virtualization.info Editors

Quoting from the XenSource official announcement:

XenSource, Inc., the leader in infrastructure virtualization solutions based on the open source Xen hypervisor, today announced the open source community release of Xen 3.0. In its first major release in over a year, the Xen project has delivered a compelling virtualization feature set that is squarely targeted at enterprise infrastructure virtualization needs, focusing on support for symmetric multi-processing (SMP), large server memory configurations and near-native performance, and offering for the first time an ability to virtualize all guest operating systems.
…
Xen 3.0 supports Intel Virtualization Technology, which allows virtualized servers to run natively on the processor, exploiting hardware acceleration for CPU and memory virtualization. This support is key to Xen’s ability to virtualize all operating systems. Xen will also support AMD’s Pacifica hardware virtualization early in 2006.

Xen 3.0 also supports up to 32-way SMP virtualized guests, with an ability to dynamically “hot plug” CPUs to ensure best use of available resources. Used in conjunction with Xen’s ability to dynamically relocate a running guest from one server to another, this capability enables IT managers to optimally place workload on their available server resources. Additionally, Xen 3.0 offers support for two new addressing modes for servers with large memories: Physical Address Extension (PAE) allows 32-bit servers to address more than 4GB memory, and 64-bit addressing for up to 1TB of memory; and, support for Trusted Platform Modules, which provide hardware based security, attestation and trust, as well as security features contributed from IBM’s secure hypervisor initiative. A port of Xen, to Intel’s Itanium Architecture contributed by HP and Intel is also included, and a port of Xen to IBM’s Power PC architecture by IBM is close to completion, signaling broad cross-platform adoption of Xen.
…
“Red Hat recently announced that it will integrate and support Xen 3.0 virtualization in the upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux release, which is expected to ship by the end of 2006”, said Brian Stevens, CTO, Red Hat Inc. “Prior to that, Xen will be available in Fedora Core 5, and we are working closely with the XenSource team to ensure a smooth inclusion in the Red Hat release process….

Notice that there is no direct mention of eventual Xen capability to run Microsoft Windows guest operating systems.

You can download sources and .rpm for SuSE, Red Hat and Fedora Core here:
http://www.xensource.com/xen/downloads

Remember you can also try Xen with no effort downloading and running the new liveCD (called Demo CD)here.

Quoting from the Enomalism official site:

The Enomalism Virtualized Management Console (VMC) is a powerful web-based systems administrator / management tool for XEN hypervisor. Servers with hundreds of multiple isolated Virtual Private Servers (VPS) can be managed like a standalone server with Enomalism tools which include a VPS creation wizard and templates which facilitate VPS configuration, loading applications and centralized software management & deployment.

Enomalism also provides a single interface for managing multiple servers across assorted platforms. The same administrator can monitor and administer both Linux and Windows servers using the same Enomalism interface without having to learn extensive OS skills. Enomalism also eases cross-server and large server farm management. Applications can be deployed and updated on many servers simultaneously. The Enomalism provides a centralized look at server information and software versions across all server resources, facilitating versioning and patch management.

The web interface is developed in Django/Python and served by Twisted (a Python web server). It’s quite identical to the VMware ESX/GSX Server web management console but integrates Nagios also for servers discovery and services availability check.
The project is Open Source and really worth to check.

Thanks to OSNews for the news.

Quoting from Network World:

XenSource, the company founded to provide support and maintenance for the open source Xen virtual-machine monitor, is releasing its first commercial product, a set of tools that the company says will make it easier to virtualize servers.

Called XenOptimizer, the product is in beta for the latest release of Xen, a community-developed program that provides an alternative to commercial offerings from VMware and others.

XenSource is expected to announce this week that XenOptimizer will be generally available in the first quarter of next year, says CTO Simon Crosby. Pricing has not been released…

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from Mulling Security, the Matt Richard’s blog:

Most people are familiar with the traditional overflow exploit methodology – find a condition where more data is sent to a buffer than the buffer can handle and gain control of program execution. With new protections against buffer overflows popping up (Stackguard, propolice, XP SP2) and better OS level protections such as randomized entry points we might be tempted to think that we’re almost at the end of the road.

There’s a new trend in IT that could bring buffer overflows back. Virtualization is really starting to take hold everywhere from enterprise datacenters to the desktop. In and of itself this probably isn’t news to anyone nor is it necessarily very interesting. What is interesting is how virtualization might lead to a new type of buffer overflow attack….

Read the whole article at source.

