virtualization.info Editors

Till Brehm has released an essential how-to for installing OpenVZ, the open source version of SWsoft Virtuozzo, on a Linux Debian 3.1 32bit operating system.

It starts from the very beginning step, patching kernel, up to the final goal, building a so-called Virtual Private Server (VPS).

Read it here.

If you are interested in OpenVZ you could find interesting as well my Review of SWsoft Virtuozzo for Windows 3.5.1.

Quoting from eWeek:

Red Hat’s announcement March 14 of its integrated virtualization push, starring Xen, didn’t take anyone by surprise: Red Hat, along with just about everybody else, has been tooting the Xen horn ever since the fledgling open-source virtualization technology began grabbing headlines almost a year ago.
…
The trouble is that Xen is somewhat early on in its development, and the high rate of change in Xen’s code base will keep the technology out of the mainstream Linux kernel for some time.

Red Hat has and will continue to chart its own course with respect to the kernel, diverging from the mainstream where and when appropriate, but Xen’s potential will remain somewhat stunted for as long as it remains in heavy flux…

Read the whole article at source.

1000 posts and 434,000 impressions since September 2003.

Dedicating my whole professional life to IT security I started this blog about virtualization mainly for 3 reasons:

1. I sincerely felt the urgency to share my enthusiasm for this technology.

   I’ve always been jealous of a gift developers have: the power to create something from scratch. Someone having a foundation know-how as sysadmin and not enough time to seriously start developing can only be jealous of this huge freedom (and I secretely believe learning scripting is a way to fill that hole).

   When I first discovered virtualization I felt like, as sysadmin, I suddenly had a similar power: I see in the virtualization the power of creating datacenters from scratch. I see the freedom to do.
   I know: it’s pretty naive considering what virtualization really is and what can really do, but I still believe this (and I’m a little less jealous of developers).

2. I wanted to try an emerging phenomenon called blogging, which I read about on many parts but never fully understood.

   Without any experience I probably approached it in the worst way, feeling like I had a sort of imposed task: to cover everything about a topic I chosen to talk about.

   Today, 3 years later, I think this is the worst way to blog: I feel best blogs are ones written for yourself, originally born as personaly diaries where to store important considerations about something you are working with or you are tracking.
   But my unexperienced approach transformed virtualization.info (originally called Blue Alliance) in what it is today. So I won’t regret too much.

3. I thought writing about something you do from morning to evening, 365 days per year, IT security, was simply too boring while blogging on something I was just discovering was much more interesting.

   After so much time I changed my mind and think that if you blog just about what is interesting for you, without the pressure to cover everything (see my second reason), then it’s not boring anymore.
   So I created SECURITY ZERO (originally called False Negatives Blog) and this is the reason why it has much less posts per day than virtualization.info.

Virtualization is spreading every day and I’m totally busy covering and evaluating what’s happening all around the world about this technology.

As I said in my end year’s balance there is so much more to come: expect thousands and more posts on this blog.

Enjoy your stay!

Jeff Alexander is calling for Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1 Technology Adoption Program (TAP) :

This TAP program has two goals:

1. Product Validation
2. Help customers deploy this product in production scenarios and get case studies

The production scenarios that are of high interest are:

1. Production Server consolidation in datacenters
2. Disaster recovery
3. Server consolidation in Branch offices

TAP is a very special program giving access to particular benefits like direct interaction with product team engineering and product education from Microsoft, and is reserved for a very small amount of critical customers, able to dedicate a serious amount of time for testing and usually providing information to create case studies for a new product launch (for more details about TAPs you should check this blog entry). So it’s really hard to get it.

Thanks to Virtualserver.tv for the news.

David Wang answers a blog reader question:

Question:
I was wondering if it is possible not to have the virtual machine additions installation eject the iso image after installing, maybe an undocumented switch.

I have created a custom OS installation CD and anything to be installed after VMA will be left hanging, or if you have more files in the $OEMO$\$$ or $OEM$\$1 directories they are never copied.

If there is a switch please let me know the full command line.

