virtualization.info Editors

EMC Corporation is preparing the EMC World conference on 24-27th April in Boston.

The event is mainly focused on storage but this year I can see several VMware sessions:

• Storage Best Practices with VMware ESX Server 2.x
• Using VMware for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
• Using VMware for Server Consolidation
• Trends in Virtualization
• VMotion with CLARiiON Storage (Hands-on Workshop)
• VMware and Storage: Planning and Deploying with Fibre Channel, iSCSI and NAS
• VMware ESX with CLARiiON – Best Practices
• VMware Integration with Symmetrix
• VMware Remote Disaster Restart using CLARiiON Replication Software
• VMware’s ESX Server Architectural Overview

Read the whole agenda here.

EMC is also preparing a Momentum 2006 conference edition in Rome, Italy. I’m unlucky the event is not related to virtualization as well.

Paul Thurrott, the famous Microsoft specialist, wrote an article about Microsoft virtualization licensing.
He summarize recent Virtual Server 2005 R2 licensing changes and expected licensing plans for Longhorn Datacenter.

It’s available here just for WindowsITPro subscribers.

An email circulating in these hours reports GSX Server is going to change name in VMware Server, distributed for free from 6th February.

The new product should appear on this page (now forbidden) for description and on this page (now redirected to VMware home page) for download.

CNET News seems to confirm this news:

VMware, an EMC subsidiary whose software lets multiple operating systems run on the same computer, is expected to announce next week that it will begin giving away one of its key products for free.
…
The company sells three core products, VMware Workstation, GSX Server and ESX Server, but competition is on the horizon in a market VMware once had to itself. On Monday, however, the company is expected to announce it will give away GSX for free, sources familiar with the plan said.

Read the whole article at source.

The Register is reporting a slightly different version of the story:

…
The free product will be called VMware Server and will join the Workstation, GSX Server and ESX Server products. VMware Server relates most closely to the midrange GSX Server product often used by VMware customers to test and and develop software packages. The high-end ESX Server is used for production applications and actually slots in below operating systems such as Windows and Linux, whereas GSX Server and the upcoming VMware Server run on top of the OS.

When plugging VMware Server, which arrives in beta only for the moment, company representatives insisted that we think of the free option as a way to promote virtualization technology.
…
The VMware Server, for example, has a feature not even present in GSX Server. It supports Intel’s VT technology for improving virtualization performance. In addition, it supports 64-bit guest operating systems – including Solaris x86 – and has support for virtual SMPs. So, it’s not just some crippled, low-end product.
…
Next week, a beta version of VMware Server will be available here. The product is expected to be fully baked in the first half of this year, and VMware expects to sell plenty of support contracts behind it. Over time, it will effectively replace GSX Server…

Read the whole article at source.

If this is true, and I’m pretty confident it is, VMware will give a huge hit to Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2, now sold at $99, to Xen and to the upcoming Windows Hypervisor.

Thanks to vmdude for pointing me out the CNET News article.

Several users reported on VMTN forums they received a VMware email about ESX Server 3.0 beta program.

If you are interested in being included in this program you could still try to enroll.

More details to come.

DevX just published a great, extended report on virtualization focused on development and testing.

Here the whole list of articles:

• Virtual Machines Usher In a New Era
  Recognizing the impact virtual machines can have on the application development process, DevX has compiled a comprehensive special report that helps you understand and evaluate the available virtualization solutions and guides you through deployment.
• A Developer’s Eye View of Virtual Machines
  Virtualization technology allows developers to create multiple virtual testing and development environments on a single physical machine. The cost-saving implications are just the beginning of the story.
• The Right and Wrong Virtual Machine Uses in Development and Testing
  As much time and money as virtual machines can save you in your software development and testing processes, they’re not the right choice for every scenario.
• The Pros and Cons of Virtual Machines in the Datacenter
  Think implementing virtual machine technology in your datacenter is a no-brainer? Think again. You’ll need to determine whether the VM benefits outweigh the drawbacks for your particular environment.
• The Developer’s Guide to Building Virtual PCs
  Walk through a step-by-step Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 installation of SuSE Linux 9.1 Professional. Once it’s built, you can clone your Virtual PC, back it up, perform experiments on it, restore it, and even distribute it to others.
• Prototype Complex Enterprise Solutions with Just Your Workstation
  Before embarking on a hardware purchasing spree to prototype and test that clustered backend solution you’re planning, learn how virtualization enables you to build a prototype right on your desktop.
• Make A Virtual Machine Your Safe Internet-Browsing Sandbox
  Browsing unknown Web sites puts your system at risk for malware infection. Using a virtual machine as a sandbox for safer browsing provides an additional layer of security for your machine.
• Keys to a Successful Virtual Infrastructure Implementation
  A senior systems engineer who oversaw his organization’s virtual infrastructure deployment has some valuable advice for those ready to make the VM leap.
• Virtual Machines: A Logical Evolution of Operating Systems
  The same properties that made virtual machines (VMs) on IBM mainframes indispensable in the 1960’s will eventually make VMs indispensable on today’s servers and desktop machines. But as of today, they still have some evolving to do.

