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These tasks and hardware costs can be greatly minimized with the use ofVMwares product offerings. ESX Server can be used to create a virtual RAC infrastructure. ESX Server accomplishes this by transforming a physical system into a pool of logical computing resources. Each RAC nodes operating system and Oracle software are encapsulated into isolated virtual machines. These virtual machines, in turn, can reside on a single server.

In addition, VirtualCenter will be used to manage, monitor, and provision resources within the virtual RAC infrastructure. VirtualCenter can clone the virtual RAC nodes, thereby scaling the existing cluster or replicating the cluster for development or test purposes.

By using VMwares virtualization technology and the techniques described in this pape RAC deployments can be reduced to basic Database and System Administration tasks. This greatly reduces the complexity and costs associated with a traditional RAC infrastructure. Oracle administrators no longer must set up individual nodes of a cluster, but can instead clone a master to create new nodes. Moreover, the use of VMware ESX Server allows multiple virtual machines to coexist on a single piece of hardware, thus massively reducing hardware costs for deploy ment. Using the described methodology, operational Real Application Clusters can be created in the time it takes to clone nodes and edit a few files entries (approximately 30 minutes per node).

Under a partnership arrangement expected to be announced next week, Oracle plans to distribute and support versions of its software designed to run in the VMware virtual server environment. The database giant will also standardize its internal development on VMware.

“What it means for the customer is that when we release the product, we will release the standard CD version and we will release versions which are VMware-ready,” said Prem Kumar, vice president of Oracle’s server technologies division. Oracle’s database, application server, collaboration suite and management software will all be distributed in this fashion, he said.

Kumar’s 4,000 person group is now using VMware as a standard part of its software development process, which means that VMware customers will receive a better level of support from the database giant, VMware said.

Oracle supports and distributes its server software for a wide variety of systems, including those based on Intel, Sun Microsystems, and IBM processors. VMware’s virtualization software, which can mimic the role of a hardware server, will be added to this list in the first half of 2005.

“We are being treated like any other hardware platform right now,” said Diane Greene, president of VMware, which is operated as an independent subsidiary of EMC. “This is actually a profound new way to let people get their software,” she said.

Instead of running an install wizard and then configuring Oracle’s software on their computer, users who are running the VMware software will instead be able to download a VMware file that will contain both the Linux operating system, as well as a pre-configured version of Oracle’s software that will be immediately ready to run.

This product is particularly useful for developers who will be able to test and tinker with Oracle’s software in a virtual environment. Any changes they make in the virtual environment will not affect the underlying operating system.

EMC’s acquisition of VMware has proved to be a good move for the company, said EMC CEO Joe Tucci, speaking at a keynote address at the Oracle conference Thursday. VMware’s sales have been growing at over 100 percent per year, and the software company is now on track to reach sales of $250 million, Tucci said.

In addition to the added security and ease-of-use benefits that come with running software in a virtual environment, VMware’s ability to run a number of virtual server environments in tandem lets customers get more use out of their systems, Tucci said.

“Our growing partnership with Oracle’s Server Technologies division mirrors customers’ increasing preference for VMware virtual infrastructure environments to address business-critical computing requirements,” said Diane Greene, president, VMware. “The extension of our relationship demonstrates our mutual commitment to deliver performance-optimized, fully supported systems consisting of industry-leading database, application server, business applications, and virtualization solutions. Moreover, VMware virtual machine containers maximize hardware utilization, facilitate provisioning and management, enable full flexibility across hardware environments, and allow servicing of systems without downtime and dynamic rightsizing across server farms through VMotion.”

“This partnership brings great value to Oracle Server Technologies product development efforts,” said Prem Kumar, vice president, Server Technologies Engineering, Oracle Corporation. “Our use of VMware as our standard virtualized development platform will simplify and accelerate our infrastructure product development efforts as well as help ensure that our Oracle 10g infrastructure software is developed, tested and optimized for execution on VMware virtual machines.”

As part of this new relationship Oracle and VMware are working towards an agreement to facilitate the following objectives:

VMware as a Standard Virtualized Development Platform for Oracle Server Technologies Products: Oracle Server Technologies development teams plan to standardize on VMware virtual infrastructure as part of the standard Linux and Windows x86 development, test and support environment for Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Application Server 10g, Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g, and Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g.

With more than 7,000 VMware virtual machines proposed for internal deployment, Oracle Server Technologies division plans to use VMware virtual infrastructure as a standard virtualized development platform for its database products. This use of VMware products within Oracle Server Technologies can help accelerate product delivery for Oracle customers.

Software Distribution in VMware Virtual Machines: Oracle plans to continue offering a pre-installed and fully configured evaluation version of an Oracle Database 10g environment within VMware virtual infrastructure. To date, more than 12,000 copies of Oracle Database 10g have been distributed within VMware virtual machines.

