Year: 2007

Following the announcement of Hyper-V (formerly codename Viridian / Windows Server Virtualization), Microsoft also discloses new name for its application virtualization solution acquired by Softricity one year and a half ago.

Microsoft dropped SoftGrid in favor of Application Virtualization (a choice that will confuse customers indeed) but didn’t change the actual delivery method: the upcoming version 4.5, which is expected for H2 2008, will be released only for Software Assurance customers through the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP).

Brian Madden published a detailed list of new features, which includes new architecture, new capture capabilities for the Sequencer, and a new security model.

The related beta program starts today on Microsoft Connect.

With an unexpected announce Microsoft opens TechEd IT Forum 2007 in Barcellona revealing that final name for codename Virdian will be Hyper-V.

Tentative name used so far, Windows Server Virtualization (WSV) is now definitively dropped.

With the new name Microsoft also reveals that Hyper-V will be released as a stand-alone product as well as a feature for every Windows Server 2008 64bit edition.

While these versions will load a full Windows OS into the parent partition (check the Hyper-V architecture here), the Hyper-V stand-alone edition will load a thin, dedicated version of Windows into its parent partition. Microsoft is not providing technical details about it but it’s likely to be a Server Core edition without capabilities to run any server role but the virtualization one.

The Hyper-V stand-alone edition will be available in bundle with OEM servers from Dell, HP, IBM and others at the price of $28.

After several different and confusing messages, now Microsoft finally states that first beta of Hyper-V will be released at the of end of January 2008.

EarthWeb interviewed former XenSource CTO, Simon Crosby, about future of new Citrix XenServer and competition with VMware. In one answer Crosby revealed a major news:

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Q: The XenSource applications are based on open source. In terms of the virtualization market, what are the pluses or minuses of an open source approach?

Open source is an extremely valuable tool for innovation. One of the key things about the Xen code base is that it can be delivered to market by multiple vendors, and will be.

One of the biggest challenges that the hardware vendors have had is that vendors like Microsoft take five years to get new features to market for them. But of course we have support on Day One. So the day that the first Intel VT CPU ships, we have the support. The day the hardware virtualization [launches] we have the support. So we’ve become the industry’s first and best support for an enhanced hardware experience.

And at the same time, we’ve been very anxious to make sure that Xen as an engine was open sourced, but that multiple different vendors could have economic business models built around that. So we commoditize the “engine” – it’s the code base that everyone agrees should be commoditized – and then it has much broader applicability.

So, for example, Xen runs on [certain] PDAs, and Samsung is doing work with those as a product prototype. But it also runs on supercomputers from SGI. That way, we don’t have just one “car” – thereìs everything from Porches to Minis. So you don’t limit its applicability…

Read the whole interview at the source.

With upcoming release of Windows Server 2008 Microsoft will introduce a new technology called Volume Activation 2.0, to simplify genuine check of large scale deployments of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating systems:

Volume activation enables the customer to activate systems within the customer’s own environment using Key Management Service, or KMS, (a lightweight service that can run on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008) or activate systems one-time using Multiple Activation Key, or MAK, with Microsoft’s hosted activation services. Use of the KMS eliminates the need for individual machines to connect to Microsoft. KMS enables an unlimited number of activations of both physical and virtual systems as long as a minimum threshold of physical systems is established and maintained within the customer environment. Activation can be performed either online or over the phone, using SMS text-messaging (in Europe), or leveraging proxy tools and services provided by Microsoft.

Volume Activation 2.0 will support virtualization out-of-the-box:

• Q. Do virtual servers or virtual machines (VM) add to the KMS count?
  A. No. Only physical computers are added to the KMS count.
• Q. Can I KMS-activate virtual machines and guest operating systems?
  A. Yes, but keep in mind that virtual machines are not added to the KMS count.
• Q. Can I MAK-activate virtual machines and guest operating systems?
  A. Yes. If MAK activation is used, it is subject to the same hardware tolerance restrictions as on physical machines. This means that if the host hardware changes, the virtual machine may require reactivation. MAK activation of virtual machines is also applied against the MAK activation limit, thus decreasing the activations remaining on the MAK.
• Q. What is the guidance for deploying Windows volume editions in virtual machines?
  A. When the virtual machine is created, it is recommended to run sysprep /generalize to reset activation and other system-specific information as the last step before storing or capturing the VM image. Optionally, if you do not want to generalize all computer settings, you can run slmgr /rearm to reset the product activation timers only. This can be done a maximum of 3 times.
  It is important to run either sysprep /generalize or slmgr /rearm the system before storing an image. This prevents the activation timer from running down while the product is in storage.

