virtualization.info Editors

Leveraging virtual machines for Business Continuity

by

Quoting from Continuity Central:

Typically, discussions around server virtualization seem to focus on consolidation, easier management, and facilitation of older applications/operating systems on newer platforms. However, there are some interesting and, in fact, exciting business continuity solutions that are empowered through server virtualization.

Specifically, by combining virtual machines with a data protection/replication technology (which is the heart of most business continuity approaches), one can…

Read the whole article at source.

Thanks to VMTN Blog for the news.

High demand for virtualization competencies on IT jobs

by

VMTN Blog reports IT industry started asking for more virtualization competencies on job recruiment.
Earning a VMware Certified Professional credential can help to be employeed as soon as virtualization specialists increase in availability.

I personally have two thoughts about this:

  • Quite every person on the IT world tried at least once VMware Workstation or Microsoft Virtual PC or QEmu. And a lot of them works with these products often. This kind of virtualization experience is considered enough to claim to be a virtualization specialist.
    But the large majority of these claimed specialists never worked or even saw things like ESX, GSX, VirtualCenter, Blades, Fiber Channel SANs, etc. and never done things like capacity planning, P2V, virtual networks designing, etc.
    Modern virtualization is in its infancy and as usually happens in these cases, companies must be really aware of who is expert and who pretend to be so. Otherwise virtualization performances will be poor or unacceptable, and virtualization projects will eventually fail, slowing down progress.
  • In my country, Italy, the request for virtualization competencies is still near to zero. I suspect that apart U.S. few other countries already started to feel the need of virtualization knowledge. For every other world nation the large part of companies requests can still be managed by a small bunch (10-20) of consultant companies.
    Things are going to change but not sooner than another couple of years.

Whitepaper: Intel Virtualization Technology Specification for the IA-32 Intel Architecture

by

This whitepaper is quoted on the new Intel DevX article posted here, describing how Intel Virtualization Technology solves virtual machines privileges conflict.

It’s highly technical and could be useless for many, but gives you a great insight of how Intel VT really works:

This documents describes Intel Virtualization Technology for IA-32 processors, referred to as VT-x. VT-x constitutes a set of virtual-machine extensions (VMX) that support virtualization of processor hardware for multiple software environments by using virtual machines.

This document is organized as follows:

  • Chapter 1 gives an overview of the virtual-machine extensions.
  • Chapter 2 details the virtual-machine control structure (VMCS) and its usage.
  • Chapter 3 details processor behavior in VMX non-root operation.
  • Chapter 4 details the operation of VM entries.
  • Chapter 5 details the operation of VM exits.
  • Chapter 6 details VMX capability reporting.
  • Chapter 7 provides a reference for the new VMX instructions.
  • Chapter 8 details interactions between VMX operation and system-management mode (SMM).

Download it here.

Intel’s VT-x technology and the secrets of virtualization

by

Quoting from Intel DevX Software Network:

There’s a problem with virtualization. It’s not a huge problem, but it’s an impediment, in my opinion, to some large-scale deployments of virtualization technology across the enterprise data center. The problem is that the venerable x86 architecture wasn’t designed for virtualization. Operating systems have complete control over the processor and the hardware; they understand the full instruction set, and can exercise every mode, use every interrupt, access every page of memory. That makes it hard for a virtual machine monitor (VMM) to exercise supervision over operating systems running in virtual machines, often called guest operating systems.

If the guest OS is trying to access physical memory, physical devices, or invoke specific interrupts, a software-based VMM is largely powerless to stop it. If there are multiple guest operating systems running in different virtual machines, the VMM has to work really hard to trick those guest operating systems into playing nicely with each other, and not stomping all over each other’s resources. These workarounds waste CPU cycles, lowering overall efficiency. They’re also not always perfect.
…
In this article, we’re going to talk about what I see as the biggest challenge facing virtualization, which is the ring privilege problem. VT-x neatly solves this problem…

Read the whole article at source.

Thanks to VMTN Blog for the news.

Microsoft releases Virtual Server 2005 R2 for beta testers

by

Microsoft finally granted the promised Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise Edition (x86 or x64) to its beta testers:

Microsoft is proud to announce the release of Virtual Server 2005 R2. As a participant in the Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Beta tester program you can get your complimentary* product activation key just by completing the order form below.

Offer good only to registered participants of the Microsoft Beta Tester program. Limit one complimentary copy of Virtual Server 2005 R2 per person, original PIN and/or e-mail address. This offer is non-transferable and not available to employees of Microsoft Corporation. This offer expires on March 30, 2006 and is not redeemable for cash.

If you are among them you just received the instructions email and downloaded your copy.

Community virtual machines started appearing at light speed

by

As I predicted announcing the VMware opening of its Community Virtual Machines site, many projects immediately started producing a virtual machine for VMware Player to be sponsorized online.

So we’ll soon have a VM providing a development environment for pfSense (which is a worderful liveCD firewall based on FreeBSD and forked from the well-know m0n0wall project); a VM creating new virtual machines by customers orders through The Virtual Machine Order HOTLINE; and how knows how many other projects actually in planning phase.

I’ll update this post with more interesting projects as soon as I know about them.

Xen virtualization quickly becoming open source “killer app”

by

Quoting from SearchOpenSource:

As the end of the year approaches, it appears that virtualization’s time in the open source spotlight has all but come.

Whether it is because of the machinations of companies like Palo Alto, Calif.-based XenSource Inc. or analyst endorsement, emulating an enterprise-class infrastructure environment using open source has been on the rise in 2005. And, now, it looks ready to burst next year.
…
This period of hot growth was buoyed last week when XenSource announced the release of Xen 3.0, which the company said was specifically targeted at enterprise infrastructure virtualization needs.
…
The rise of OSS virtualization has caught the eye of CEO of the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) Stuart Cohen, who noted that the rise of Linux means virtualization will become a key requirement in enterprises that had adopted open source technologies…


Read the whole story at source.

Sun Solaris 10 Containers run other operating systems binaries with BrandZ

by

With Solaris 10 Sun launched an OS partitioning technology known as Containers.
Containers permit to create Zones where the original operating system appear as a new instance, with its own network settings and applications.

By default Solaris Containers, which offer what SWsoft offers today on Linux and Windows with Virtuozzo, can only create multiple native OS partitions so they aren’t comparable to VMware or Microsoft virtualization technologies. But this could change soon.

A new project called BrandZ appeared on the Open Solaris community:

BrandZ is a framework that extends the Solaris Zones infrastructure to create Branded Zones, which are zones that contain non-native operating environments. The term “non-native” is intentionally vague, as the infrastructure allows for the creation of a wide range of operating environments.

Each operating environment is provided by a brand that plugs into the BrandZ framework. A brand may be as simple as an environment with the standard Solaris utilities replaced by their GNU equivalents, or as complex as a complete Linux userspace.

Actually BrandZ is already in the work, with an available lx brand able to run Linux binary application unmodified on a Solaris zone, on x86 or x64 environments.

Another project called ZoneBSD, started quite a year ago, aims to run a FreeBSD environment on a Solaris zone as well.