virtualization.info Editors

RapidApp consulting firm published a new book (177 pages) about upgrading from VMware ESX Server 2.x to new VMware Infrastructure 3.

Table of Contents

• Lesson 1 – Introduction to Virtualization & ESX Server 3.0
• Lesson 2 – Installing & Configuring ESX Server 3.0
• Lesson 3 – Virtual Networking Concepts
• Lesson 4 – Storage Concepts
• Lesson 5 – Installation & Administration with Virtual Center
• Lesson 6 – VM Creation, Gold Builds and Clones
• Lesson 7 – Resource Management
• Lesson 8 – VM Access Control
• Lesson 9 – Disaster Recovery & Backup
• Lesson 10 – Monitoring

Preview and buy it here.

This book has been published as with indipendent service Lulu so it doesn’t appear on Amazon and it’s not included in virtualization.info Bookstore.

Vincent Vlieghe published an interesting article about how to setup a semi-automated patching system for VMware ESX Server.

At the same time he leaks the information VMware is preparing better patching capabilities for upcoming ESX Server 3.1 and VirtualCenter 2.1.

Read it here.

From a security point of view it’s worth to remember that blind patching is strongly discouraged in production systems (even with official methods), more than ever if we are talking about a mission critical environment like a virtual one.

When budget allows it, testing new patches on lab environments is always the best solution. This imply a complex and expensive infrastructure replicating the production one, even if virtualization mitigates issues in building it.

The application virtualization startup Thinstall is looking for a talended Windows developer willing to work in San Francisco, CA [US].

If you are looking for a new job in the emerging application virtualization market you should take a look.

And by the way: the virtualization.info Job Board has been fully revamped thanks to SimplyHired aggregation engine.

If you are looking for new virtualization professionals in your company, you should take a look as well.

After announcing its efforts in October 2006, Sun is preparing to really deliver its new virtualization technology for SPARC processors called Logical Domains (LDom).

On Sun official website is in fact available Logical Domains Manage 1.0 Early Access (corresponding to Release Candidate 3).

Logical Domains are a different approach to virtualization than Solaris Containers introduced with Solaris 10: they are partitions handled directly by Sun T1 UltraSPARC CPUs through the sun4v hypervisor, with a current limitation to maximum 32 fully isolated domains (on 8-cores CPU) depending on a so-called control domain.

Sun plans to release this technology for free to its customers even if they will have to pay for a support contract.

Enroll the beta program here.

At the same time Sun published a 95-pages introductory guide on this new technology, Understanding and Deploying Logical Domains, which is worth to read.

Thanks to Tony Kay for the news.

In a Microsoft official email between Ben Waldman and Bill Gates (dated June 27, 1997) about destiny of Mac Office 2007 circulating these days on the web, a postscript from Waldman reveals Gates early interest in Connectix and possibly first report he had about virtualization:

P.S.: I owe you some info on connectix virtual PC – short answer is that it’s a cool product that emulates hardware (Trition chip set, IDE controller, Ethernet card, soundblaster, etc.) rather than Windows (like SoftWindows does), and so can run any OS – Win95, NT, Linux,DOS, etc. They are OEM-ing Win95 and DOS from us; we get money for every copy sold. I know the people there very well, and could easily arrange a demo for you. I also have a copy of the product they sent me, and could show it to you. Performance seems adequate on high-end Macs.

Watch a scan of original document here.

Dennis Damen and Rodney Medina, Senior Consultants at Login Consultants, have developed a free tool for converting application setups in Microsoft SoftGrid sequences.

Download it here.

In its effort to push communities for advent of Windows hypervisor (codename Viridian) Microsoft opened a new web forum where company representatives (including General Manager for VIrtualization Strategy Mike Neil) are answering questions.

Check it here.

It will be interesting see if this place will be as liberal as VMware VMTN Forums, where customers can freely talk about competitors (including Microsoft) since ever.

Thanks to Andrew Dugdell for the news.

VMware methodically continues to apply its aggressive strategy at 360 degrees and, after attacking Microsoft on Windows licensing, it’s now directly challenging other OS vendors.

Quoting from TechWorld:

Operating systems vendors who jump on the bandwagon have missed the point, according to VMware’s president, Diane Greene.

…

Vendors including Microsoft and Red Hat, who are integrating virtualisation functionality into their operating systems, are sacrificing the value proposition of a hypervisor independent of the operating system, she said at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco, yesterday.

…

“Traditionally, the operating system manages the hardware and manages the application. Once you virtualise with a hypervisor, that is now what is managing the hardware, not the OS,” Greene said. “Now the operating system is just managing the application. So certainly Windows and Red Hat are moving to integrate virtualisation into their OS, but part of the value proposition seems to be lost when you do that.”…

Read the whole article at source.

With these statements, which express a known position anyway, VMware is indirectly hitting the Linux community as well, since the new KVM virtualization project appears as a kernel module and could put back Linux in key position on the virtualization stack.

From its corporate blog, Roger B.A. Klorese, Senior Director of Product and Solutions Marketing at XenSource, announces opening of XenEnterprise 3.2 beta program.

This release is showing notable new features like:

• Support for Windows 2000 Server SP4, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 guest OSes
• Support for virtual SMP (up to 4 vCPUs)
• Support for suspend/resume virtual machines
• Support for more than 2GB virtual RAM allocation
• Resource controls for CPU, network and disk bandwidth for prioritization of co-resident guests
• Basic iSCSI SAN support
• VLAN trunk support for virtual bridges

Enroll the beta program here.

The russian startup Veeam continues to release utility tools for VMware ecosystem, focusing on simplifying virtualized datacenters management.

The new Veeam Reporter aims to cover the almost empty segment of reporting solutions from a unique point of view: once discovered VMware Infrastructure 3 tiers (hosts, virtual machiens, virtual switches, etc.) and their relationships, it generates a Microsoft Visio diagram with data-rich shapes.

Download a trial of Veeam Reporter here.

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