virtualization.info Editors

Summary
A virtual evolution in IT organizations throughout the world has begun. It is estimated that currently 3% of all servers run virtually and that number is expected to grow rapidly over the next 5 years. VMware?s ESX server is the enterprise tool that provides the platform on which a complete virtual infrastructure can be designed, implemented, and managed. ESX is the most powerful, resilient and customizable of VMware?s three virtual platforms and this book will explore many of the possibilities that a virtual infrastructure running on ESX Server provides.

Server Sprawl and escalating IT costs have managers and system administrators scrambling to find ways to cut costs and reduce Total Cost of Ownership of their physical infrastructure. Combining software applications onto a single server, even if those applications are from the same software vendor, can be dangerous and problems hard to troubleshoot. VMware? ESX Server allows you to consolidate 15 to 20 or even more servers onto a single physical server reducing hardware, electrical, cooling, and administrative costs. These virtual servers run completely independent of each other so if one crashes the other are not affected.

Planning and implementing a server consolidation is a complex process. This book details the requirements for such a project, includes sample forms and templates, and delivers several physical to virtual migration strategies which will save both time and costs. Readers of this book will easily be able to plan and deploy VMware?s ESX Server and begin down the path of an evolved, virtual infrastructure in which costs, administration overhead, and complexity are reduced.

VMware has provided the technology for a virtual infrastructure and this book shows you how to build it.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1 – The Joy of ESX
• Chapter 2 – Installation
• Chapter 3 – Configuring a Virtual Machine, Gold Builds, and Clones
• Chapter 4 – Advanced Configurations
• Chapter 5 – Virtual Networking
• Chapter 6 – Physical-to-Virtual Migrations
• Chapter 7 – Server Consolidation
• Chapter 8 – Cool Tools for a Virtual Infrastructure
• Chapter 9 – Administering a Virtual Infrastructure
• Chapter 10 – Best Practices, Gotchas, and Common Problems
• Chapter 11 – VMware Under the Covers
• Chapter 12 – Backup Strategies for ESX Server and Virtual Machines
• Chapter 13 – Common and Necessary Command-Line Interface (CLI) Commands
• Chapter 11 – A Peek at the Future: It?s Totally Cool

Quoting from InformationWeek:

Virtual Iron Software, which came out of stealth mode last month, finally took the wraps off its channel plans Monday. The company, which develops Windows-based virtualization technologies for the data center, also revealed that Intel Capital has invested $8.5 million in the startup’s third round of venture funding.
While many companies develop software that allows businesses to virtualize servers, storage or applications, Virtual Iron’s technology addresses all of the elements in a data center, including CPUs, memory, I/O, and storage, said Mike Grandinetti, chief marketing for Virtual Iron, of Acton, Mass.

“This gives users the ability to pool those resources as needed,” Grandinetti said. “They can provision servers, networks, and storage automatically without having to touch them. In the past, whether in the mainframe or Unix space, there have been substantial capabilities to manage those resources. We are aimed at the Windows space.”

The investment will help Virtual Iron and Intel work together to develop data center virtualization, said Grandinetti. “It’s rare that Intel announces it is leading a round of funding,” he said. “The funding includes a collaboration agreement. We get access to Intel’s roadmaps, and to technologies like Intel’s VT (Virtualization Technology) chip.”

Lucy McQuilken, investment manager of Intel Capital, said that her company invested in Virtual Iron because of its technology for virtualizing an entire data center, which lets customers balance workloads and increase resource usage, all without the need to purchase excess capacities to meet peak loads. “Our strategy is to invest in companies aligned with [Intel’s] strategic goals,” McQuilken said.

This is not Intel’s first investment in the virtualization industry. Besides developing its Vanderpool virtualization technology for its processors, the company in June also invested in Herndon, Va.-based SWsoft, a developer of technologies to allow multiple virtual servers to share one physical server.

The initial version of the Virtual Iron virtualization platform was released early summer, said Grandinetti. Part of the funding will be used to expand its marketing efforts, which will now include a channel. “We were direct at first, like any early-stage company,” said Grandinetti. “We are now working with application vendors, and are recruiting resellers with data center experience, server and storage virtualization experience or experience in certain markets. A formal reseller program will be rolled out pretty quickly.”