Answer:
The switches are all standard, documented commandlines for InstallShield and MSI. I am not certain why you want undocumented switches – I hate undocumented switches from a supportability and maintenance perspective, and why do you want us to get sued? 😉

Anyways, this is the commandline that I use to automate installation of VM Additions into my Virtual Machine as a part of OS installation – all standard and documented switches:

setup.exe /s /v”REBOOT=ReallySupress /qn”

/s – InstallShield “Silent” install switch
/v – InstallShield “pass arbitrary values to the internal MSI” switch
REBOOT – Standard MSI switch controlling reboot behavior (no, I do not use the newer /norestart switch because I do not want to require MSI 3.0 and I want automation that works from NT4/W2K on up)
/qn – MSI switch which pops up NO user interactive dialog (can use /qb- to get a dialog with cancel button)

Thanks to Virtualserver.tv for the news.

Richard Garsthagen produced a video to demonstrate how VMware VirtualCenter API can be programmed to develop useful applications for managing aspects of virtual infrastructure.

In particular Richard demonstrated how his Virtual Machine Order HOTLINE application.

Richard wears VMware shirt but I’m not sure it’s an official VMware presentation (I also have some doubts about introduction music…) 🙂

Fraser Campbell tracked VMware effort to introduce several patches in Linux kernel to make it compliant to what it’s called Virtual Machine Interface (VMI), or Paravirtualization API 2.0

In the Fraser article there are a lot of interesting informations like a comment from Zachary Amsden:

Zach was asked “Why can’t vmware use the Xen interface instead?” and he responded:

We could. But it is our opinion that the Xen interface is unnecessarily complicated, without a clean separation between the layer of interaction with the hypervisor and the kernel proper. The interface we propose we believe is more powerful, and more conducive to performance optimizations while providing significant advantages – most specifically, a single binary image that is properly virtualizable on multiple hypervisors and capable of running on native hardware.

Read it at source.

While RackForce is already providing web hosting with SWsoft Virtuozzo technology, they just expanded offering introducing Virtual Private Servers with Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 (which sounds a bit strange indeed).

Quoting from Host Search:

Web hosting provider RackForce has announced the launch of Windows-based virtual private server (VPS) options. The company claims to be the first to offer this technology (based on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2) to the web hosting market.

The latest addition to RackForce’s Dynamic Dedicated Server (DDS) products, the company’s VPS utilizes a Dual Xeon Processor server which creates eight environments that replicate dedicated Windows server functionality. The package also includes Windows Server 2003 Web Edition, a 10Mbps connection, Plesk for Windows (optional) and FortiGate Firewall Intrusion Protection…

Read the whole article at source.

Let’s Talk Computers ranks as one of the longest running radio computer talk shows, distributing up-to-the minute computer information since 1989. Produced in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, it is broadcast via radio in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Texas and New Mexico and on the world wide web via the Internet.

Yesterday they hosted Chris Henley from Microsoft to talk about Virtual Server 2005 R2:

Microsoft offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device. Chris Henley, Microsoft IT Specialist talks about the many advantages to using Virtual Server in our business applications. Virtual Server 2005 R2 is the cost-effective server virtualization technology engineered for the Windows Server System platform. As a key part of any server consolidation strategy, Virtual Server increases hardware utilization and enables organizations to rapidly configure and deploy new servers.

Here the podcast in Read Audio or Windows Media Player.

Let’s Talk Computers is also hosting another 1 month older podcast about Virtual PC: Read Audio or Windows Media Player.

Akimbi realized an interesting whitepaper about automatic provisioning with virtualization:

Two trends in enterprise software development – the accelerating adoption of distributed application architectures (the service-oriented architecture, or SOA, being the state of the art approach) and the outsourcing of software development activities – are undermining the effectiveness and efficiency of prevailing enterprise software development lifecycle (SDLC) processes and the infrastructure supporting these processes. Across the board, enterprise software development organizations are grappling with:

• Server Sprawl
  Organizations face an explosion in the number of machines required to develop and test enterprise applications, with some application development (AD) organizations reaching server- to-staff ratios of greater than 7:1, even though average server utilization rates are often below 10%. Servers are hoarded under desks and duplicated across underutilized labs housed in data centers that are short on space, power and cooling capacity.
• Setup and Provisioning Overhead
  An enormous amount of time is wasted on repetitive system setup, provisioning and configuration tasks, done in preparation for software development and test activities. These tasks often account for more than 50% of the total time expended in an application development and test cycle.
• Costly System Failures
  Difficulties reproducing, diagnosing and correcting software defects discovered in remote development facilities, or by outsourcing partners, are leading to serious system failures in production, when the cost to repair can be over 470x higher than if resolved earlier in the AD process.

…

Download it here and consider attenting the related webcast.