virtualization.info Editors

SWsoft just launched the beta program of its complete solution for hosting services, HSPcomplete 3.3, and among 100 new features there is the Virtuozzo integration:

The latest features of Virtuozzo are supported in HSPcomplete 3.3 including EZ templates management, simplified SLM, Zero-Downtime Migration (ZDTM), centralized distribution of Virtuozzo for Windows OS, and application templates.

You can download the beta here.

The final version of HSPcomplete 3.3 is planned to be released in July.

If you are interested in Virtuozzo you may want to read the virtualization.info review of SWsoft Virtuozzo for Windows 3.5.1.

Mike Kol write a nice article about managing Sysprep utility and avoid Virtual Machine Additions to be disabled in the process:

If anyone has tried syspreping Windows Vista Beta 2 inside a VM, you may have noticed that the VM Additions are still installed but not functional afterwards.
This is because of the way that the new Sysprep Generalization phase works. The idea here is that the system starts with a totally clean slate, and PnP detects the “best” driver for the hardware all over again.

For some reason, the drivers included with the Additions are not detected as the “best” fit. I’m not on the setup team, so I’m not sure why, but that’s what seems to be happening.

There are a few ways to work around this…

Read the whole article at source.

Mike Kol unofficially announces the release of highly expected Virtual Server 2005 R2 Virtual Machines Additions for Vista beta 2.

Download as usual on Microsoft Connect (Additions for Vista beta 2 are included in the Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 beta program).

MacDailyNews reports about a new tool to optimize just released Parallels Desktop for Mac: PD Tweaker.

The tool has two major features:

• Optimizes caching for HDD and SAV files
• Always writes HDD and SAV files all the way to disk

Download it here.

Note that this is not an official Parallels release and the company is not actually endorsing the tool in any way.

Quoting from the Emulex official announcement:

Emulex Corporation, the most trusted name in storage networking connectivity, today announced that the Emulex LightPulse® family of HBAs , including the latest 4Gb/s PCI-X and PCI Express models, are fully supported as part of the new VMware Infrastructure 3.
…
In March 2006, Emulex contributed its virtual HBA API to the VMware Community Source program to help drive standardization of SAN connectivity solutions for server virtualization environments.

The Sun branded version of LightPulse HBAs have been certified as well.

Gear Live published an iterview with Benjamin Rudolph, Marketing Manager at Parallels, about the just released Desktop for Mac.

Read the whole interview at source.

Quoting from the Virtinium official announcement:

– Virtinium, a solutions developer focused on the creation of products that extend and enhance the management of virtualization technologies, today announced the commercial availability of the Nirvana VSAN and VM Manager products.
…
In addition, the VM Manager is a web based operation management component to allow access to VMware virtual machine management from any browser or small form factor device. “The VM Manager is a great tool for your virtualization toolkit and enables IT managers to check the performance of their virtual machines. It is the first component available in our Vixen development project, which will be a complete enterprise resource management suite specifically created for virtualized environments,”
…
More information will be released on Vixen in November 2006 at VMWorld in Los Angeles, California.
…
The VM Manager is available for free download on the company’s website (www.virtinium.com).

Hello everybody.

I would spend just 1 minute to introduce you 3 new/revamped virtualization.info features:

• Virtualization Industry Radar
  After the Virtualization Industry Roadmap here’s the Radar: the complete list of companies involved in application and server virtualization markets that virtualization.info monitors on daily basis.
• Monthly archives
  Archives have been completely revamped: now, instead of publishing the complete body of all month’s posts (generating a huge, slow and hard to check page), you’ll just have the titles list for the month.
  I found myself this arrangement much more useful, bringing a immediate, easy to read picture of what happened so far.

  Try taking a look at the ongoing June archive.

• Search
  Also search has been revamped: it’s now much more precise, relying on Google Co-Op engine, and results has been integrated in the layout.
  Check it here.

I invite everybody reading this post by feed or email to spend 1 minute and check these changes online. I hope they will further improve usability and overall value of virtualization.info.

Many more things to come. Stay tuned!

Approaching the final launch of its free enterprise-class product, Server (formerly GSX Server), VMware is expanding the list of supported host and guest operating systems.

In this new build (27828) the support has been extended to:

• SUSE Linux 10.1 as host and guest OS (full support)
• 32-bit Ubuntu 6.x as host and guest OS (full support)
• 32-bit Sun Solaris 10.x as guest OS (full support)
• 32-bit and 64-bit FreeBSD 6.0 as guest OS (full support)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 Update 8 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 Update 4 (experimental support)
• 64-bit Ubuntu 6.x as host and guest OS (experimental support)
• 64-bit Sun Solaris 10.x as guest OS (experimental support)

As you can notice the most notable change is the long awaited full support (yes, with VMware Tools) for Sun Solaris 10, initially made available in Virtual Infrastructure 3.

Read the complete Release Notes and download it here.

Scott Herold wrote a nice article about using upcoming free VMware Server to set up a low cost mirror machines for ESX Server 2.x installations:

…
With VMware’s pending release of VMware Server new opportunities for low cost disaster recovery are becoming available for enterprise environments. Many organizations are looking for a low-cost alternative to building a parallel VMware ESX Server infrastructure at a disaster site. VMware Server is adding an additional level of recoverability to virtual machines that would typically be ignored or delayed in the event of a disaster.

Taking a backed up virtual machine from VMware’s ESX Server isn’t as simple as restoring the data to a destination VMware Server system and powering it on. There are slight differences in the VMDK data files that need to be addressed before the virtual hard drive is in a format that is readable by VMware Server. The best part of the solution is that it can be done with a simple text editor…

Read the whole article at source.