Steven Bink reports this upcoming TechNet webcast from Microsoft, scheduled for Tuesday, October 04, 2005 1:00 PM (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada):

Today’s information technology organizations are under pressure to reduce costs and prioritize spending on new equipment. Virtualization technology is emerging as an effective way to increase both productivity and deployment flexibility. Virtualization technology can play a key role in uncoupling workloads from server resources and enabling a dynamic and automated datacenter. Microsoft is investing heavily in the next generation of virtualization technology and the management tools that will drive it. This session presents Microsoft’s virtualization roadmap and strategy, starting with Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. We then discuss the Windows hypervisor technology, which will be incorporated into the next release of Microsoft Windows Server.

Presenter: Mike Neil, Product Unit Manager, Microsoft Corporation

Mike Neil is the product unit manager of the Microsoft Windows Virtualization team. His team is responsible for Microsoft Virtual PC, Microsoft Virtual Server and the next-generation Windows virtualization technology. He joined Microsoft with the acquisition of Connectix, where he was vice president of engineering

The webcast will be 1 hour long, in English language only. It’s considered a Level 300 session. You can register for free here.

I surely will attend, hoping more details about Microsoft hypervisor and next Virtual Server will be disclosed.

Today VMware released the new 16958 build, labelled Release Candidate 1.

With this new phase VMware re-introduce the brand new, cool feature, introduced in beta1 and dropped in beta2, called VMware Player:

VMware Player is a utility that opens and plays VMware Workstation 4 and Workstation 5 virtual machines. On Windows hosts, the player also opens and plays Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server virtual machines and Symantec LiveState Recovery system images. VMware Player makes your VMware virtual machines accessible to colleagues, partners, customers, and clients who do not own VMware products.

The VMware Player is probably one of the most wanted feature by every VMware customer: it will be able to run a single, non-editable VM at a time, without installing all Workstation product.
This new opportunity will be mostly interesting for any salesman or teacher or conference speaker in need of a fast and non-invasive way to run VMs.
The VMware Player could also be the perfect companion of the new USB keys with U3 platform, covered in a previous post.

The build is still available for whole public. Download it here: http://www.vmware.com/programs/1/wkst5beta.do

Quoting from Redmondmag.com:

Over the next few years, Microsoft intends to phase out the virtualization products it acquired from Connectix Corp. and develop virtualization functionality of its own in the heart of the Windows operating system.

In an online customer chat last month with Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Windows Server Division, Microsoft offered much more detail than ever before about how it plans to integrate virtualization technology directly within Windows.

Redmond’s current virtualization product lineup consists of Virtual PC 2004 and Virtual Server 2005 (as well as Virtual PC for Mac). Eventually, Microsoft wants to put virtualization into the operating system via a virtualization stack and a thin software layer called the hypervisor. Microsoft describes the hypervisor as code that sits at the lowest level of the host OS to abstract and control hardware access for multiple guest operating systems.

The first move, announced in late August, will be to eliminate Virtual Server 2005 Service Pack 1, which has been in beta testing since April. Microsoft decided belatedly that SP1 had too much new functionality to be given away for free to anyone except customers already paying for Software Assurance. Renamed Virtual Server 2005 R2, the product is scheduled for a mid-Q4 release to manufacturing (RTM). There are no plans to update the beta code released as SP1 before R2’s RTM. With no major security issues plaguing Virtual Server 2005, Microsoft has no plans to deliver a bug fix-only SP1 now either.

Support for Linux guest operating systems is the most notable new feature coming in Virtual Server 2005 R2. Other new features will include:

• Support for x64 versions of Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP as hosts to allow more virtual machines per host
• Performance enhancements like improved hyper-threading (performance improvements will be best on guest process switching and memory-intensive applications)
• Built-in support for network installations of guest operating systems
• Higher availability through support for failover clustering across hosts

Next Step
Microsoft intends to quickly follow the R2 release with another release of Virtual Server. The as-yet-unnamed, post-R2 version of Virtual Server is supposed to enter beta testing in the first half of 2006 and RTM in the second half. It will support the hardware-level virtualization platforms being developed by Intel and AMD. Both Intel, via VT or “Vanderpool,” and AMD, with “Pacifica,” are working to make their chips more adept at simultaneously running multiple operating systems. The post-R2 Virtual Server beta release should coincide with the initial availability of server chips from those companies sporting the new virtualization architectures.

