Year: 2007

After announcing an early alpha of new Parallels Server for Windows, Linux and for the first time ever on Mac OS, the russian startup is now disclosing some notable informations about key features of the upcoming product:

• Hypervisor (type-1 VMM) architecture
• Enhanced virtual SMP (multi-core virtual machines)
• Binary and web-based management tools (with capability to manage physical and virtual machines at the same time)
• Open APIs
• Support for SWsoft management console (Virtuozzo and Parallels Server can be managed by the same tool)

Parallels Server is not only interesting because it will be first virtualization solution for Mac OS, but for a number or other reasons. The most important is its hypervisor architecture, which implies this product will compete with VMware ESX Server, Xen-based solutions (XenSource and Virtual Iron) and upcoming Microsoft Windows Server Virtualization (formerly codename Viridian).

It’s also worth to note SWsoft and Parallels are starting a long integration path, aiming to offer both hardware and OS virtualization with a single solution. This move is not only useful against VMware, but also against Microsoft, which in the past expressed a will to offer both technologies as well.

More news as soon as possible.

Initially planned for Q1 2007, and after more than one year beta testing, Service Pack 1 for Virtual Server 2005 R2 finally makes its appearence.

Among others Microsoft included following features:

• Support for hardware-assisted virtualization (both Intel VT and AMD SVM)
• Support for Windows Volume Shadow Service (VSS)
• Capability to browse a virtual hard drive (.vhd) at host level through VHD Mount utility (APIs available as well)

Most important feature, VSS support, which allows live backup of running virtual machines, is unfortunately limited: as virtualization.info exposed in September 2006 Microsoft doesn’t allow native Windows NTBackup to perform such operation. Customers will have to buy a 3rd party backup solution.

It’s remarkable to note that this release is not supporting new Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 beta 3 as host OS for production use. But it’s even bigger to note that Microsoft is not supporting Windows Vista as guest OS for production use.

On the other side Microsoft introduced production support for some Linux and Unix distributions like:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (2, 3 and 4)
• Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (9 and 10)
• Sun Solaris 10

Download it free of charge here.

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

The virtualization startup VMLogix silently released a new version of its LabManager.

In this new release VMLogix, which is showing up a completely new website, introduces two very interesting capabilities:

• IP Zones Capability to deploy several virtual machines with identical network settings (and Windows SID) without conflicts
• Shared Snapshots Capability to share any virtual machine (or group of them) snapshot within your team with just a link

Download a trial here.

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

With a not-too-much surprising (but much wanted) move, Parallels exposes alpha code of its first server product, Parallels Server, at Apple WWDC event.

Lucky attendees of this year’s conference are in fact invited to a hotel in San Francisco to see a preview of upcoming new platform.

Despite server virtualization diffusion on Apple market is expected to be very limited at beginning, virtualization may drive a major widespread of Mac OS in corporations. Parallels is betting on this scenario, focusing its efforts and working to beat VMware on time, now that Microsoft completely retired from this segment.

More news as soon as possible.

Finally Microsoft takes a clear and official position about application of Windows licensing on virtual machines hosted on 3rd party virtualization platforms (including hardware virtualization solutions like VMware ESX Server or VMware Server and OS virtualization solutions like SWsoft Virtuozzo).

In a brand new whitepaper Microsoft covers all these scenarios, including special features like VMware VMotion and client-side licensing terms, detailing:

…

If you have assigned a single license of Windows Server Standard Edition to the server running ESX, then you may run one instance at a time of Windows Server Standard Edition. If you have assigned a single license of Windows Server Enterprise Edition to the server running ESX, then you may run up to four instances at a time of Windows Server. You may not run a fifth instance under the same Enterprise Edition license because that right requires that the fifth instance be running hardware virtualization software and software managing and servicing the OSEs on the server. However, Datacenter Edition permits unlimited running of instances in virtual OSEs.

…

VMotion, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, and Windows Server Clustering all move instances of virtual OSEs between physical servers. However, the licenses remain with the physical server to which they are assigned. When an instance is moved to a new physical server, the new server must have the appropriate licenses.

With a few exceptions, described in the box to the side regarding PUR, software licenses may only be reassigned to new hardware after 90 days. However, the dynamic movement of virtual OSEs between licensed servers is not restricted in any way. As long as the servers are licensed-and are not running more instances simultaneously-you are free to use VMotion and System Center Virtual Machine Manager to move virtualized instances between licensed servers at will…

The most interesting part anyway is a final comparison chart between VMware ESX Server, SWsoft Virtuozzo and Microsoft Virtual Server, where appears VMware ESX Server is less expensive than competitors when using Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition, and has equal costs when you adopt Enterprise or Datacenter editions (which are preferred choice for virtualization deployments):

Microsoft already exposed its licensing strategy more clearly with launch of Virtualization Calculator 2.0, few weeks ago, but customers were still missing an official document to refer to.

Highly recommended reading before starting any virtualization project. Read it at source.

