Year: 2007

Approaching the launch of Windows Server 2008 (formerly codename Longhorn), Microsoft is refreshing documentation available documentation, including one about most wanted feature: its new hypervisor.

Windows Server Virtualization (codename Viridian) is still set for a postponed release, six month after Windows Server 2008 release (which possibly means August or September 2008), but Microsoft already provided an overview of its virtualization ecosystem where the hypervisor will interact with other tiers like System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Operation Manager.

Viridian architecture and technology infrastructure around it are now represented in a big Feature Components poster that Microsoft just published.

Download it here.

Thanks to Andrew Dugdell for the news.

Manfred Meier creaded a new tool for VMware ESX Server administration called ESX Manager.

Already at its second release this tool is able to:

• Virtual Center independent
• Keeps track of Virtual Machine Host Registration, Migrations and Status
• Manage Virtual Machine Configuration
• Display and work in the Virtual Machine Console
• Kill Virtual Machine Process (if the VM can’t be powered off)
• Rename Virtual Disks of registered Virtual Machines
• Move Virtual Disks and keep the disk attached to the Virtual Machine
• Virtual Machine Registration, Start , Restart , Reset, Power Off, Suspend
• Extend Virtual Disks
• View-Search-Filter Logfiles on the ESX Host.
• Define and save custom SSH commands with Parameter handling
• Publish and share custom SSH commands with other ESX Administrators

Download it free of charge here.

To simplify adoption of its products, XenSource released a virtual to virtual (V2V) migration tool able to import virtual machines from VMware and Microsoft virtualization platforms: the XenSource Virtual Disk Migration Utility.

The tool, based on highly popular Ken Kato’s VDK utility, only supports VMware virtual machines 4.x format, despite other generations may work as well.

Download it free of charge here.

Quoting from SearchServerVirtualization:

Sources close to VMware Inc. and Network Appliance Inc. say that engineers at the two firms are working closely to improve integration between VMware’s ESX virtualization platform and NetApp’s storage software, specifically its snapshot capabilities.

That’s not to say that people don’t use NetApp snapshot technologies in VMware environments today; they do. But in order to get a consistent copy of a VMware virtual machine, they need to use VMware’s own snapshot function, which consumes resources on the host. In contrast, NetApp performs its snapshots on the array, consuming no CPU resources.

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A NetApp exec’s corroborates the notion of collaboration between the two companies. Server virtualization “creates a powerful need for storage virtualization,” said Phil Brotherton, NetApp senior director of enterprise alliances and solutions. “VMware integration is good today, but we are committed to tightening it up even more.”

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In the technology industry, it’s rare to find a company that’s enthusiastic about its primary competitor. But even though EMC owns VMware outright – and will continue to own about 90% of it following VMware’s initial public offering this year — Brotherton is undeterred…

Read the whole article at source.

Macworld published a long and focused review of new Parallels Desktop 3.0, providing following pros:

Many substantial new features; 3-D accelerated graphics support; Snapshots and Undo Disks features allow you to easily revert a system to its previous state; support for Boot Camp partitions as virtual machines; Explorer program facilitates easy transfer of files between operating systems.

cons:

3-D graphics support still has some problems; Shared Application support may be overkill in some situations; tech support still somewhat complicated.

and bottom line:

Parallels Desktop 3.0 is currently the best solution for running Windows, Linux, or any of many other operating systems alongside OS X. With the inclusion of (still limited) 3-D graphics support, Snapshots and Undo Disks, virtual appliances, and many other features, it’s a compelling alternative to rebooting via Boot Camp. Tech support has improved, although you will pay somewhat dearly if you need an answer via phone. Unless you need full 3-D graphics support, or support for some esoteric hardware, Parallels will probably get the job done for you.

Read the whole review at source.

InformationWeek published a brief but very positive review of XenSource XenEnterprise 3.2:

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After running a battery of tests, we were impressed with the outstanding performance of the slim XenEnterprise hypervisor and XenSource’s paravirtualization approach for hosting Windows Servers–at times running a truly impressive 99.9% of bare-metal CPU performance.

