Year: 2007

Waiting for the final release of the much expected Parallels Desktop 2.5 betatesters can now download the release candidate 3 (build 3170) which introduces a couple of interesting things:

• Windows XP to Windows Vista seamless upgrade
• Secure drag&drop

Download it here.

Quoting from the HP official announcement:

The HP Virtual Server Environment (VSE) allows HP-UX 11i to go a step further and has integrated virtualization and mainframe-class availability to deliver mission-critical virtualization for customers with the most demanding workloads. HP has broadened the functionality and simplified the deployment of its mission-critical virtualization capabilities for HP-UX 11i:

• Deployments of virtualized environments are simpler due to the addition of four new VSE Reference Architectures, including ones for Oracle, SAP software and shared services based on HP’s own application server and database implementations. These reference architectures can help cut a customer’s deployment time in half.
• Mainframe-class availability has been enhanced via HP Serviceguard clustering enhancements, including faster user transparent failover for SAP and the introduction of new levels of disaster tolerance via cascading failover across three data centers.

IBM Redbooks department released a new 96-pages paper on System p5 virtualization capabilities:

The “Advanced POWER Virtualization on IBM System p Virtual I/O Server Deployment Examples,” REDP-4224, publication provides a number of high-level system architecture designs using the Advanced POWER Virtualization feature available on IBM System p5 servers. These high-level architecture designs are referred to as scenarios and they show different configurations of the Virtual I/O Server and client partitions to meet the needs of various solutions.

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This publication is targeted at architects who are interested in leveraging IBM System p virtualization using the Virtual I/O Server to improve your IT solutions. System architects can use the scenarios as a basis for developing their unique virtualization deployments. Business Partners can review these scenarios to help them understand the robustness of this virtualization technology and how to integrate it with their solutions. Clients can use the scenarios and examples to help them plan improvements to their IT operations.

Read the whole paper at source.

Citrix finally introduces the new version of its Presentation Server putting a lot of emphasis on new application virtualization and streaming capabilities (known so far with the Tarpoon codename).

Among other features this new release introduces:

• On-Demand Application Streaming
  Presentation Server has always provided the best way to virtualize the delivery of client-server based Windows applications, enabling them to be centrally installed and managed while providing a great access experience for end users. With its innovative new application streaming technology, Presentation Server 4.5 now extends these same benefits to desktop applications like Microsoft Office 2007, allowing them to be streamed over the network to users as an on-demand service, much like downloaded music or videos. This process is entirely transparent to end users who continue to access desktop applications from their Windows Start menu, just as they have in the past. Because streamed applications operate in a protected isolation environment on each user’s desktop, IT managers can now offer a much wider range of desktop applications to users without worrying about version conflicts and migration headaches. When users are disconnected from the network, streamed applications run normally, just as if they had been installed via traditional means. When connected, any new updates, patches or rollbacks are automatically, and transparently, streamed to each user, ensuring they are always working with the latest version
• Centralized Application Provisioning
  The new centralized application provisioning capabilities give customers with large Presentation Server farms one central location to stage the latest versions of all Windows, desktop and client-server applications, enabling IT to provision new applications and servers more quickly than ever before. As a result, the delivery and maintenance of Windows applications across mid-to-large enterprises is greatly simplified, allowing many application updates, rollouts or rollbacks to be completed during normal business hours without the need for weekend or late night implementations
• Advanced Graphics Acceleration
  With the new SpeedScreen progressive display technology in Presentation Server 4.5, the performance of graphics displays in Windows-based applications over a network is improved by up to 20 times, making it possible for the first time ever to virtualize the delivery of even the most graphics-intensive applications with no compromise in end user experience. As a result, IT can now take advantage of all the benefits of Presentation Server to deliver applications such as healthcare PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication Systems) and GIS (Geographic Information System) mapping, while providing the speed, data security, and anywhere-access flexibility that users need.

Citrix offers Presentation Server 4.5 in three edition: Advanced, Enterprise and Platinum., all available since March 2007 at a suggested starting price of $350 per concurrent user.

Brian Madden published an insightful post on the new product which is worth to read.

Considering terminal services capabilities of upcoming Windows Server codename Longhor, and Microsoft acquisition of Softricity, this release from Citrix (which will be further enforced by technology acquired from Ardence) set the company directly against the long time partner.

At the same time Citrix is facing another notable competitor, VMware, which is challenging on the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) segment.

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

Thinstall remains one of the few independent application virtualization startups, after acquisitions of Softricity by Microsoft, Ardence by Citrix and Altiris by Symantec.

