virtualization.info Editors

Since the release of Workstation 5.5 VMware is offering for free an handful tool to transform virtual machines made with Microsoft Virtual PC / Server and computer images made with Symantec LiveState.

Now, after a big success, VMware has started a beta program for the 2.0 release, extending importing and exporting features to upcoming VMware Server 1.0 (formerly GSX Server 4.0), ESX Server 3.0 and Virtual Center 2.0 products.

The new GUI is pretty smart, now able to grab local virtual machines and importing them in remote virtual infrastructures, with immediate placement in inventory.

Read the Release Notes and download the beta here.

Thanks to Run-Virtual for the news.

Today ended the first event VMware organized for Northern Europe: Nordic Symposium 2006.

Among around 450 attendees, I received some feedbacks reporting the event as just a showcase of VMware successful stories and partners solutions, without any real news.
Apart lack of news (it’s always possible to have nothing new to annouce) VMware missed to touch sensitive arguments like evolving licensing issues, capacity planning, best practices, etc., nordic customers were eagerly waiting for.

It’s true I received just few bad feedbacks and it’s true this is a first event but, assuming this is what happened, there is a risk the Technical Solutions Exchange (TSX) 2006, now opened to all partners and customers, could have same problems.

At Intel Developer Forum (IDF) 2006, Intel announced a new extension for its Virtualization Technology called VT-d.
While VMware will start supporting VT in ESX Server 3.0 (expected for 2H 2006), VT-d support will be introduced from 2007.

Also both companies, in a joint press release, announced a starting marketing campain to increase awareness and adoption of the technology:

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In addition to product development and support, Intel and VMware plan to collaborate on several market acceleration and education initiatives, including:

• Enterprise Marketing
  The two companies are working together to drive market awareness and adoption of virtualization by planning a multi–million–dollar marketing campaign. Intel and VMware shall continue to educate and bring the value of virtualization directly to the enterprise’s top IT managers through direct engagements and targeted materials in conjunction with some of the companies’ largest joint original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners.
• Entry Market Education
  To help educate the market and drive virtualization ubiquity, the companies are investing in the development of a comprehensive virtualization starter kit containing fully featured products and the supporting resources required for new customers to start using virtualization. The companies plan to make these starter kits easily available to users in all market segments and geographies by utilizing Intel’s worldwide channels and OEM programs combined with VMware’s industry–leading virtualization software portfolio , including the freely licensed VMware Player and VMware Server

Several times in these months virtualization.info reported the news of an upcoming update for Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2.
It was supposed to be a new release, expected for 2H 2006 and sporting some new interesting features.

But the IDF 2006 annoncement made by Intel and Microsoft mentions a Service Pack for Virtual Server 2005 R2 in that timeframe, not a new product.
And since the major new feature, support for Intel VT, is underlined, there are great chances the so-called vNext will be just this Service Pack.

If so Microsoft customers could not see a new major virtualization product until 1,5-2 years, when codename Longhorn Server will gain virtualization capabilities with the Windows Hypervisor (codename Viridian).

Quoting from the Intel official annoucement:

Intel and Microsoft have also joined together to extend Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) to include support for mapping I/O devices to virtual machines on servers with a new specification, published today, called Intel Virtualization for Directed I/O (Intel VT–d).

Part of the Intel VT family of technologies, Intel VT–d helps improve the reliability, flexibility and performance of I/O in a virtualized environment.
Microsoft has collaborated with Intel on development of the specification to help ensure it provides optimal functionality for users…

Andre Keartland discovered a 2 years old Technet article suggesting to move .vhd files in an Encrypted File System (EFS) for increase security.

After doing some tests he reported on microsoft.public.virtualserver newsgroup that the operation imply a minor performance decrease of less than 5% on a critical virtual machine like a Domain Controller.

Thanks to Virtualserver.tv for the news.

Virtual Strategy Magazine interviewed Davide Beneman, CEO of Vizioncore, about the upcoming new product called esxReplicator:

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VSM: So esxReplicator can take a running VM, make a copy of it and then move that VMDK file to another ESX Server somewhere on the network? – I’m assuming that one would be non-running at the time?

DB: That’s true. esxReplicator can replicate via the WAN or LAN. esxReplicator will compress the image before sending it over the LAN to the destination ESX Server. The machine on the destination is offline. If you really wanted to get creative, it would be pretty easy to detect a source failure and power on the offline VM at the remote destination. We do that regularly internally at Vizioncore for our web server testing and today it is a thumb’s up. It’s working really well…

Read the whole interview at source.

Quoting from the Surgient official annoucement:

Surgient, the leader in virtual lab applications for automating software demo, test and training labs, today announced that its Virtual Training Lab Management System (VTMS) application will be featured in several notable presentations March 6–8 at the Training 2006 Conference & Expo in Orlando, Florida.
…
Presentations and demos at Training 2006 include the following:

• Virtual Labs: The Next Frontier in Software Training
  Nancy Hensley, Surgient’s Global Training Strategist, will define virtual labs, demonstrate their use and explore the growing role of virtual labs in sandbox learning (including customer case studies).
• Virtual Labs and Distance Learning
  At the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) pavilion, Marcus MacNeill, Surgient’s Director of Product Strategy, will provide detailed case studies on companies using virtual labs to deliver innovative synchronous and asynchronous distance learning programs.
• Virtual Products and Labs
  At the E-Games and Simulations for Learning Demo Panels, Marcus MacNeill will join industry expert and author Clark Aldrich in an interactive session to demo and discuss virtual labs in the context of simulations.
• Excellence in Learning Award Winners
  The Brandon Hall Research staff will present highlights of 2005 winners in the Innovative Technology category including VTMS.

Thanks to VM Blog for the news.

While this is not strictly related to VMware it could fit the scenario pictured in my The long chess game of VMware.

Quoting from Byte and Switch:

…
But the Authentica deal also signifies a new focus on external storage security. Whereas Captiva targets ILM and Acartus archives large volumes of content, Authentica offers software for securing email documents and data on mobile devices.

By tying Authentica and Documentum together, EMC hopes to add an additional layer of security to users’ documents. An EMC spokesman tells Byte and Switch that the startup’s software will let Documentum users apply rights management policies to content, both inside and outside corporate firewalls…

Read the whole article at source.

David Berlind, a ZDNet blogger, has some very useful details about the Virtual PC Express for Vista revealed last week:

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Virtual PC Express enables only a single VM. That is key difference between Virtual PC and Virtual PC Express. With the former you can have an unlimited number of VMs and with the latter you can only have one. Virtual PC Express [will be the version of Virtual PC that’s included] in Windows Vista Enterprise and Windows Vista Ultimate.
…
For any additional VMs on the device, customers must purchase retail (otherwise known as shrink-wrap or FPP) copies of the operating system. For the example described above, the volume licensing customer would receive the right to install one copy in a virtual machine. The customer would then purchase 2 additional retail licenses to install in the 2 additional virtual machines (making 3 VMs total). These rights are associated with volume licensing of the operating system rather than with the Virtual PC SKU and so it makes no difference whether the customer is using Virtual PC Express or Virtual PC…

Read the whole article at source.