virtualization.info Editors

Quoting from the Emulex official announcement:

Emulex Corporation, the most trusted name in storage networking connectivity, today announced the industry’s first demonstration featuring Linux-based server virtualization combined with industry-standard N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) technology in Europe. Emulex has teamed with Novell to showcase the benefits of leveraging its industry-standard NPIV-based LightPulse Virtual HBA technology within a Fibre Channel environment using Xen 3 technology and tools provided by Novell as part of Novell’s next SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Enterprise data centers are increasingly looking to virtual server technology for consolidation, increased resource utilization and management flexibility. The Emulex LightPulse Virtual HBA technology in conjunction with Xen 3, enables each virtual machine or guest operating system to own and access a dedicated World Wide Port Name (WWPN), even when several virtual machines are sharing the same physical host bus adapter. This new capability enables each guest to be managed independently, using SAN best practices for security and configuration management, such as fabric-based zoning and storage Logical Unit (LUN) mapping…

Quoting from the Unisys official announcement:

Unisys Corporation today announced that it has expanded its relationship with VMware Inc., the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems. Under terms of the expanded relationship, Unisys will now offer the enterprise-class suite of VMware virtual infrastructure products on its ES7000 Server portfolio.
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The suite includes VMware ESX Server with Virtual SMP and VMware VirtualCenter with VMotion technology. In addition, Unisys intends to certify its ES7000 for use with VMware ESX Server.
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In expanding the VMware virtual infrastructure products Unisys will offer, Unisys will further enhance its ES7000 family of server-based solutions…

VMware just released a new build (22088) of upcoming Server product (formerly GSX Server).

While it seems there are no features here what issues have been fixed:

• Virtual SMP virtual machines suspend automatically after 24 hours.
  In beta release build 20925, VMware Server automatically suspends a virtual machine configured to use Virtual SMP after 24 hours of continuous operation. To correct this issue, upgrade to VMware Server beta build 22088.
• Virtual machine might fail to power on when debugging is enabled.
  In beta release build 20925, your virtual machine might fail to power on, and VMware Server displays the error message: “Operation failed to change the VM to the expected power state.” To correct this issue, upgrade to VMware Server beta build 22088.
• Unable to create new virtual machine over SSL connection.
  In beta release build 20925, attempts to create a new virtual machine over an SSL connection might fail. By default, the VMware Server Console connects to the VMware Server host using SSL. To correct this issue, upgrade to VMware Server beta build 22088.
• “Socket issue” reported when attempting to create virtual machine.
  In beta release build 20925, VMware Server sometimes fails to create a new virtual machine and displays the error message: “An operation was attempted on something that is not a socket.” To correct this issue, upgrade to VMware Server beta build 22088.

The final release of this product is expected for Q2 2006.

Download it here.

Quoting from the SWsoft official announcement:

SWsoft, the leading provider of operating system virtualization and automation tools, today announced its Virtuozzo support of Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT) capabilities, including the recently unveiled Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) specification.

By supporting Intel VT and Intel VT-d, Virtuozzo will offer customers additional levels of manageability, security, isolation and I/O performance.
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The SWsoft Virtuozzo product release with VT support is scheduled for later this year. Virtuozzo VT-d support will follow in conjunction with platform availability…

If you are interested in Virtuozzo you could read virtualization.info review of Virtuozzo for Windows 3.5.1

A Swiss VMware partner, Kybernetika, had a great idea: setup a complete ESX Server & VirtualCenter infrastructure and lease it for absolutely uncapped remote use.

The real good is that you can manage the whole infrastructure remotely, connecting via Remote Desktop to a Windows virtual machine offering physical servers management panels, ESX Server and VirtualCenter web and binary consoles.

The infrastructure, called Testcenter, actually offers following hardware:

• 3 Server HP Proliant DL380 (2-ways)
• 1 SAN HP MSA1500
• 2 Network Gigabit Switch HP ProCurve 3400cl-48G (redundant, deployed on a dedicated DMZ)
• 2 UPS APC (redundant)

Kybernetika offers you a whole set of operation systems ISOs trials and all VMware and Vizioncore softwares to create from scratch any kind of configuration.

I personally tried it from Italy, setting up a whole ESX Server 2.5.2 and VirtualCenter 1.3.1 datacenter, working with VMotion without problems.

The rent price is of 250 CHF, which are quite 160 Euros / 190 US Dollars, for 5 days.

Absolutely recommended for preparing to VMware Certified Professional (VCP) exams or improve confidence with VMware technologies.

Microsoft has confirmed me that the upcoming vNext reported for the first time by Steven Bink at the end of 2005, has finally been named Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1, as I speculated just yesterday.

It will be a free update for R2 customers, featuring:

• Intel Virtualization Technology and AMD I/O Virtualization Technology CPUs support
  This won’t further improve performances of Windows guest OS but will improve other OSes performances.
• Windows Server 2003 Volume Shadow Service (VSS) support
  Contrary to what I reported before this feature will permit virtual machines live backup.

The beta program will start 2Q06 with RTM expected within 6-8 months, depending on customers feedbacks on stability.

Massimiliano Daneri, creator of the worldwide known perl script VMBK for live backup of ESX Server virtual machines, is working on another great project: VMCL.

VMCL is a clustering software for VMware ESX Server based on the Linux-HA project, able to syncronize virtual machines between different host OS.

Actually there is no documentation available but the beta program just started and you can download beats here.

Quoting from TechWorld:

If there was any thought that storage giant EMC might spin out its virtualisation specialist and subsidiary VMware, which has established itself as the clear market leader, EMC’s CEO Joe Tucci put that idea to rest
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“VMware is a tremendous asset and to separate it from EMC would be a huge mistake,” he said. “It’s not going to happen.”

Read the whole article at source.

A very interesting post appeared on the comp.os.os2.apps newsgroup:

SVISTA continues to die a slow death under the hands of Boob St. John. The folks originally working on the development have abandoned Serenity and OS/2 and left Boob with a small group of unexperienced buggers who can’t figure anything out.

As it stands now SVISTA will never reach completion or end up as a viable VM application.

This is a personal opinion from a user but in fact there are no news from Serenity Virtual Station (SVISTA) since 2H 2004…

Quoting from CRN:

Intel snuggled up to VMware and Microsoft at its developer’s forum but it’s Xen that will benefit most from the company’s latest batch of virtualization technology-enabled (VT) server chips, sources claim.
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“It’s a big deal,” said Simon Crosby, CTO at Xensource, Palo Alto, Calif. “It brings us the ability to virtualize all operating systems on the x86 architecture, and hands us on a plate a hardware implementation of everything VMware has done over the last five years.”
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Xen claims that VT incorporates much of the functionality offered in its rivals’ respective proprietary virtualization servers…

Read the whole article at source.