virtualization.info Editors

Quoting from the Wise official announcement:

Wyse Technology, the global leader in thin computing, today announced a thin desktop device optimized for VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), based on Wyse’s thin client OS technology. Wyse and VMware collaborated to make Wyse Thin OS – VDI Edition aware of key VDI-oriented technologies, enhancing the experience of IT and users deploying this innovative architecture.
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The new Wyse solution is expressly designed for the VDI architecture. It incorporates the New Wyse Thin OS – VDI Edition, which eliminates the user complexity around deploying the Virtual Desktop architectures, enables single push button “power on to work” for virtualized environments and is integrated with popular connection broker technologies, and Wyse’s popular S Class thin client device…

VMware released another the third patch for its flagship product: ESX Server. Note that this update is related to the 2.x branch and not the new ESX Server 3.0.

This patch fixes some bugs and introduces support for:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 Update 3 guest operating systems
• IBM DS4700 Fiber Channel storage array

Download it here.

Corsaire published 3 security bulletins reporting multiple vulnerabilites found in ESX Server 2.x and leading to risk of hijacking, cross site scripting and exposure of sensitive informations:

• http://www.corsaire.com/advisories/c060512-001.txt
• http://www.corsaire.com/advisories/c051114-001.txt
• http://www.corsaire.com/advisories/c051114-003.txt

All vulnerabilities are already fixed with lastest version of the product: ESX Server 2.5.3 patch 2.

Quoting from eWeek:

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“We certainly believe in one simple universal way to integrate a variety of virtualization solutions, and that is the way that Andrew Morton [the maintainer of the stable Linux kernel] wants to go,” said Bob Shimp, the vice president of Oracle’s technology business unit, on July 31.

“I can say that Oracle is losing its patience over this issue and we are going to be pushing harder and harder on everybody to come to the table with a realistic solution,” he said, noting that it is in everyone’s interest to get a solution thrashed out that benefits the open-source community as a whole.
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“Xen and VMware both supply huge patch-sets and are both trying to do the same thing, but their technologies don’t work with one another, and we are telling them that we do not want to take one over the other, we want them to talk and work it out,” he said.
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While Brian Byun, the vice president of products and alliances for VMware, acknowledged that the Palo Alto, Calif.-headquartered company had been approached by a neutral third party about offline mediation to establish how best to make this happen, he said he was unaware of any previous request for the company to meet directly with XenSource on this.

“We are very supportive of the mediation request, but we have not, as yet, had a request from Oracle – with whom we work closely–to mediate in this regard. We would love nothing more than a standard, multi-party approach to achieving this for the Linux kernel as soon as possible. We want something to be established quickly so we can move forward from there,” Byun said…

Read the whole article at source.

This sounds strange: Oracle already has a partnership with VMware and promotes its database through a Virtual Appliance since a lot.
They could easily do the same thing with XenSource but prefer to take a neat position in the debate and push for standardization.

Ben Armstrong published a much appreciated post detailing ports used by Microsoft Virtual Server 2005:

When Virtual Server is installed – the installer creates the following exceptions:

• Port 135 for RPC
• The port for the Virtual Server website (usually 1024)
• Any ports opened by the Virtual Server service

When configuring Virtual Server behind an external firewall (software or hardware) you do not have the luxury of just opening ports ‘used by the virtual Server service’ – you need to know which ones to open. The first one is fairly obvious – you will need to open port 5900 for VMRC.

In most situations this will be sufficient. If, however, you are running remote scripts / programs that access the Virtual Server COM interfaces you will also need to open a port for DCOM. Now, normally DCOM uses a random port above 1024. Obviously this is a problem for an external firewall – but it is one that can be easily addressed.

This article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dndcom/html/msdn_dcomfirewall.asp explains how to configure DCOM to be restricted to a defined range of ports – which you will then need to open on your firewall.

Be sure to read the original post for updates and comments.

Bob Roudebush published a brief overview of a new virtualization solution from Sentillion, vThere, focused on security and based on VMware Player technology.

He provided following conclusion:

All in all, I think the vThere solution is interesting and pretty compelling for companies that are looking for a better way to provide remote access to corporate applications and data. Paul was quick to point out that by the research they have, there will by about 41 million people worldwide working from home at least one day a week by 2008. If those estimates hold true, companies are going to need a better way to get them access to critical systems. The telecommuting and remote branch office scenarios are the main focus for the vThere product at this point according to our conversation. For companies whose corporate applications require standard “rich client” technology on the desktop instead of “thin client” solutions I can see how vThere would be an appealing alternative to what’s available today.

