virtual Server R2 on 32bit Windows hosts – 64 concurrent virtual machines
• Virtual Server R2 on 64bit Windows hosts – 64 concurrent virtual machines
• Virtual Server R2 SP1 on 32bit Windows hosts – 64 concurrent virtual machines
• Virtual Server R2 SP1 on 64bit Windows hosts – 512 concurrent virtual machines

This is critical information to be considered before starting any virtualization project. VMware discloses limits of its virtualization solutions as well in a much more detailed document, updated at new releases time.

After VMware Fusion 1.0 release this month, Parallels monopoly on Apple market ends. Company has now to demonstrate it can sustain competition with virtualization leader and maintain its user base.

To banish any doubt, Parallels releases a beta for its acclaimed Desktop 3.0, introducing futher improvements in usability, with Mac OS Expose support, and in interoperability, with iPhone support for Windows XP and Vista guest OSes.

Enroll for the beta program here.

Parallels is also expected to start public beta of its first server product for Mac OS X Server, announced at WWDC 2007.

Windows IT Pro just published its August 2007 Editor’s Best. This year among other categories appears virtualization, where Virtual Iron wins as best product:

…

To get a feel for Virtual Iron in the real world, I spoke with Paul Joncas, CEO of Meganet Communications, an ISP/managed services company with 23 employees. Meganet’s environment, characterized by many standalone servers, faced mounting space, heat, and power-usage problems. Paul tried various methods to increase efficiency and eventually faced the prospect of virtualization. He told me, “We spoke with three companies, including VMware and Virtual Iron, and we zeroed in on Virtual Iron immediately, for several reasons. First, Virtual Iron offered a lot of the same features as VMware, which was great because we felt that we weren’t a big enough fish for VMware. Second, Virtual Iron’s pricing was certainly attractive-about $600 or $700, compared with $4000 for VMware-although price wasn’t really the determining factor for us. What it really came down to was the eagerness and availability of Virtual Iron’s support for even the most minute, seemingly trivial questions. We were about to move into a totally different world, from stand-alone servers to a virtualized environment, so we obviously didn’t take this very lightly. Virtual Iron gave us all the attention we needed.”…

Along with Virtual Iron, Windows IT Pro named two finalists: Vizioncore esxReplicator and VMware ESX Server.

Read the whole article at source.

Seeking Alpha just published a comprehensive summary of VMware market positioning and financial evaluation.

It’s a good reading for any investor looking for August 13 or 14 stock launch, and should be read along with official VMware IPO webcast and virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Predictions.

Finally VMware enters in the Apple market with its first virtualization solution for Mac desktops: Fusion 1.0.

With this product aims at taking over Parallels Desktop, which conquered Mac OS users with impressive usability. To do so VMware is exposing since first version (build 51348) a remarkable feature set which includes:

• Support for 32 and 64bit guest OS
• Support for Virtual SMP
• Support for USB 2.0
• Support for host-guest drag&drop / shared folders
• Support for seamless displaying (Unity)

Fusion supports all guest OSes that Workstation 6 alread supports. The unified Guest Operating System Installation Guide will be updated soon to include Fusion in its summary charts.

Download a trial here.

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