virtualization.info Editors

It’s finally out.

One of the most expected virtualization release, Workstation 5.5 (build 18463) brings in a lot of new features and improvements:

• Full support for 64-bit guest operating systems and improved support for 64-bit host operating systems enable users to work in a broader range of environments
• Experimental support for two-way Virtual Symmetric Multiprocessing (Virtual SMP) enables multiprocessor virtual machines
• VMware Player gives you greater flexibility in distributing virtual machines
• Improved support for 32-bit host and guest operating systems
• Workstation emulates a new Ethernet adapter type for 64-bit guests
• Workstation 5.5 driver certification updates
• Improved import capability lets you open and import Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server virtual machines, as well as Symantec LiveState Recovery system images, directly into Workstation
• On Windows hosts, enhancements to the user interface let you customize Workstation toolbars to suit your workstyle
• Enhanced support for wireless Ethernet adapters used in bridged networking lets you connect your virtual machines to wireless networks on Linux hosts
• Enhanced autodetect makes it easier to configure devices for virtual machines
• Enhanced autoconnect automatically reconnnects manually connected USB devices
• Enhanced snapshot management makes it easier to work with snapshots
• Enhanced command line interface helps you manage snapshots
• Memory page trimming can be disabled to improve performance
• Enhanced product update checking makes it more convenient to keep your Workstation software up to date
• On Linux hosts, the user interface has been enhanced to work better with desktop appearance themes
• Workstation 5.5 extends the display resizing features Autofit Guest and Fit Guest Now to Linux guests

You really need to read the Release Notes to have a first overview of all these things.

But there’s more: with VMware Workstation 5.5 comes out a series of very useful utilities (producted by VMware but not officially supported):

• VMware Player
  VMware Player is free software that enables PC users to easily run any virtual machine on a Windows or Linux PC. VMware Player runs virtual machines created by VMware Workstation, GSX Server or ESX Server and also supports Microsoft virtual machines and Symantec LiveState Recovery disk formats.
• Processor Check for 64-Bit Compatibility
  This is a standalone processor check utility which you can use without VMware Workstation to perform the same check and determine whether your CPU is supported for virtual machines with 64-bit guest operating systems.
• Disk Mount
  This is a Windows installer for the VMware DiskMount utility. With the VMware DiskMount utility, a VMware virtual disk file can be mounted as a Windows drive letter for read/write access to the files it contains.
• Movie Decoder
  This is a Windows installer for the movie decoder. This utility is required to play movies recorded using VMware Workstation 5.
• Virtual Machine Importer
  This is a Windows installer for the VMware Virtual Machine Importer. This utility allows you to convert a Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Virtual Server virtual machine into a VMware Workstation 4 or 5 virtual machine.

Download everything (except the Player) here: http://www.vmware.com/download/ws
Download the Player (which is still reported as beta 2) here: http://www.vmware.com/download/player

Fedora Core 5 Test 1 is just released to the public. As the official announcement says one notable feature is the appearence of a Xen 3.0 snapshot (xen-3.0-0.20050912.fc5.1).

You can download it here:
http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html

Quoting from the Microsoft official download page:

The Virtual Machine Network Driver allows the Device emulator’s OS (or even the Virtual PC OS, as the case may be) to emulate its own network connection. Since the physical network interface on the host machine is now “virtualized”, you have a way to get two IP Addresses – one for the host PC, and one for the operating system that is running within the Device Emulator (or Virtual PC). Device Emulator users using the VMNet Driver can connect to the host machine over TCP or UDP as the alternative to the standard “Activesync over DMA” solution.

Thanks to Steven Bink for the news.

I just discovered an interesting application project for virtual machines technology called Virtual Workspaces:

A virtual workspace is an abstraction of an execution environment that can be made dynamically available to authorized clients by using well-defined protocols. The abstraction captures resource quota assigned to such execution environment on deployment (such as CPU or memory share) as well as software configuration aspects of the environment (such as operating system installation or provided services). The Workspace Service allows a Grid client to dynamically deploy and manage workspaces.

Workspaces can be implemented and deployed in many ways. One potential implementation is to deploy boot images, another is to use virtual machines, and yet another, to simply dynamically provide access to already deployed workspaces by creating Unix accounts on the fly. Our current infrastructure focuses primarily on the deployment and management of virtual machines, but we also provide basic services for creating dynamic accounts.

The workspace service implementation based on VMs takes as input a VM image wrapped in meta-data providing critical deployment information and deploys the VM on one of the physical hosts administered by it. Our implementation is based on the Globus Toolkit 4 (GT4) — this allows us to leverage an interaction protocol for Grid Services as well as many tools available in the Globus Toolkit such as authentication and authorization mechanisms or persistence. Although we experimented with VMware in the past, our current implementation is based on the Xen hypervisor: an open source, efficient implementation.