Intel published this interesting paper on summer 2005, republished today by Bitpipe:

Underutilization of computing power can be costly. Studies show that for many companies, their IT infrastructure investment has yet to achieve the financial objectives anticipated or provide the expected boost in corporate productivity. A key objective of business is to maximize productivity while minimizing expense, yet many are failing to fully utilize their IT resources. Or they have overlooked the under-tapped capabilities they already have on the racks in their data center. As a result, computing power is wasted because servers are under-utilized.
This white paper explains how to:

• Better utilize resources in your data center
• Avoid unnecessary infrastructure expansion
• Improve network reliability and server utilization
• Better manage IT expenses

Learn about the benefits and advantages of implementing a consolidated virtualization strategy.

Download it at Bitpipe (registration required).

This is a question many of you already started to ask since a while.

What if I take my everyday desktop (workstation or laptop is indifferent) and move it on a virtual machine?

How much this will cost?
Today I can have a virtualization solution at no cost thanks to the just born VMware Player. Or, if I need more, can invest a small amount of money for a complete, brand new Workstation 5.5.

What I gain?
Give me a removable USB 2.0 hard drive (USB keys are still too small for an ordinary workstation space usage), let me move my VM inside it, and fundamentally I’ll have my portable desktop everywhere I need.

Snapshots will permit me (with VMware Player this is going to be complicated) to save my steps before installing something new (like a cumbersome Service Pack or a beta program or anything else) and having multiple branches of my desktop, to consolidate when I’m sure everything works ok.

Snapshots will also permit me to backup my data in a new fashionable way: no more file level copy on a removable backup disk, but the whole VM copy just on the physical machine itself.
As many backup as I want, if enough space. As often as I want (since Workstation 5.5 snapshots can be taken on the background and launched via command line interface, scripting the whole process).
If something goes wrong 1 minute and I’m back. Faster than restoring a Ghost clone.

The hyper-flexible networking features of Workstation could provide me a sandbox environment for host OS: I’ll just unload TCP/IP from my physical network card and just let my desktop VM going on the Net.
Or the opposite…: why don’t I use the host OS below to surf in Internet mantaining safe my desktop virtual environment? When I download something useful from a site I’ll just drag & drop it inside the VM and I’ll be happy.
In this second case I could even run my personal firewall and my antivirus just outside the VM, to avoid unfair I/O performances degradation.

The VMware virtual disks manipulation tools will permit me to enlarge my desktop virtual disk in seconds avoiding additional costs for 3rd parties disk management applications.

The native screenshots and movies capture feature will give me a way to document my work at no additional cost (even if there are a lot of good open source solutions to achieve this in any way).

What I lose?
Surely I’ll lose some performances. Virtualization in desktop products isn’t as fast as in datacenter products. I’m going to forget around 15% or more of my speed, for sure (but this is going to change as soon as AMD and Intel CPUs with virtualization extensions will wide spread).

Then I lose support for some complex graphical applications and last generation games: VMware actually just support Direct3D experimentally (I could choose to install this kind of things in the host OS anyway).

Eventually I’ll lose some money, since adopting this solution is possible only if I have enough RAM inside my physical machine. And considering today’s applications requirements this means at least 1-1,5GB.

And finally I will probably lose sleep, trying to configure the perfect environment…

Quoting from The Register:

Intel will next year launch its third branded PC platform, after Centrino and Viiv, this time pitched at corporate desktops.

As yet there’s no word on the platform’s go-to-market brandname, but it will almost certainly be based on Intel’s ‘Averill’ platform. Averill was announced at the chip giant’s Developer Forum in March this year for availability in 2006.
…
The platform will support Intel’s Active Management Technology, its enterprise-oriented remote-control system, aling with ‘LaGrande’, the company’s upcoming Trusted Computing security sub-system, and Virtualisation Technology….

Read the whole article at source.

Podtech.net realized an interesting podcast with Mike Palin, Leostream COO, about Leostream VMC and other Leostream solutions.

Worth the listening: http://www.podtech.net/?p=221

Podtech.net realized an interesting podcast with Seruei Beloussov, SWsoft CEO, about Virtuozzo and other SWsoft solutions.

Worth the listening: http://www.podtech.net/?p=223

This is nice: Ben Armstrong just posted on his blog a new script for getting events from Virtual Server VMs with VBScript:

Option Explicit

Dim vs, vm, alive

‘Jump to the main routine

main()

‘============================’

sub keepAlive()

‘ This subroutine makes sure that the script hangs around
‘ in order to capture any server events

On Error Resume Next

while (alive = 1)
WScript.Sleep(500)
wend

end sub

‘============================’

Sub vm_OnStateChange(vmState)

wscript.echo vmState

alive = 0

end sub

‘============================’

sub main()

alive = 1

Set vs = WScript.CreateObject( “VirtualServer.Application” )

set vm = vs.FindVirtualMachine(“My Test Virtual Machine”)

WScript.ConnectObject vm, “vm_”

keepAlive()

end sub

‘===========================’