In the user interface, R2 will bring only minor changes to the process of creating VMs and for branding. According to Mike Neil, product unit manager for virtualization, Microsoft is also considering adding support for snapshot backups of virtual machines in the post-R2 version.

On the client side, Virtual PC 2004 will go through another rev before hypervisors make their way into the Windows client. “We are planning an upgrade for next year that will have performance improvements,” Neil said during the chat in response to a question complaining about the speed of the product versus competitors. “We have plans for an update to [Virtual PC] around Windows Vista that will provide improved performance as well as 64-bit host support. Look for more details on this toward the end of the year.”

Microsoft repeatedly answered requests for features during the customer chat by promising support in Windows virtualization, which will not arrive for some time. “[Hypervisor support in Longhorn] will ship after Longhorn Server,” Muglia said. Longhorn Server is promised for 2007. “The server implementation will come first as there are additional things which need to be done on the client.” Microsoft plans to deliver support in an R2 version, a service pack or an update of Longhorn Server. With the client piece so far out, there’s been no decision on whether it would be an upgrade for Windows Vista or whether it will ship with some other client operating system.

As if there were any doubt, Microsoft is not working on any VMware ESX-style virtualization software that requires a no host operating system (read no Windows). “The future of virtualization is in thin hypervisors with a virtualization stack built into the OS. That is what we’re doing,” Muglia said.

The frequently requested features that Windows virtualization will support include:

• A completely revamped UI
• Support for 64-bit guest operating systems
• Support for SMP guests
• Remote Desktop/Remote Desktop Protocol UI integration
• Published interfaces to let developers of other operating systems plug into the Windows infrastructure
• Copy-and-paste support and improvements in I/O performance
• The SMP guest issue is one of the most interesting features. Virtual Server currently scales across multi-processor servers up to 32 processors. No individual virtual machine, however, is allocated more than a single processor. Running Virtual Server on large SMP systems lets users run more virtual machines, not larger ones. With Windows virtualization, Microsoft expects to create virtual machines on guest operating systems encompassing several processors.

At the same time, Virtual Server currently runs on dual-core processors, but doesn’t recognize or use the second processor core. Microsoft aims to change that when it brings virtualization into Windows.

Along with the effort to shift from virtualization products to hypervisors and virtualization stacks within Windows, Microsoft is working on improving virtualization management technologies within the System Center product family. “We are building management tools to allow the placement of VMs and migration. We’re also enhancing [Systems Management Server] and [Microsoft Operations Manager] to treat VMs as a core part of Windows,” Muglia said.

Microsoft clearly has many balls in the air regarding virtualization. The change coming in Virtual Server 2005 R2 to support Linux guest operating systems is an important fix for enterprise customers with heterogeneous environments. At the same time, the recent chat highlighted a number of customer concerns, especially about I/O performance and feature parity with VMware in the SMP guest area. Microsoft’s design decision to focus development efforts on bundling virtualization into Windows means many of those issues will have to linger for another three to five years.

Quoting from the SWsoft official announcement:

Today, SWsoft, a recognized leader in server automation and virtualization software, officially announced the OPEN FUSION platform for the hosting industry. Pre-announced at HostingCon 2005, OPEN FUSION is an open and connected technology initiative for advancing the integration of a wide range of hosting systems including 3rd party modules, custom/in-house systems, and the full range of SWsoft products and solutions.

Resulting benefits of this platform vision include reduced time to market for service offerings, more automated and integrated systems with single sign-on and consistent UI, and improved overall infrastructure manageability.

“SWsoft has the widest range of automation and virtualization solutions, many of which have already been successfully incorporated into our business,” said Warren Adelman, COO, Go Daddy. “We look forward to influencing and participating in OPEN FUSION and see clear value in being able to offer broader services, obtain the highest levels of product and support quality, and reduce complexity and effort spent with in-house and third party integration.”