Two VMTN users, Fabio Rapposelli and Dave Parsons, published several informations allowing to actually run a VMware ESX Server 3.x inside a VMware Workstation 6 virtual machine.

Obviously such configuration is not supported by VMware and is not really useful. But allows customers to have a look at ESX Server Console Operating System (COS) without deploying an intere enterprise infrastructure.

After some tests to cut away all unnecessary customizations, all needed steps can be summized below.

First of all you must create a new virtual machine with following virtual hardware requirements:

• Workstation 6 virtual hardware type
• Red Hat Linux guest OS type (guest OS type should be vmkernel but it’s not implemented in VMware public products at today)
• one or more SCSI hard drives (LSILogic type, for ESX Server 3.x compatibility)
• one or more network cards
• no USB ports or sound adapters

After that you have to manually modify your virtual machine configuration file (.vmx) to change your network card type. To do that replace similar entry with following one:

• ethernet0.virtualDev = “e1000”

Finally, if you have an Intel VT powered CPU or an AMD SVM (or AMD-V) powered CPU you have to add to your .vmx file one of the following entries to improve performances:

• monitor_control.vt32 = “TRUE” or
• monitor_control.enable_svm = “TRUE”

Without one of these settings ESX Server virtual machine performances will be almost inacceptable: on a Intel P4 3.06GHz (no VT) host with 1024MB RAM assigned to virtual machine, the ESX Server 3.0.1 boot process takes 15 minutes (100% physical CPU spike for all time). Other host configurations may take hours to boot up same machine.

On any Intel VT powered host instead, ESX Server boots in 2-3 minutes, achieving similar times of installations on physical systems.

A final entry is reported as needed to avoid virtual machines inside ESX Server recognize they are running on a nested virtual infrastructure:

• monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = “TRUE”

This setup is reported to work on new VMware Fusion beta as well. So Mac OS users can now familiarize with ESX Servers as well.

Read the original thread at source to know about further evolutions.

Number of readers of this thread (19,456 since June 11, with 106 replies at time of writing) reveals this is one of the most wanted features by VMware community. Capability to run ESX Server for demo and training purposes must be seriously considered by VMware in future ESX Server releases.

For VMware customers still running ESX Server 2.5.x there is a very good news: the bestseller 450-pages book VMware ESX Server 2.5 Advanced Technical Guide, authored by Ron Oglesby (CTO at RapidApp) and Scott Herold (Director of R&D at vizioncore), is now provided for free.

Authors decided to release it for free now that they are about to release a new one on ESX Server 3.x.

Download it here.

If you still want a hardcover you may want to order it on virtualization.info Bookstore.

While deep diving in Workstation 6 configurations options for improving new technical tip How to run ESX Server 3 on a VMware Workstation 6 virtual machine, I discovered a new undocumented option, exposed by virtualization hacker Ulli Hankeln:

• hypervisor.xen.allow (which can be set as = “TRUE”)

Presence of this setting may imply VMware is working on importing capabilities for Xen-based virtual machines, now that Workstation 6 includes (experimental) support for para-virtualized Linux guest OS.

Check complete list of advanced entries for VMware configurations files (.vmx) at source.

Update: a VMware developer commented this post and provided detailed explaination for the feature.

Normally, booting VMware within a Xen kernel causes workstation to freeze solid – Xen mis-emulates the VMware backdoor instruction (real hardware causes a processor exception; Xen enters an infinite loop on the instruction). WS6 code now checks for the presence of a Xen hypervisor, and refuses to start a virtual machine if one is detected. “hypervisor.xen.allow” disables this check.

The option is present so that Xen developers could (if they desire) disable the check, thus allowing a VMware virtual machine to run in a Xen guest as far as bugs permit. I would hope that eventually Xen becomes robust enough to run a full VMware virtual machine within a guest, and when such a day arrives “hypervisor.xen.allow” can retire. Until then, a helpful error message is better than an obscure hang.

Quoting from the VMLogix official announcement:

VMLogix, a provider of virtual infrastructure management technology to streamline the software development lifecycle, today announced its support for the IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform, including out-of-the-box integration of VMLogix LabManager with IBM Rational Build Forge.

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IBM Rational Build Forge automates the software build and delivery processes while LabManager automates the provisioning and management of physical and virtual machine images…

Quoting from the rPath official announcement:

rPath™, provider of a platform for creating and maintaining virtual appliances, today announced that virtual appliances intended for the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace can be developed using the rPath Appliance Platform to automate some of the certification requirements of the VMware Virtual Appliance Certification Program.

In addition to complying with VMware best practices for developing virtual appliances, virtual appliance developers can now add the VMware Tools package, which is required for certification, directly inside the virtual machine using rBuilder.

After the virtual appliance has been created using rBuilder, a developer can submit it to VMware for certification. In addition, a developer can automatically publish an uncertified virtual appliance from rBuilder to the Community section of the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace.

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rPath is currently running an Application to Appliance Program to convert qualified commercial Linux-based software applications into virtual appliances at no charge…