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The Achilles’ heel of Xen, and to some degree all virtualized environments, is the shared disk pool hosting multiple virtual machines.

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The virtualization benefit decreases when systems are short on physical memory and/or are running disk-intensive apps from a shared repository. VMware supports multiple repositories, providing far greater flexibility in host server design and off-box storage options. In contrast, all current XenSource offerings are limited to one storage repository per physical server. This can severely impact performance when two or more resource-intensive app servers start competing for the same disk pool.

In our loaded tests, we found that scores on our PassMark Software PerformanceTest hardware benchmark dropped significantly because of reduced disk performance scores, though the hypervisor does a solid job maintaining and allocating CPU and memory resources across the XenVMs…

Read the whole review at source.

InfoWorld published a comparison between the two commercial solutions based on open source hypervisor Xen: XenSource XenEnterprise 3.2 and Virtual Iron Enterprise Edition 3.7.1

XenEnterprise 3.2 achieved a score of 7/10 with following bottom line:

XenEnterprise is on its way to becoming an enterprise-grade virtualization platform, but it isn’t there yet. The foundation looks good, but needs server farming capabilities, as well as support for centralized storage, iSCSI SANs, 64-bit VMs, and VM migration. Much of this is promised for later in 2007, and will be needed for XenSource to compete at the enterprise level.

while Virtual Iron scored 7.7/10 with following bottom line:

Virtual Iron Enterprise offers high-end virtual server management features without the high-end price, but it has a few rough spots and can be fragile in places. When treated carefully, it’s a stable and scalable cross-platform virtualization solution with VM migration, load-balancing, and iSCSI SAN support. The future looks bright for this Xen-based solution.

Read the whole comparison at source.

Quoting from the Scalent official announcement:

Scalent Systems, the leader in server repurposing software, today announced that it has been chosen by AlwaysOn as one of the AO 100 Top Private Companies for 2007, gaining recognition for innovation, market potential, customer adoption, and investor value creation. The fifth-annual elite AO100 list was compiled by the AlwaysOn editorial panel. In order to be eligible for the AO100 list, companies had to be peer-nominated, with AlwaysOn receiving more than 1,000 nominations from venture investors, investment bankers and other industry experts. The winning AlwaysOn 100 Top Private Companies were unveiled at a special evening reception Tuesday, July 17th at KPMG in Mountain View. Scalent is a winner in the Infrastructure category…

VMware is using its still-in-beta VMmark benchmark platform to compare CPUs capability to run virtual machines and scale up.

A short but interesting post appeared on VMmark development team blog reveals results obtained measuring Intel dual-core and quad-core CPUs:

…I was able to measure the performance difference between Intel’s dual-core (Woodcrest) and quad-core (Clovertown) processors using otherwise identical HP Proliant DL380G5 systems.

One system contained two dual-core Intel Xeon 5150 processors (four cores total) running at 2.66 GHz. The other system contained two quad-core Intel Xeon 5355 processors (eight cores total) running at 2.66 GHz.

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At three tiles, the dual core system was fully utilized, which limited the score, while the quad core systems continued to scale well due to the additional available CPU resources. The quad-core system delivered a 28% higher score with three tiles. The quad-core system became saturated at five tiles and ultimately achieved a score 70% higher than the dual-core system while supporting 67% more VMs…

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from the XenSource official announcement:

XenSource, Inc., the leader of the open source Xen virtualization project and a provider of enterprise virtualization solutions, today announced that they have signed over 500 commercial customers for XenEnterprise and XenServer – doubling their customer base during the past quarter. New customers include AmerisourceBergen, Cimex Media UK, Harvard University, Intuit, Investcorp, KBC Clearing, Miami Herald, Moen, NASDAQ, Palm, Rollins, Inc., and Sankyo. Additionally, since introducing XenExpress, their free product, at the end of 2006, they have experienced more than 100,000 downloads, illustrating the intense interest in new virtualization solutions.

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XenSource will introduce the newest release of its XenEnterprise product, version 4.0, in late August 2007…

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