“One unified hosting standard is something that will help create a more unified experience for users and increased revenue and margins for hosting providers,” said Jeremy Christ, Business Development Director, ModernGigabyte, LLC. “Our new advanced billing solution, ModernBill, is already integrated into Plesk, creating a new attractive solution for end customers seeking complementary hosting package options.”

“SWsoft has focused on developing solutions that are not only innovative and cutting edge but that deliver real business value,” said Jeff Reinis, VP Product Management, The Planet. “We see the OPEN FUSION strategy solving exactly what the industry needs – more integrated solutions to offer more services at higher profit. We’re excited to partner with SWsoft and others on this important project.”

“Through joint collaboration with industry partners and providers, OPEN FUSION will enable a new generation of highly integrated services that can help grow the overall hosting market by an order of magnitude,” said Serguei Beloussov, CEO, SWsoft. “Our company is in a unique position to support this initiative with the highest level of commitment, our broad set of multi-platform products, rapidly growing partner ecosystem and largest hosting software R&D team.”

Next Generation Hosting Software Platform
OPEN FUSION is a multi-year initiative that will be delivered by SWsoft and its growing number of industry partners to directly address market needs for improved integration. This program will be fully supported, documented, maintained and promoted and will incorporate comprehensive training. .

Core Components of OPEN FUSION include:

• Consolidated API
  Open XML/web services based protocols with consistent vocabulary
• Pluggable, Integrated UI
  Complete guidelines, common vocabulary and graphical elements
• Authorization Engine
  Provides profile management, identity management and session management; integrates well with existing authentication and authorization solutions
• Licensing
  Common licensing across products with KA (Key Administration) as an example
• Version Management
  API and products consistently support multiple versions
• Safe Updates
  Supported and seamless updates and upgrades
• Localization
  Common API for localization and changing language/locale for all integrated applications simultaneously
• Documentation
  Single comprehensive description and OPEN roadmap for all of the above OPEN FUSION components

All existing SWsoft products, including Plesk, SiteBuilder, Virtuozzo, HSPComplete, and PEM are moving to the OPEN FUSION platform and will leverage and provide the core components. SWsoft will strongly support the efforts of other ISVs who join this collaborative initiative.

Roadmap, Availability and Industry Partners
OPEN FUSION integration will be delivered in stages and delivered in line with future industry and SWsoft product releases:

• OPEN FUSION V0
  Available now with Plesk/Expand, Virtuozzo/Plesk, HSPcomplete/Plesk, and an increasing number of 3rd party partners as examples
• OPEN FUSION V1
  Will be delivered in 2006 with complete SWsoft product integration (including PEM), additional partners, improved API and additional common framework elements
• OPEN FUSION V2
  To be shipped in 2007 with advanced performance, UI and broad range of applications further optimized specifically for OPEN FUSION by industry partners

Quoting from the SWsoft official announcement:

Today, SWsoft, an established leader in server automation and virtualization software, announced that as part of its 64-bit road map, Virtuozzo 2.6.2 for Linux server virtualization now supports AMD Opteron™ and Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T) based servers. Virtuozzo’s true 64-bit support enables customers to take full advantage of the benefits of 64-bit computing for virtualized infrastructures and applications. The combination of Linux, Virtuozzo server virtualization and 64-bit processing forms the core of a true “next generation” enterprise computing architecture.

“Offering AMD and Intel support at both host and guest levels, coupled with our near-zero overhead, provides maximum performance and ROI,” said Serguei Beloussov, CEO, SWsoft. “Virtuozzo’s ability to scale to the full power of the physical machine and to support virtually any hardware the operating system supports ensures no-compromise virtualization. Our solution supports a wide variety of scenarios from disaster recovery and server consolidation to business application workload agility, which enables real-time balancing of processing intensive applications.”

“The power and flexibility of virtualization is now a reality and is moving into the next generation of platforms,” said Tony Iams, Vice President, Ideas International. “Solutions such as SWsoft’s Virtuozzo server virtualization software offer 64-bit computing power for virtual scenarios that could help facilitate even faster adoption and transitions to next generation platforms.”

