virtualization.info Editors

Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, yesteday at Macworld 2006 officially launched the first iMac computer on Intel technology.
It powers a MacOS X 10.4.4, but the iMac hardware could run Windows without restrictions, as Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said.

So we are sure MacOS could run on any x86 hardware, even on a virtual machine. But it actually can’t.
Why? Because Apple provided the operating system a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip control check which prevent installing it on anything but Apple approved hardware.
It also appears that Apple patented the MacOS to not run on dual-boot systems and virtual machines.

During the long beta these issues didn’t stop hackers which found a way to circumvent the security check and spread unauthorized MacOS x86 copies inside virtual machines all around the Net.

Now what can happen?

1. There will be another crack and MacOS X 10.4.4 for Intel will start spreading again, on physical and virtual machines, even if unauthorized.
2. With an unexpected move Apple will permit MacOS virtualization at a later time
   (we already read something in this direction in our exclusive interview to Parallels)

Will Microsoft accept to run MacOS virtual machines on its product as already did with Linux? I think not so fast. Surely not before launching and selling upcoming Vista.

So VMware could be the first do this, and for free thanks to VMware Player, gaining even more market on the desktop virtualization segment.
Customers are already asking for MacOS guest support which, by the way, would greatly simplify transition to Apple operating system.

Meanwhile the good PearPC project could receive a major stop.

PowerRecon 2.0 is PlateSpin’s next generation resource inventory, analysis and consolidation modeling solution.
It born to help identify which servers to convert to virtual infrastructure but become much more useful than that.
The product is currently in beta and is planned for launch in Q1 2006.

New features are:

• Increased Scalability
  PowerRecon 2.0 provides the scalable viewing and measuring of heterogeneous data center inventory, optimized for use in large scaled utilization inventory and analysis projects.
• Improved Drag and Drop Interface
  Highly interactive IDE-style user interface enables better consolidation decisions to be made by providing the right level of detail and advanced data visualization.
• Advanced Server Consolidation Planner
  Powerful consolidation designer for modeling and comparing server consolidation scenarios including what-if consolidation scenario modeling. Advanced algorithms make consolidation optimization quicker and easier than ever before.
• PowerConvert Integration
  Integration with PowerConvert provides the seamless execution of server consolidations planned with PowerRecon. Design the best fit for your data center and click the PowerConvert button to make it happen.

If you are interested complete the enrollment form here.

Quoting from the PlateSpin official announcement:

PlateSpin Ltd. today announced the availability of PlateSpin PowerConvert 5.2, with enhanced support for Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Symantec LiveState 6.0. PlateSpin PowerConvert’s unique OS Portability technology provides anywhere-to-anywhere migration of data, applications, and operating systems in physical, virtual, blade, or mixed environments. PlateSpin technology is being used by more than 700 customers worldwide to solve today’s most pressing data center challenges such as server consolidation, disaster recovery, hardware migrations, data center relocations and continuous data center optimization.

New features of PlateSpin PowerConvert 5.2 include:

• Support for the following: Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Symantec LiveState 6.0
• Enhanced network support including multi-subnet and full duplex networks, allowing increased accessibility and speed for server migrations
• Enhanced server discovery to quickly gather and refresh server inventory
• Improved error reporting and troubleshooting capabilities and direct integration with PlateSpin’s online knowledge base

VMware is highly expected to release its mainstream product new release: ESX Server 3.0.

The company announced it on middle October 2005 detailing new features, anticipating a public beta for end year and saying the product will be released in the Q1 2006.
But at today no public beta started and some customers from different countries are reporting virtualization.info ESX 3.0 release could shift on July 2006 or even later.

An unexpected major problem or new unplanned features included on the last minute? What happened? The standard answer would be: it’s ready when it’s ready…

Today virtualization is expensive for licensing. Microsoft asks people to license every OS installed on virtual machines, even if powered off.
But something is changing.

Since the release of Windows Server 2003 R2 Microsoft started approaching a per-use licensing model instead of a per-installation model.
So that now Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition owners can run up to 4 virtual machines with same OS at no additional costs.

This trend is going be stronger in the near future: the next Microsoft operating system for servers, codename Longhorn, actually in beta, will permit to use infinite virtual machines with same OS onboard at no additional costs, buying the Datacenter edition.
So if you have a performing hardware able to run 100 VMs, you’ll still have to pay just 1 Longhorn Datacenter Server license.

This is what Scott Bekker reported on a Redmondmag December 2005 article.

This move could slighty reduce customers feeling open source competing products (Xen) are a better investment.

By the way Scott example isn’t so unrealistic: hardware (RAM in particular) is becoming cheaper every day and 2007 (planned Longhorn Server release date) is just around the corner. Are you ready?

Quoting from IT Week:

Intel is promoting its next generation of business desktop technologies, which will come to market next summer in chips codenamed Avril. The key components amount to dual-core processors, Virtualization Technology (VT) hardware support, and Active Management Technology, or AMT.
…
VMware says that VT would enable it to remove less than one percent of its source code from its products. Of course, VMware probably won’t do that for a few years because to do so would spoil the performance of its tools when running on kit that doesn’t have VT. So it seems to me that VT simply makes it easier for Microsoft and open-source competitor Xen to catch up with VMware…

Read the whole article at source.

Rodney Buike wrote an interesting article on how to create a selfsigned SSL certificate and use it to protect Virtual Server 2005 web administration and virtual machines access.

Read it at source.

OpenVZ (formerly called Open Virtuozzo) is the SWsoft open source project, launched in September 2005, to bring Virtuozzo awareness to the masses.

Today the project launches a set of pre-built Debian 3.1 (Sarge) x86 and x64 Virtual Private Server (VPS) templates as reported in the official press release.

VMware achieved another success, as reported in the official press release:

VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems, today announced that eWEEK has named VMware Workstation 5, the fifth generation of its powerful desktop virtualization software, a Top Product of 2005. This is the fifth major industry award that Workstation 5 has won since its release in April 2005. In 2005, Workstation 5 won the eWEEK Labs Analyst’s Choice, PC Magazine Editors’ Choice, Redmond Magazine Editors’ Choice and Redmond Magazine Most Valuable Product awards….

Microsoft just released an interesting 270-pages toolkit for virtualization:

This set of Windows Server System Reference Architecture (WSSRA) documents can help large organizations and enterprises create environments for development and testing that emulate their own production environments.

WSSRA Virtual Environments for Development and Test (WSSRA-VE) is an extension of the WSSRA Implementation Guides. It describes the architectural blueprint, planning considerations, deployment practices, and operational considerations to create and support virtualized instantiation of the Windows Server System Reference Architecture. It leverages the power of Virtual Server 2005 and automated deployment and configuration tools to minimize the physical infrastructure and logistical overhead necessary to deploy emulations of various data center services…

Download it at source.

Thanks to VirtualServer.tv for the news.