virtualization.info Editors

After first announcement made at VMworld 2006 in last November, VMware customers had few chances to really understand how the new Record/Replay feature is really going to work in upcoming Workstation 6.0.

Now Steve Herrod, Vice President of of Technology Development, finally writes a long article on its corporate blog describing what can be done with it:

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When you enable the Record/Replay feature, VMware Workstation immediately takes a snapshot of the full VM state, continues guest software execution, and begins tracking its execution behavior. We’re not talking about a movie of what’s on the screen, but the full system behavior including all CPU and device activity. It notes the exact point in time when every device interrupt or other asynchronous event occurs and records this information to a compressed log file until you tell it to stop. It actually has to save a few other things such as the contents of all incoming networking packets, too.

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When you choose to replay the recording, it restarts the VM from the snapshot and faithfully re-creates the recorded execution by feeding the logged events and data back to the VM at the exact points in time when they occurred during the original execution. The result is that the exact same execution path is followed during replay. And since the log is saved to disk, you can share the exact execution scenario with others and replay it over and over and over again.

This behaviour makes Record/Replay feature incredibly useful for software debugging, but so far was unclear if it’s suitable also for other purposes. Steve finally clarifies:

We also allow you to “go live” at any time, aborting the rest of the replay and allowing new interactions and new behaviors to proceed. One analogy is autopilot for an airplane. You can disengage it at any point in the trip, go to manual control, and head off in a new direction from that point.

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We’ve also added “in-guest recording control”. This lets guest software start and stop VM Record/Replay itself…

Capabilities to go live at any point during replay and to invoke recording from inside the guest OS, suddently make Record/Replay the most wanted feature in security industry as well.

While it has limited application in Workstation, imagine this feature available in Server and ESX Server, used for production virtual datacenters: a new class of intrusion detection systems (IDS), sitting at host or guest level and recognizing incoming malicious or anomalous traffic, may activate virtual machines recording. After attack, during forensic analysis of compromised systems, security admins may replay the whole attack and go live immediately after break in, to check which kind of exploiting technique has been used, which kind of files have been injected, etc.

Despite Record/Replay is still an experimental feature, still planned for Workstation 6.0 only, one day it could really change the way we do forensic analysis.

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from Information Week:

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Sun Microsystems on Thursday revealed updated virtualization technology it says uses a layer of abstract data to allow for file system virtualization and run-time content that can be used to update an operating system or application with or without existing virtual machine monitors such as VMware or Xen.

Named “Live *”, or Live-Star, the framework is a hardware agnostic platform that includes reusable module instructions for identical read-only images. The two-year-old project stemmed from Sun’s virtualization endeavors.

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Before it makes its way into any of Sun’s commercial projects, Manczak said Live-Star still needs to solve some problems including a decision on which language Sun will use at the abstract executable metadata layer, how to deal with conflicting images, and what should be included in temporary snapshots….

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from the Virtual Iron official announcement:

Virtual Iron Software, a provider of enterprise-class server virtualization and virtual infrastructure management software, today announced that it has joined the Intel Enabled Server Acceleration Alliance (ESAA). As a member of ESAA, Virtual Iron will certify its virtualization and management solution on Intel-based server platforms.

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In conjunction with its participation in ESAA, Virtual Iron has also signed an OEM agreement with Arrow Electronics, Inc., a global provider of products, services and solutions to industrial and commercial users of electronic components and computer products. As part of the agreement, Arrow North American Components, a business unit of Arrow Electronics, will offer an integrated, Intel-based “appliance” with Virtual Iron’s software pre-installed on its white box servers. These appliances will be based on Virtual Iron’s ESAA solution recipes.

Citrix released a free tool to remotely manage virtual machines hosted on a VMware ESX Server through a mobile device (Pocket PC, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Blackberry, etc.) with ICA Client installed on board.

Tool has been developed with Microsoft .NET Framework and can be published on Citrix Presentation Server.

Download it here (requires free registration).

Quoting from the SYSGO official announcement:

SYSGO, the global supplier of highly reliable device software, and AMD have formed a cooperative venture to exploit AMD multi-core technology in conjunction with SYSGO’s PikeOS paravirtualization real-time operating system. AMD and SYSGO aim to provide a unique combination of multi-core technology, hardware virtualization, and software virtualization for the embedded industry. The first result of this partnership demonstrates the cooperative execution of Windows Embedded XP and a real-time application in clearly separated partitions.