Unmatched Server Virtualization
Virtuozzo for Linux and Virtuozzo for Windows radically increase the power of enterprise servers by turning a single physical server into multiple isolated virtual private servers (VPSs). Virtuozzo operating system (OS) level virtualization delivers unique benefits including:

• High Performance
  Efficient technology with near-zero overhead delivers maximum density, scalability up to 16-CPU SMP and 64 GB of RAM, and availability by migrating VPSs between physical servers in seconds.
• Expansive Platform Support
  Linux and Windows operating systems and any underlying hardware; fully supports native 32 and 64-bit systems at host and guest levels.
• Powerful Toolsets
  Intuitive and effective management of large groups of servers and VPSs with a full set of client web-based and command line tools including physical to virtual (VZPV) capabilities.
• Rapid ROI
  Lower hardware, software and management costs due to advanced architecture and automation minimize total cost of ownership and drive rapid return-on-investment.

There’s a press coverage from ZDnet about this:

…
Virtuozzo is most popular among Web site hosting companies, which use the software to share the same server with multiple customers. Customers include GoDaddy and RackSpace.

Virtuozzo costs $999 per processor for its 32-bit software and $1,500 for the 64-bit version. The company charges double for use on dual-core chips, which feature two processing engines on a single slice of silicon. That policy stands in contrast to the one used by VMware, Microsoft and BEA Systems, which charge per processor and not per processor core.

Virtuozzo is not certified to run with Windows or Linux, but the company “has open discussions with a number of companies, including Red Hat, Novell and Microsoft,” the company said.
…

VMware arranged an online search engine for the many sessions presented at upcoming VMworld conference.
You can find it here: http://www.cplan.com/vmware/cc

I can go wrong but I have the impression this year the conference is less technical: just a couple of interesting “Products & Architecture” level 4 speeches:

• PAC267-C “ESX Server Storage III: Internals”
• PAC491 “The VMware SDK In-depth”

And not much more about upcoming technologies sessions:

• PAC345 “VMware and CPU Virtualization Technology”
• SLN223 “Maximizing Virtual Infrastructure with AMD Technologies: Dual-Core Servers, Direct Connect Architecture and Processor-enabled Virtualization with Pacifica “
• PAC500 “The VMware Hypercall Interface”
• PAC498-B “ESX Server Architectural Directions”
• PAC485 “Managing Data Center Resources Using the VirtualCenter Distributed Resource Scheduler”

Quoting from CRN:

VMware is preparing its next-generation ESX 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0 platforms to usher in a new era of virtualization.

At VMWorld next month, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company will debut its ESX 3.0 upgrade with greater scalability and memory and new support for iSCSI storage.

In addition, the new platform, which is expected to ship by the end of the year, will support Intel’s Virtualization Technology (IVT) and Advanced Micro Devices’ Pacifica hypervisor virtualization extensions.

The Intel server chips to support the platform are slated to ship in the first quarter of 2006, while AMD’s chips are expected to ship in the first half, sources said.

ESX 3.0, deemed an interim upgrade over version 2.5, will support four-way SMP and 16 Gbytes of RAM. This will pave the way for VARs to integrate large database workloads on virtual machines, according to sources briefed at VMware’s recent partner event in Vienna, Austria. The current version supports two-way machines and up to 3.6 Gbytes of memory.

In addition, VMware is introducing two automation features in VirtualCenter 2.0: Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and Distributed Availability Service (DAS), sources said.

Paul Ghostine, CEO of Emergent Online, a VMware solution provider based in Reston, Va., said the advanced features of the new platform surpass anything the competition has. “Our VMware business is growing through the roof,” said Ghostine, whose systems integration firm has generated roughly $6 million since becoming a VMware partner this summer.

Microsoft announced plans earlier this year to integrate hypervisor technology into the next major upgrade of its Windows server, but the software giant recently revised that date, saying the capability won’t make it until after Longhorn server in 2007.

