Year: 2007

Book: Tuning IBM System x Servers for Performance

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IBM Redbooks department released a huge (1104 pages) and highly interesting book about performance tuning on System x servers. It includes two chapters dedicated to VMware ESX Server:

This IBM Redbook describes what you can do to improve and maximize the performance of your business server applications running on IBM System x hardware and either Windows, Linux, or ESX Server operating systems. It describes how to improve the performance of the System x hardware, the operating system, and specific server applications.

The book is divided into five parts. Part 1 explains the technology implemented in the major subsystems in System x servers and shows what settings can be selected or adjusted to obtain the best performance. Part 2 describes the performance aspects of the operating systems: Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and VMware ESX Server.

Part 3 introduces the performance monitoring tools that are available to users of System x servers. Part 4 shows you how to analyze your system to find performance bottlenecks and what to do to eliminate them. Part 5 examines specific performance characteristics of specific server applications.

This book is targeted at people who configure Intel and AMD processor-based servers running Windows, Linux or ESX Server and seek to maximize performance. Some knowledge of servers is required. Skills in performance tuning are not assumed.

Table of Contents

  • Chapter 1 – Introduction to this IBM Redbook
  • Chapter 2 – Understanding server types
  • Chapter 3 – Introduction to hardware technology
  • Chapter 4 – Processors and cache subsystem
  • Chapter 5 – Virtualization hardware assists
  • Chapter 6 – PCI bus subsystem
  • Chapter 7 – Chipset architecture
  • Chapter 8 – Memory subsystem
  • Chapter 9 – Disk subsystem
  • Chapter 10 – Network subsystem
  • Chapter 11 – Microsoft Windows Server
  • Chapter 12 – Linux
  • Chapter 13 – VMware ESX Server
  • Chapter 14 – Windows tools
  • Chapter 15 – Linux tools
  • Chapter 16 – ESX Server tools
  • Chapter 17 – Capacity Manager
  • Chapter 18 – Spotting a bottleneck
  • Chapter 19 – Analyzing bottlenecks for servers running Windows
  • Chapter 20 – Analyzing bottlenecks for servers that are running Linux
  • Chapter 21 – Case studies
  • Chapter 22 – File and print servers
  • Chapter 23 – Lotus Domino
  • Chapter 24 – Microsoft Exchange Server
  • Chapter 25 – IBM DB2 Universal Database
  • Chapter 26 – Microsoft SQL Server
  • Chapter 27 – Oracle
  • Chapter 28 – Microsoft Windows Terminal Services and Citrix Presentation Server
  • Chapter 29 – Microsoft Internet Information Services

Definitively a must-read: download it here.

Trigence secures $8 million in Series B funding

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Quoting from the Trigence official announcement:

Trigence, the leader in virtualization at the application level, today announced it has raised $8 million in new financing. The investment brings Trigence’s total venture funding to $17.5 million. The additional funding, which is led by GrowthWorks and includes existing investors BDC Venture Capital and VenGrowth Capital Partners, will be used to meet demand by extending the technology to additional platforms and accelerate sales through marketing and strategic partnership programs.

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With Trigence AE, legacy and newly developed applications are virtualized and encapsulated into independent, moveable objects that can be relocated within Solaris and Linux operating systems to virtually any setting without compromising functionality. By turning applications into self-contained capsules, Trigence AE dramatically improves application manageability in Linux or Solaris environments and eliminates the need for reconfiguration or reinstallation to migrate, update, or move applications.

rPath raises $9.1 million in Series B funding

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Quoting from the rPath official announcement:

The company’s recent closing of a $9.1 million round of venture financing is the second vote of support from the company’s existing backers. Investors in the Series B round are General Catalyst, North Bridge Venture Partners, and Wakefield Group. The company plans to use this new capital to expand its market leading position as the provider of technology for creating and maintaining software appliances.

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rBuilder Online (rBO), rPath’s community for developers, grew to over 250,000 downloads in 2006. With over 5,000 projects and 8,000 users, the community has become the most active catalog for software and virtual appliances in the industry…

Citrix to launch Desktop Server

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Thincomputing.net discovered a new, unannounced product appeared on the official website: the Citrix Desktop Server.

Citrix has silently launched a new product page with a product called Citrix Desktop Server. All though there is very little information on the web page, an educated guess would be that this is the first real product in the whole Citrix VDI Dynamic Desktop Initiative.

The first step Citrix made into this space was of course the Citrix Remote Desktop Broker. This looked like kind of a “hasty” solution just so Citrix could step into the VDI hype. One of the drawbacks of the Remote Desktop broker is that it is a double-hop solution: RDP through ICA.

The next step was an announcement of a project called PortICA, which is a the more mature product, which will it’s the successor of the Remote Desktop Broker. One of the main features is that it brings the ICA protocol to Windows XP (and Vista). This eliminates the double-hop problem that the Remote Desktop Broker imposes.