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The first step of the cooperation roadmap is general support of AMD multi-core CPU’s within PikeOS. This will be followed immediately by support for AMD-V technology. As soon as the new I/O MMU is available, PikeOS will utilize it. This will be the last step to a complete virtualization environment. SYSGO will continue to support AMD’s single-core line…

Quoting from the STORServer official announcement:

STORServer, manufacturer of the all-in-one suite of Business Continuity Appliances, announced today its new STORServer VCB Appliance, the first backup appliance on the market to protect vulnerable VMware environments.

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Using Consolidated Backup, a backup schedule is created on the STORServer for each virtual machine to be backed up. Each schedule creates a virtual machine snapshot, mounts the snapshot to the STORServer in the SAN and then uses the STORServer backup client to either back up the full virtual machine or to perform file level incremental backups, thus allowing the virtual machine to continue to operate while the backups are taking place. When the backup is complete the schedule dismounts and releases the snapshot of the virtual machine.

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Pricing for the STORServer VCB Appliance will start at $20,000…

Quoting from the Propalms official announcement:

Propalms USA, Inc. is pleased to announce the Company has joined the Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) Program with VMware, Inc. This signing is a worldwide program for independent software vendors (ISVs), developers, system integrators (SIs), and consultants. This partnership will provide Propalms with a multitude of benefits and services to assist growing the business with VMware.

Propalm is deelply involved in remote desktops market, so I would probably expect a VDI desktop broker from them in the near future. Unless VMware acquisition of Propero will create a negative effecton this market segment.

Quoting from the NetApp official announcement:

StoreVault, a NetApp division, today announced that its StoreVault S500 has been certified to work with VMware Infrastructure 3.

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Pricing is available directly from StoreVault VARs.

StoreVault S500 acts as NAS or SAN device, supporting NFS, CIFS, FC (through QLogic HBAs) and iSCSI.

Propero is a UK company (with a US subsidiary) active in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) space since early launch of VMware VDI Alliance in April 2006.

Its product, workSpace, is a VDI desktop broker for VMware ESX Server and Citrix Presentation Server, but Propero is also working with IBM, XenSource and Microsoft for supporting their platforms.

So far nor VMware neither Propero disclosed the acquisition, but today VMware released a S-1 Registration Statement needed for its summer IPO.

This public document includes several annexed, including a List of Subsidiaries, reporting all companies controlled by VMware:

• Akimbi Systems, SARL.
• Propero, Inc.
• Propero Limited
• VMware Australia Pty Ltd
• VMware Bermuda Limited
• VMware Canada Inc.
• VMware Germany GmbH
• VMware Global, Inc.
• VMware International
• VMware International Limited
• VMware Singapore Pte Ltd.
• VMware Software India Private Limited
• VMware Sweden AB
• VMware UK Limited
• VMware, K.K.

Propero is listed along with Akimbi, acquired in June 2006, and worldwide VMware headquarters.

After virtualization.info broke the news VMware is expected to release a public statement about this document or a press release disclosing the acquisition.

Meanwhile check VMware S-1 Registration Statement, List of Subsidiaries attachment and a video demostration of Propero workSpace.

Propero has been included in virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Radar.

Announced at MMS 2007 and planned for upcoming WinHEC 2007, Microsoft released earlier than expected System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2007 beta 2.

Some of promised features are finally available:

• PowerShell integration
• P2V migration capabilities (Windows Server 2000 and 2003 only)
• V2V capabilities (import of VMware virtual machines)

Some others features depending on Windows Server Virtualization (codename Viridian), like Live Migration (VMware VMotion-like capability), are missing because of hypervisor delay. But Virtual Machine Manager beta 2 already supports new Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1 release candidate.

According to this release Microsoft published original Bob Muglia’s keynote at MMS 2007 introducing new features, and an introductory paper describing product’s architecture.

Microsoft also disclosed some informations about one possible licensing scheme for SCVMM:

Another alternative for acquiring the Standard OML through Volume Licensing programs are the Microsoft System Center Server Management License (“SML”) suites.

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The Enterprise SML will be available in Q4 CY2007 and will include the Enterprise versions of the OML and Data Protection Manager Management License, as well as the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Server Management License, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007.

Last but not least Microsoft unveiled this version of SCVMM will not support Windows Server Virtualization (codename Viridian) beta at public launch. To see such integration we’ll have to wait for SCVMM 2007 R2 public beta, planned for Q1 2008.

Enroll for the beta here.