The sophisticated new features of VMware’s platform underscore the company’s commitment to stay ahead of Microsoft and the open-source Xen virtualization project, partners say.

ESX 3.0, for instance, will support para-virtualization, a technique employed by the Xen project.

VMware’s DRS, meanwhile, is a collection of ESX servers that can be managed as a single pool and uses VMware’s VMotion live migration to move virtual machines between servers to balance workloads.

DAS enables clustering of ESX servers so that virtual machines can provide automatic failover from one host to another in the event of a host failure, according to the company’s Web site.

“It’s a poor man’s disaster recovery,” said one partner who is beta-testing the code but requested anonymity.

One VMware source told CRN that DRS and DAS are the crown jewels of VirtualCenter 2.0 but partner customization will be necessary.

“VirtualCenter looks at all servers as a grid, and if they need more power and space, you can set it to automatically get more space or pull a [virtual machine] out of one place and move it to other places where it makes sense,” said the VMware source.

Quoting from Computer World:

VMware Inc. has dominated the virtualization market for some time. But the company is scrambling to stay ahead of an increasingly competitive landscape that includes Microsoft Corp. and Linux vendors. In an interview with Computerworld, VMware President Diane Greene talked about how working with the open-source community could help her company stay ahead.

ComputerWorld: Where would you like to see improvement, or new direction, in your core technology, ESX?
Diane Greene: We’re looking forward to having our core technology go out with the VT [Intel Corp.’s Virtualization Technology] and Pacifica [from Advanced Micro Devices Inc.].

CW: What will Pacifica and VT technology do for your virtualization technology?
DG: It will reduce the [performance] overhead of CPU virtualization. They will make the CPU virtualization run even better, thus opening up the market even more.

CW: As Microsoft and Linux vendors start shipping virtualization within their products, how are you going to keep your customers from switching?
DG: We are working well with the open-source community. We see ourselves as complementary in working together. We have a pretty phenomenal track record of bringing out major new functionality on a regular basis. And we have a very big road map of more things to do along that way. We are going to continue moving our stuff forward. We are going to continue our partnerships with the community at large. We announced this community source [program] to allow our partners to participate more fully, and we have resell arrangements with all the x86 hardware vendors. … Customers are going to have the broadest array of choice and flexibility.

CW: People wonder whether Microsoft will have the an impact on VMware similar to what happened to Netscape in the browser battle. Are there any lessons learned in what happened to Netscape?
DG: We see some differences between us and Netscape. One, the technology involved is much deeper. There’s a lot more complexity and robustness requirements on it as well. No one cared if a browser crashed. And we have very strong partnerships with the hardware community, which Netscape was not able to do. We continually try to work with Microsoft because we think we are bringing them a lot of value. We’re helping move Windows into the data center, which we think is a very good thing for them.

CW: What are you trying to do with the open-source community?
DG: We are making sure that Linux runs really well with our products. And we regularly contribute to the open-source community, too.

CW: While XenSource has not yet released a product, do you see them as a potential competitor?
DG: I don’t know where they are going to play, because we haven’t seen the robustness, performance and functionality of their products. We are certainly saving our customers huge amounts of money today … and will continue to lead. We also launched an initiative around APIs to standardize some things around virtual machines, like how the OS runs in the virtual machine or what the disc format of the virtual machine is. And we certainly want to partner with XenSource and Microsoft in those areas.

CW: What are you doing with Sun Microsystems?
DG: We are supporting Solaris x86 in a virtual machine. We have had a lot of customers show a great deal of interest in that.

CW: Are there any other operating systems you would like to support?
DG: We would love to support a Mac OS. They’ve announced that they are going to move to the Intel platform — that’s the only reason I say that.

CW: How important is R&D for you – what percentage of your revenue is being spent there?
DG: It’s a huge investment for us. I can say we spend well above the norm. We plow our money back into R&D.

CW: What’s your relationship with EMC? What difference has it made to VMware’s life?
DG: We operate as a completely independent subsidiary. We’re not integrated. And this has been very important for us to do, because we’re all about heterogeneity within the x86 ecosystem. Having a parent like EMC has allowed us to be comfortable to continue to do bold things.