As some VMware users probably know there are some issues with ACPI in Microsoft Windows 2000 guest OSes virtual machines.
VMware offers a workaround but this won’t work well if you usually update your virtual machine with service packs and Windows Updates.

Someone investigated the issue deeply and produced a long, detailed support article:
http://starship.python.net/crew/timehorse/VMware.html

Quoting from Ask Dr. Root blog:

Consolidating with Solaris Containers:

Solaris Containers combine operating system partitioning with fine-grained resource controls to allow servers to be partitioned at sub-CPU granularity without having to replicate the operating system image itself. They provide a virtualised Solaris 10 Operating System image including a unique root file system, a shared read-only set of system executables and libraries, and whatever resources the root administrator assigns to the container at creation time. Solaris containers can be booted and shut down just like any instance of the Solaris 10 OS, and rebooted in seconds if the need arises. Unlike virtual machines, which must intercept every single interrupt and allocate it to the right instance, Solaris Containers support mainframe-level partitioning capabilities with almost zero overhead.

Consolidating using VMware ESX Server :

When an IT organization wishes to consolidate multiple Linux applications, multiple Microsoft Windows applications, Solaris OS applications, or a combination of them all, ESX Server is the consolidation option of choice. Not only can its virtual machine technology support all operating systems, it can support multiple versions of each one as well. IT organizations consolidating onto Sun x64 servers running ESX Server have the additional benefit of migration software that helps to package up an entire environment so that it can be installed in its own virtual machine.

What happens when the most famous open source virtualization project (Xen) meets the most famous open source liveCD project (Knoppix)? Xenoppix.

Xenoppix is a new Knoppix 4.0 customization including the Xen package and 2 pre-made guest OSes: NetBSD and Plan9.
X window System is prepared by KNOPPIX and GUI of GuestOS is mapped to the X11 using VNC full-screen mode

You really need to read the website for requirements and further explainations but if you never tried Xen this is a very good way to start in about 5 minutes.

I just wonder if Xenoppix could run inside a VMware Player virtual machine, launching then both its guests…. 🙂

Quoting from the Parallels official announcement:

Paralells, Inc. announced today that it is bringing hypervisor virtualization technology to the desktop by incorporating a lightweight hypervisor into the beta4 version of Parallels Workstation 2.0, the company’s efficient, cost effective, easy-to-use desktop virtualization solution. Parallels Workstation’s lightweight hypervisor inserts a thin layer of software between the machine’s hardware and the primary operating system that directly controls some hardware profiles and resources, resulting in maximally efficient, stable and secure virtual machines. In addition, the technology optimizes Parallels Workstation to work seamlessly with forthcoming hardware virtualization technologies like Intel VT and AMD Pacifica

A free, fully functional 60-day trial version of the beta4 version of Parallels Workstation is available for download at www.parallels.com/en/download!

“Including lightweight hypervisor technology into Parallels Workstation 2.0 ensures that the product is a virtualization solution for today, and tomorrow,” said Benjamin Rudolph, Parallels’ Marketing Manager. “Parallels Workstation’s lightweight hypervisor not only increases virtual machine stability, performance and security, but also helps the product to work efficiently with upcoming virtualization-optimized processors from Intel and AMD.”…

Are you interested in creating a virtuali infrastructure and offer virtual machines to your customers (maybe cause your are an Application Solution Provider) or partners?

Brian Madden just announced two news whitepaper from Citrix on how to set up this kind of environment (they call it Hosted Client Solutions) with Microsoft Windows Server 2003, VMware Workstation 5.0 or Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 SP1 and Citrix Presentation Server 4.0:

• Hosted Client Solutions on VMware Workstation
• Hosted Client Solutions on Microsoft Virtual PC

It really worth the read.

Quoting from CRN:

Server virtualization isn’t just for the big guys anymore. Small businesses can also benefit from virtualization, allowing offices of any size to access the latest enterprise-quality technology.

Ron Kramer has built his business around the idea that server virtualization can help small businesses work better, and his one-man IT-shop-for-hire is thriving.
…
In 2001, he started All Computer Solutions in Portland and now has more than 20 high-end boutique small-business clients.

Before virtualization technology, Kramer was putting two to four servers in each client’s office. Today, he takes a different approach. “I’ll put in one medium-powered HP ProLiant ML Series Server, and I’ll build it out with VMware GSX Server,” he said. “I’ll build a very robust host and we’ll have anywhere from three to six guest operating systems on that hardware. What virtualization allows me to do is become hardware independent.”…

Read the whole article at source.