virtualization.info Editors

After last month declarations of SWsoft CEO about performance superiority of Virtuozzo over VMware solutions and VMware modification of its EULA to permit publishing of benchmarks on its plaftorms, SWsoft now moves further and unofficially announces they want to create a standard system for performance measurement on server virtualization products.

Quoting from the SWsoft blog:

After some thinking, we decided that SWsoft needs to take a lead and help create a virtualization benchmark that would allow IT organizations to assess different aspects of server virtualization technologies.

Here is the current thinking about the benchmark, and as usual I’m looking forward to comments:

• The benchmark will be focused on server virtualization. When we have desktop product, we’ll focus on a benchmark for desktop technologies, but for now, it’s just servers
• The benchmark will be comprehensive and will measure several aspects of the technology
• SWsoft will work with all interested parties – virtualization technologies vendors, hardware and software vendors and, of course, benchmark vendors – to ensure that the benchmark is accepted by the entire industry

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Read the whole post at source.

As you may have noticed between the lines there is a possible expansion of SWsoft on the desktop market. Are we going to see Virtuozzo for Desktop anytime soon?

About this topic you may find interesting take a look at virtualization.info Review of SWsoft Virtuozzo for Windows 3.5.1.

Quoting from the Tideway official announcement:

…
Tideway Foundation 6.0 allows IT organizations to cut through the complexity of virtual environments, penetrating the layers of abstraction and untangling the relationships between the physical and virtual worlds. Tideway Foundation 6.0 uniquely models and maps complex, virtualized, n-tier business applications, assisted by hybrid discovery techniques, removing the last hurdle to virtualization. It is now possible to visualize exactly how the physical and virtualized IT environments support critical business applications and gain direct access to compliance reports.

Tideway Foundation 6.0 manages virtual technologies including VMware (ESX, GSX, VMware Server, Workstation, ACE), Xen, Solaris 10 Containers, Egenera BladeFrames and Microsoft Clustering Services…

Quoting from the nworks official announcement:

nworks, an HP OpenView Platinum Business Partner, today announced that the nworks Smart Plug-in (SPI) for VMware has achieved certified integration with HP OpenView Operations for Windows and HP OpenView Operations for UNIX.

nworks provides a comprehensive solution by integrating VMware ESX Server performance, event, state, and configuration into HP OpenView Operations without installing any software to the ESX Servers. The integration of VMware VirtualCenter events into HP OpenView Operations software helps to expand the reach of the nworks solution to a strategic piece of the VMware virtual infrastructure.
…
nworks’ solution enables real-time virtual machine discovery by mapping virtual resources to physical resources and physical to virtual resources for a complete view of an enterprise’s virtual infrastructure.

SecurityFocus published a long and interesting interview with Eyal Dotan, Founder and CTO at Trustware.

Trustware recently launched an application virtualization solution called BufferZone which is available for free when virtualizing a single application.
BufferZone clearly competes with Altiris Software Virtualization Solution even if Trustware put focus mainly on security uses.

Read the whole interview at source.

Trustware has been included in the virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Radar.

Virtualization has been predicted to become a commodity since a long time. We are now in the exact moment when the projection becomes reality.

With the today’s releases of Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 SP1 and VMware Server 1.0 for free, the most popular virtualization platforms are now available at no cost:

• VMware Player and Server
• Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server
• Xen
• Virtual Iron (which is now based on Xen)
• Sun Solaris Containers (better known as Zones)
• SWsoft OpenVZ
• Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) (free at least for personal use)

In this scenario how companies like Parallels and Win4Lin can sustain a strategy where they ask customers to pay for their solutions?

Despite the launch of VMware Infrastructure 3 (including VirtualCenter 2.0), the company continued to develop VirtualCenter 1.x branch, and is now releasing the 1.4 version.

This new one is aimed to correct existing 1.3 bugs, centrally manage ESX Server 2.x but mostly the just released VMware Server 1.0.
The product has been in fact renamed VirtualCenter for VMware Server.