Quoting from SiliconBeat:

XenSource, a Palo Alto start-up backed by Kleiner Perkins, and active in the open-source “virtualization” area, is shuffling its management team, and has made a few layoffs.
…
Turns out, co-founder Moshe Bar resigned, and relocated to Texas with his family. And chief executive, Nick Gault is leading the search for his replacement. In addition, several engineers were laid off, as the company shifts its R&D team to the East Coast, where some of the remaining seven co-founders were based anyway…

Read the whole article at source.

Update: SiliconBeat reports details about the XenSource mass leaving: around 20 managers included 2 founders and Michael Enescu, VP of Development.

Thanks to David Rottenberg for the news.

Quoting from Byte and Switch:

Replicating data on virtual servers from the likes of Microsoft and VMware can force users to install multiple servers to accommodate each instance of a virtual-server application (for instance, SQL Server, Exchange, etc.). Not all products can replicate virtual servers remotely. And user-friendly pricing packages that don’t force users to pay for multiple copies of a replication package have been thin on the ground.

It’s important to note that while several products today support data replication of virtual machines on a SAN, we’re talking here about replicating from server to server. And so far, there have been few direct product fixes for the complications involved.

But several firms, including Datacore, NSI Software, and XOsoft are making headway. Next Monday, NSI Software will start shipping Double-Take for Virtual Systems, a product that replicates data from one Windows-based virtual server to another. Users have the option of replicating individual virtual machine applications like Exchange or SQL Server to one or more remote servers. Alternatively, they can replicate the entire virtual-machine server and enable failover in case of disaster…

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from the XenSource official mailing list:

We’re pleased to announce the release of Xen 3.0.1 !

This is primarily a bug fix and cleanup release.

Although many of the fixes had already been cherry picked into 3.0-testing, we felt it was time to roll a new release and encourage people to upgrade.

You can download src and binary tarballs along with RPMs for common distros from http://xensource.com/xen/downloads/

As usual, you can download the source using mercurial from http://xenbits.xensource.com/xen-3.0-testing.hg

Since branching the code for the release, the -unstable tree has had some fairly major merges: support for AMD SVM virtualization extensions (3.0.1 only supports Intel VT), and an upgrade to the latest linux version (with xen as a subarch of i386/x86_64 rather than a seperate architecture). The tree is likely to be unstable for a little while as we absorb these changes, though we’d certainly appreciate feedback from users.

Actually 3.0.1 are still on their way to the download server.

Quoting from Redmondmag.com:

Released in mid-December of last year and with one major exploit already announced and patched, VMware’s Player tool has taken the Internet by storm. A restricted version of the well-known and full-featured VMware Workstation application, the freely distributable Player brings the core functionality of VMware to the masses at a very reasonable cost.

VMware Player won’t allow you to build new virtual machines (VMs) or reconfigure the hardware on existing ones — you’ll need VMware Workstation or a similar app for that. But if you’ve created a compatible VM, the freeware Player license suddenly opens a whole new realm of possibilities for leveraging VM technologies in the workspace. Imagine a few of the architectural possibilities now available that may have been previously financially unattainable:…

Read the whole article at source.

The author also mentioned virtualization.info quoting part of the How to improve disk I/O performances with VMware Workstation 5 article: thank you!

Quoting from CRN:

Vizioncore on Tuesday said it has enhanced its application for virtualizing the storage environment that sits behind servers virtualized using VMware software.

Vizioncore’s esxRanger Professional now enables users to improve their ability to track the movements of virtual servers created by VMware’s ESX Server application and better optimize their virtual IT infrastructure, said David Bieneman, CEO of Antioch, Ill.-based Vizioncore.
…
New in esxRanger Professional is compatibility with VMware’s VirtualCenter, a VMware tool that lets virtual servers be moved from one physical host to another. Bieneman said this compatibility allows his company’s application to track the movement of those virtual servers to ensure they are backed up properly.

Vizioncore also added a new database for tracking the success and failure records of the virtual server backups, as well as to show which virtual servers were backed up by who and to where, said Bieneman. The database also includes information on the size of both the original and compressed backup images and on how long the compression and the backup took.

Also new is a rules optimization engine that lets IT administrators look at the tree structure of their VMware virtual server environment and increase the efficiency of the server backups. For instance, Bieneman said, an administrator can specify that 100 virtual machines should be backed up immediately, with 15 virtual machines per host at three virtual machines per SAN LUN (logical unit number)…

Read the whole article at source.