This PortICA product will probably be one of the core components of Citrix Desktop server. What will undoubtedly also be a part of Citrix Desktop Server is some of Virtual Desktop-provisioning software, so that (pools of) VMs can be dynamicly managed. Think creation, deletion, suspending here. What they also clearly have big plans for is Citrix Edgesight. This will probably also be a part of Citrix Desktop server…

Read the whole article at source.

The name is hilariously confusing: is it a desktop or is it a server…?

VMware certifies QLogic iSCSI HBAs

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Quoting from the QLogic official announcement:

QLogic Corp., a leading supplier of iSCSI host bus adapters (HBAs), today announced that its SANblade(r) 4050 Series iSCSI HBAs are the first in the industry to support VMware Infrastructure 3.

QLogic SANblade QLA4050 iSCSI HBAs offer high performance, low CPU utilization, and server connectivity directly to iSCSI storage or to iSCSI storage through an Ethernet network. These 1Gbps iSCSI-to-PCI-X HBA solutions offer several key features and benefits including:

  • Offloading iSCSI + TCP/IP Processing
    SANblade iSCSI HBAs provide access to a high performance iSCSI SAN without sacrificing server performance. Interrupts, CPU utilization, memory bus utilization and host bus access associated with iSCSI and TCP/IP are significantly reduced by offloading the tasks onto the SANblade iSCSI adapter. With iSCSI offload engines, fewer servers are required to maintain application performance. Server CPU utilization testing with typical applications and current servers demonstrates that QLogic SANblade iSCSI HBAs can save 30 percent or more of the server CPU. This can be a 100 percent improvement over software initiator implementations. Recent testing by Network Computing’s Storage Pipeline magazine shows less than three percent CPU utilization by QLogic iSCSI HBAs for large block tests.
  • Broad Platform Support
    Realizing the cost and ease-of-use benefits of iSCSI HBA standardization requires drivers for multiple operating systems. Drivers for popular operating systems are available for the QLogic iSCSI HBAs including Windows, Solaris, Linux and VMware ESX Server.
  • Boot from External Storage (SAN)
    Managing several operating system “boot images” is a complex and time-consuming task for system administrators. By consolidating operating systems on and booting servers from external storage, changing, adding and removing servers is easier and faster. The SANblade QLA4050 includes “boot-from-SAN” capability, enabling this cost and time saving strategy.

VMware certifies LeftHand Networks iSCSI SANs

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After announncing its support for VMware Infrastructure 3 in August 2006, now LeftHand Networks achieves official certification.

Quoting from the official announcement:

LeftHand Networks announced today that iSCSI SANs powered by SAN/iQ 6.6 and the HP ProLiant DL380 server have been certified with VMware ESX Server 3, a component of VMware Infrastructure 3, and are listed on the Storage / SAN Compatibility Guide for VMware ESX Server 3. This certification extends LeftHand’s commitment to technical industry standards, a key component of the company’s open iSCSI SAN leadership.

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The breadth of SAN/iQ powered platforms include the HP ProLiant DL380 server, IBM System x3650, LeftHand NSM 260 and NSM 160. The first x86 server to be certified with SAN/iQ and VMware Infrastructure 3 is the HP ProLiant DL380 server…

Webcast: Reducing Data Center Costs and Complexity Using Virtual Storage and Virtual Servers

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To enforce their new partnership Virtual Iron and DataCore arranged a new webcast for February 8th:

Virtual servers and virtual storage attack the same fundamental challenge – improving resource utilization and optimizing data center resources so that they can be readily deployed when and where they are needed. These solutions are especially powerful when are used in combination to create Virtual Infrastructure.

Virtual Iron and DataCore are delivering on this promise with enterprise-class virtual infrastructure management capabilities at a fraction of the cost of alternative solutions. This webcast will highlight the combined Virtual Iron and DataCore solution and how it enables users to drive down enterprise data center costs and create a more flexible and agile infrastructure that can respond to the needs of the business. The presenters will also demonstrate comprehensive capabilities for:

  • Hot backup
  • Rapid provisioning
  • High availability with virtual servers and virtual storage
  • Disaster recovery
  • Automated capacity management

Register for the event here.

The virtualization.info Events Calendar has been updated accordingly.

Virtual Iron certifies DataCore SANmelody

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Quoting from the Virtual Iron official announcement:

Virtual Iron Software, a provider of server virtualization and virtual infrastructure management software, today announced that DataCore Software’s SANmelody virtual storage solutions are now certified for use with Virtual Iron.

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SANmelody software converts PC servers into cost-effective disk servers and virtual SANs. Their capacity appears as additional internal drives to disk-starved servers on LANs or SANs. Simple, low-cost networked storage combined with virtual infrastructure enables benefits such as no downtime maintenance, automatic capacity management, and business continuity without spare hardware…