In details:

• VMware Server support
  A VMware Server can now be managed by VirtualCenter as a host, along with ESX Server 2.x and GSX Server 3.x hosts in a heterogeneous environment
• VMware Server 64-bit support
  Create and use 64-bit virtual machines and templates on VMware Server
• VMware Server SMP support
  Create and use SMP virtual machines and templates on VMware Server
• VMware Server virtual hardware support
  Create or edit virtual machines to use the additional virtual hardware options on VMware Server. This includes the E1000 NIC and new autodetect options.
  Virtual machines not using the new hardware continue to be supported on ESX Server 2.x and GSX Server 3.1 or later hosts
• VMware Server migration support
  Virtual machines on ESX Server or GSX Server hosts can be migrated or imported onto VMware Server hosts. Once migrated to a VMware Server, they can be migrated back to an ESX Server or GSX Server, provided their virtual hardware has not been upgraded through the VMware Server Console

Read the complete Release Notes. Download it here.

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

The long awaited enterprise-class free product from VMware finally is shipping: Server 1.0 (build 28343).

This first release (something we could call formerly GSX Server 4.0) includes:

Support

• Full support for SUSE Linux 10.1 as host and guest operating systems
• Full support for 32-bit Ubuntu 6.x as host and guest operating systems
• Full support for 32-bit Sun Solaris 10.x as guest operating systems
• Full support for 32-bit and 64-bit FreeBSD 6.0 as guest operating systems
• Experimental support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 Update 8 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 Update 4
• Experimental support for 64-bit Ubuntu 6.x as host and guest operating systems
• Experimental support for 64-bit Sun Solaris 10.x as guest operating systems
• Experimental support for 32-bit and 64-bit FreeBSD 6.0 as guest operating systems
• Experimental support for SUSE Linux 10.1 as host and guest operating systems
• Support for all guest operating systems supported by WorkStation 5.5
• Support for all host operating systems supported by VMware Server GSX 3.2

New Key Features

• Support for taking and reverting to snapshots in the background
• Experimental support for two-way Virtual Symmetric Multiprocessing (Virtual SMP). This lets you assign two virtual processors to a virtual machine on any host machine that has at least two logical processors
• Support for using and upgrading legacy virtual machines
• Ability to configure virtual hardware devices, including serial and parallel ports, DVD/CD-ROM drives, floppy drives, and sound drivers (Linux only) to be automatically detected

Other VMware Products Supported by VMware Server

• Support for using the VMware Server Console to connect to and configure VMware GSX Server 3 hosts as well as to run virtual machines on VMware GSX Server 3 hosts.
• Support for VirtualCenter version 1.4 to manage virtual machines running on VMware Server.
• Support for VMware Virtual Machine Importer version 1.5 to import virtual machines from Microsoft Virtual Server and Virtual PC as well as Symantec LiveState recovery system images.
• Support for VMware DiskMount Utility to mount a Microsoft Windows host file system as a separate drive without connecting to the virtual disk from within a virtual machine.

As you can see with a surprising move at the last moment VMware re-introduced support for VirtualCenter centralized management and released VirtualCenter 1.4.

Read the complete Release Notes. Download it here.

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

While announcing unlimited virtual machines for Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition and up to 4 virtual machines for Windows Vista Enterprise Edition, Microsoft also released Virtual PC 2004 with Service Pack 1 for free.

The product now includes a recent hotfix specifically designed for laptop systems, correcting several issues.

Download it here.

The company also announced the next version, Virtual PC 2007, will be released during 2007, will support Vista and will be completely free as well.

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

From his blog Compl Torris, TechNet Ireland Manager, unofficially announces Microsoft will offer its customers purchasing Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition with Volume License capability to run unlimited virtual machines hosting any flavor of Windows Server, Enteprise or Datacenter editions. With effect since 1st October 2006.

In the official announcement Microsoft also stated Windows Vista Enteprise Edition customers will be able to run up to 4 virtual machines for free (Ben Armstrong specifies this policy works with any virtualization product, not just with Virtual PC).

Quoting from Statesman:

Austin-based Surgient Inc. has raised $20 million to accelerate its sales of software services in the United States and Europe. It also will need to buy more servers.

Surgient’s software-based services enable companies to use the Web to demonstrate products or provide customer training.

It has 65 customers, many of them software makers, and Surgient plans to expand its sales to other major companies in the United States and Europe.
…
Surgient expects to have about $20 million in revenue this year and to become self-sustaining by the second half of 2007…

Read the whole article at source.