Read the review at source.

Quoting from Network World:

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The PCI-SIG Working Group is developing a specification that adds I/O virtualization capability to PCIe. This functionality lets network administrators virtualize or share peripherals and endpoints across different CPUs or CPU complexes.
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In the new specification, root complex topologies provide two levels of I/O virtualization. In the first level, called single-root I/O virtualization (IOV), the virtualization capability is provided by the physical endpoint itself. The endpoint supports one or more virtual endpoints, and mechanisms are used to enable each virtual endpoint to directly sink I/O and memory operations from various system images, and source direct memory access, completion and interrupt operations to a system image without run-time intervention.

n the second level, called multiroot IOV, the virtualization capability is extended by the use of a multiroot switch and a multiroot endpoint. These switches and endpoints have mechanisms to let multiple root complexes and system images share common endpoints…

Read the whole article at source.

As expected vizioncore just released a new product to its offering, still focused on VMware ESX Server:

esxMigrator provides a powerful tool that can support the upgrade process from ESX Server to VI3, by enabling smooth and seamless migrations to the new platform with minimal downtime even for complex environments.

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A GUI-driven management tool to help ease the migration process and enable companies to leverage the new efficiencies of VI3, esxMigrator completes the migration with minimal downtime. The existing production environment can still be used by the workforce, even as individual virtual machines are being replicated and ported to the new production server. During the migration process, the source virtual machine remains intact and unmodified. Because the source retains its integrity until the cutover to the new server is completed, administrators can leverage this feature to support roll-back contingency plans. The destination virtual machine is also migrated in a consistent state, keeping all data intact…

Among its features:

• Allows source virtual machines to be used continuously during migration process
• Keeps both source and destination virtual machines intact, supporting roll-back contingency plans
• Eliminates manual scripting
• Can be used by any level IT administrator
• Migrates multiple virtual machines
• Windows GUI-driven migration tool
• Reduces downtime to simple reboot
• Offers scheduling option to control timing of reboots

Watch the demo here. Download it here.

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

Quoting from ZDNet:

“[Xen] is not stable yet, it’s not ready for the enterprise,” Red Hat’s vice president of International Operations, Alex Pinchev, told ZDNet Australia today via telephone.

“We don’t feel that [Xen] is stable enough to address banking, telco, or any other enterprise customer, so until we are comfortable, we will not release it.”
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Red Hat has spent “millions” of dollars testing Xen, according to Pinchev, and has hundreds of customers around the world trying out beta versions of the software…

Read the whole article at source.

Barely 4 months ago Red Hat spent big time announcing the launch of its Integrated Virtualization strategy which would include integration of Xen in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and a series of services and tools around it.
Now, suddenly, the company changed its mind. Why?

Possibly because:

• Novell launched SUSE Linux 10 integrating Xen 3.0 much earlier than Red Hat
• Microsoft signed an agreement with XenSource for interoperability with upcoming Windows Server Virtualization
• VMware could decide to directly support Xen virtual machines since there are few hopes to reach a common agreement on hypervisor standardization

Quoting from the XenSource official announcement:

XenSource, the leader in infrastructure virtualization solutions based on the open source Xen(TM) hypervisor, today introduced a comprehensive channel partner program for companies planning to deliver virtualization solutions based on the Xen hypervisor. Distribution of XenEnterprise for North America and Europe will be delivered through agreements with ComputerLinks, DataSolutions, Interquad, ITway and Tech Data.

The program is significant as it enables system integrators, hosting service providers and consultants to expand their company’s core virtualization skills by providing the expertise required to help end-users plan and deploy Xen virtualization solutions based on XenSource’s XenEnterprise multi-OS virtualization platform. The program includes a designated XenSource Certified Professional training and validation program.
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The channel program offers:

• Authorization to resell XenEnterprise
  offering members the opportunity to be one of the first companies to become certified on the delivery of Xen-based virtualization
• Training and Certification
  offering members the opportunity to become certified experts in the delivery of Xen-based virtualization
• Demand Generation
  providing a lead distribution process and the ability to leverage standardized XenEnterprise demand generation programs
• Branding and Messaging
  enabling partners to differentiate their offerings through access to XenSource trademarked branding and integrated messaging
• Access to expertise
  providing access to the industry leading knowledge and tools for Xen-based virtualization through the XenEnterprise multi-OS virtualization platform

There is no fee for charter members to join through 2006…