Read a whitepaper introducing Volume Activation 2.0 here.

One month afte the beta release, Microsoft is ready to publish its first Solution Accelerator whitepaper for virtualization.

The first document, called Infrastructure Planning and Design for Application and Server Virtualization, includes guides to select of the best virtualization technology, about SoftGrid, Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 and upcoming codename Viridian.

The documents provide guidance about:

• Definition of the technical decision flow through the planning process
• Listing of decisions to be made and the commonly available options and considerations
• Relating the decisions and options to the business in terms of cost, complexity, and other characteristics
• Framing decisions in terms of additional questions to the business to ensure a comprehensive alignment with the appropriate business landscape

Download it here.

After more less than 4 months since opening of the beta program, Red Hat is ready to launch its new Enterprise Linux 5.1.

This release introduces several improvements in virtualization, including:

• Adoption of Xen 3.1
• Support for Itanium 2 architectures (both hardware-assisted and para virtualization)
• Support for live migration of hardware-assisted virtualization guest OSes

Release Notes don’t mention which version of Virtual Machine Manager (aka virt-manager) RHEL 5.1 is including. The beta version used to sport version 0.2.0, while current version is 0.5.1.

With this release Red Hat also introduces support for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), allowing online bookstore customers to use RHEL 5.1 guest OSes on demand. It will be a major test to verify if the Red Hat implementation of Xen is ready for prime time.

Quoting from the Electric Cloud official announcement:

Electric Cloud, the leading provider of Software Production Management (SPM) solutions, today announced an integration with VMware Lab Manager. VMware is the leader in virtualization software. Electric Cloud’s ElectricCommander will be integrated with VMware Lab Manager to deliver dynamically provisioned virtual machines for the software build-test-deploy process.

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Electric Cloud will deliver the VMware Lab Manager integration as part of an ElectricCommander release available at the end of this year…

Quoting from the Centrify official announcement:

Centrify Corporation, a leading provider of Microsoft Active Directory-based auditing, access control and identity management solutions for non-Microsoft platforms, today announced it has joined the Citrix XenServer Technology Provider Program and has added support for the Citrix XenServer platform version 4 in its flagship solution, Centrify DirectControl.

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Using DirectControl, XenServer administrators can now seamlessly leverage Microsoft Active Directory to centrally control access to their XenServer deployment and use DirectControl’s cross-platform extensions to Microsoft Group Policy to globally manage key security and configuration settings on those servers.

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Centrify DirectControl 4 is available now and supports Citrix XenServer 4.0.1 Express, Standard and Enterprise editions. Pricing for DirectControl for XenServer begins at $350 per XenServer, with similar pricing for Linux virtual guests…

During the Windows Server 2008 Technical Workshop held at Microsoft campus in Redmond, Jeff Woolsey, Lead Program Manager Windows Virtualization, provided an updated roadmap for virtualization, revealing some unexpected informations: codename Viridian beta 1 is set back to Q4 2007, and the next version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) will appear just 45 days after it, confirming the well-known Q1 2008 launch:

Supposed delays in Windows Server 2008 RTM let think that Viridian beta 1 couldn’t be out earlier than February 2008, but it now seems Microsoft is on schedule.

Note that the much awaited capability to manage VMware ESX Server hosts along with codename Viridian and Virtual Server 2005 will be available only with SCVMM 2.0 RTM.

Thanks to Andrew Dugdell for the shoot.

Brian Madden published a very long and interesting technical essay about which is the best protocol to use in new Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments.

He exposes limits of Microsoft RDP (and its enhancements like the Citrix ICA) analyzing all remoting techniques, and then listing all proprietary alternatives which are appearing on the market (including the new SPICE protocol launched by Qumranet, the virtualization startup behind KVM).

But most of all Brian exposes the information that VMware may be working on dropping RDP completely, looking for a newer, standardized and more efficient replacement:

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There’s a new standard that’s working it’s way through the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) called “Net2Display”. The basic idea is that Net2Display will be a remote display protocol (like RDP, ICA, X, VNC, etc.) that’s purpose-built for remoting entire desktops to remote clients (with full USB support even!). This standard is being developed now (and should be ready very soon), and will be available to for basically any company to use when they build their VDI software/server/client/whatever.

There’s not too much available on Net2Display right now. (There’s a four-page overview that’s very good. Direct link to PDF.) This paper is very recent and even talks about RDP 6. What’s interesting is that the people on the Net2Display committee work for companies we all know in this space: IBM, Teradici, DeskTone, Avocent (the IP-KVM people who are probably nervous about all this remoting), and…VMware!…

Read the whole post at the source.