Since none of these moves actually produced new leading products, Thinstall has margin to conquer market shares, and launches its new generation Application Virtualization Suite.

This 3.0 version introduces among others following features:

• Instant zero-footprint deployment
• User-mode only, no device drivers
• Streaming capability without server or client
• Support for offline execution
• Support for Microsoft Windows Vista

Download an evaluation version here.

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

Thinstall has been included in the virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Radar.

Quoting from the Microsoft official announcement:

Microsoft Corp. and Novell today unveiled more details about their joint technical road map and the benefits customers can expect from the collaboration. Microsoft and Novell are engaged in development on four areas of technology that address significant problems faced by enterprise customers today: virtualization, Web services for managing physical and virtual servers, directory and identity interoperability, and document format compatibility.

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Virtualization

Microsoft and Novell are developing a compelling virtualization offering for Novell’s SUSE Linux* Enterprise Server and Windows Server® to consolidate server workloads in heterogeneous data centers. The virtualization collaboration agreement between Novell and Microsoft is designed to allow customers to do the following:

• Host SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 from Novell as a virtualized guest on an upcoming service pack of Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2, to be available in the second quarter.
• Host SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 as an enlightened guest on the next version of Microsoft Windows Server, code-named Longhorn, using the Windows Server virtualization technology, which is scheduled to be available within 180 days of the release of Windows Server Longhorn.
• Host Windows Server Longhorn as a paravirtualized guest on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, using the Xen virtualization technology embedded in the Linux operating system. Windows Server Longhorn is scheduled to be released in the second half of 2007.

Quoting from the Novell official announcement:

Novell and Intel Corporation today announced the availability of paravirtualized network and block device drivers that will allow Microsoft Windows Server 2000/2003/XP to run unmodified in Xen virtual environments on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 from Novell, operating on Intel-based server platforms featuring Intel Virtualization Technology.

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Novell is sponsoring a virtualization pilot program for customers, providing enterprise-level support for running fully virtualized Windows 2000/2003/XP workloads on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. The paravirtualized device drivers are now available to members of the pilot program. General availability is scheduled for later this year…

Quoting from the InnoTek official announcement:

Today InnoTek released version 1.3.4, the first significant update with over 800 improvements based on feedback from the user community.

Now Ubuntu has decided to integrate the open-source VirtualBox kernel module into the official Ubuntu Linux kernel sources starting with the upcoming Ubuntu 7.04 (“Feisty Fawn”) to further improve integration with VirtualBox, which will be hosted in Ubuntu’s software repository…

Download VirtualBox 1.3.4 here.

Despite its current beta status, the VMware benchmarking approach called VMmark is already being adopted by Dell, which published a very interesting page with performances results achieved with new PowerEdge:

Dell has recently measured various configurations of two- and four-socket PowerEdge servers running VMware ESX Server 3 using a beta version of the VMmark benchmark. The graph below shows a 4-socket PowerEdge 6950 with dual-core AMD Opteron processors has 57% higher virtualization performance than a 2-socket PowerEdge 2950 with dual-core Intel Xeon® series 5100 processors.2 The 2-socket PowerEdge 2900 with new quad-core Intel Xeon 5300 series processors shows 51% better performance.

Equally impressive, all three 8-core servers were able to support the same number of heavily-loaded virtual machines.

Read the whole paper at source.

At the same time the VMware benchmarking team published on the corporate blog some results obtained with new HP DL380 G5 (same machines virtualization.info is offering on its new online facility Rent-A-Lab):

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The mail server scales perfectly from 1 to 2 tiles and then improves by another 25%, equal to the 25% increase in CPU utilization, when a third tile is added to fully saturate the CPU on the system. The java server scales perfectly up to 3 tiles. In this case, each java server VM is allocated sufficient CPU shares to achieve full performance and excellent scaling even with 3 tiles due to the think-time constraints built into VMmark. Both the database server and the web server exhibit roughly linear scaling from 1 to 2 tiles…

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from the Real-Time Systems (RTS) official announcement:

Real-Time Systems GmbH (RTS), a leader in real- time software development, today announced their Real-Time Hypervisor software. The software enables real-time operating systems (RTOS), such a Wind River VxWorks, to run simultaneously with a general purpose operating system (GPOS), for example Linux, on a single hardware platform while ensuring real-time behaviour of the RTOS. This breakthrough technology utilizes the advantages of modern multicore processors where each core may be assigned a separate operating system. RTS expects this product to find wide use in Industrial Automation, Medical, Telecom as well as in Military markets.

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The RTS Real-Time Hypervisor is available as beta-version now. Final customer release will be in summer 2007.