Joint Support Alignment: As part of this partnership, Oracle and VMware intend to work together to provide customers problem resolution for Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Application Server 10g, Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g, and Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g running on VMware. Oracle plans to provide support of the Oracle Server Technologies software running in VMware virtual machines as it provides support to other supported physical hardware.

Joint Marketing and Customer Solutions: Oracle plans to market solutions including VMware virtual infrastructure for customer environments focused on hardware containment, cost savings and dynamic rightsizing provided by virtualization environments. The two companies also plan to collaborate on proven joint solutions and deployment guides for Oracle migrations, co-existence strategies, and Oracle hardware containment strategies.

“Virtual infrastructure innovation has moved far beyond simple server consolidation to a new level of technological sophistication. For customers, these new releases translate to streamlined, optimized enterprise IT and a powerful way to connect IT to business needs,” said Michael Mullany, vice president of marketing at VMware. “By continuing to deliver features such as SAN transparency which allows customers to adopt virtual infrastructure while leveraging existing SAN management capabilities, VMware continues to raise the bar for enterprise-class virtualization.”

Industry Leading Virtual Infrastructure Platform for the Enterprise
Adopted by thousands of IT organizations worldwide over the last three years, VMware ESX Server is the industry leading virtual infrastructure platform for the enterprise. ESX Server speeds service deployments and adds management flexibility by partitioning industry-standard servers into a pool of secure, portable and hardware-independent virtual machines. Customers using ESX Server reduce total cost of ownership by increasing server utilization and simplifying system administration. The unique bare-metal architecture of ESX Server offers market leading reliability, performance, Virtual SMP support and scalability.

New features in VMware ESX Server 2.5 include:

– Boot from SAN. ESX Server runs virtual machines on diskless servers and blades by booting the ESX Server kernel directly from a SAN.
– SAN transparency. ESX Server enables native SAN access from within virtual machines. Guest operating systems can now directly access extended SAN functionality as if they were running directly on the physical hardware. Users can run SAN backup and replication software that depends on native access inside virtual machines or offload file-level backups to SAN-based utilities.
– Automated ESX Server installation. Users can use scripts to speed deployment of multi-server installations and integrate with third-party provisioning products from Altiris, HP, IBM and LANDesk.
– Expanded ESX Server hardware support. ESX Server has been tested with and fully supports industry leading rack and blade servers from Dell, HP and IBM, using AMD and Intel processors.
– Expanded ESX Server guest operating system support. ESX Server adds full support for FreeBSD 4.9, Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 and SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9.
– Common Information Model (CIM) API and object model. The VMware CIM SDK enables monitoring of ESX Server host and virtual machine storage resources from any CIM-aware client or management tool.

“Our VMware virtual infrastructure deployment has been a real success,” said Doug Baer, systems engineer at Desert Schools Federal Credit Union. “We already have most of our corporate intranet, messaging and management servers running in ESX Server virtual machines and we look forward to using the new features in ESX Server 2.5. The beta versions of ESX Server 2.5 and VirtualCenter 1.2 have performed exceptionally. The new scripted installs are a piece of cake and we’ll be using them to streamline deployment of new ESX Server hosts. We’re already planning to make use of the SAN transparency in ESX Server 2.5 to facilitate migration of SAN-attached hosts from physical to virtual hardware. The ability to present a raw SAN device to a virtual machine will prove invaluable in this effort.”

Virtual Infrastructure Management Software for the Responsive Enterprise
VMware VirtualCenter is virtual infrastructure management software that provides a central and secure point of control for virtual computing resources. VirtualCenter creates a more responsive data center, enabling faster reconfiguration and reallocation of applications and services. VirtualCenter allows for instant provisioning of servers and decreases user-downtime while optimizing the data center.

VirtualCenter is a powerful way to connect IT to business needs. With VirtualCenter, IT infrastructure becomes more flexible, efficient and responsive. VirtualCenter uniquely leverages virtual computing, storage and networking to improve data center management and reduce cost. With VMotion, virtual machines can be migrated while running for dynamic load balancing and zero-downtime maintenance.

New features in VMware VirtualCenter 1.2 and VMware Virtual Infrastructure SDK 1.2 include:

– Support for ESX Server 2.5. Users can manage the latest VMware ESX Server release.
– Support for ESX Server SAN transparency. VirtualCenter and the Virtual Infrastructure SDK offer full management of virtual machines using SAN transparency and simplify the management of clustered virtual machines.
– Exportable performance and host summary data. Users can export virtual machine performance statistics in HTML and Excel formats for offline analysis and reporting.
– Enhanced VMware GSX Server support. Users can migrate and clone virtual machines between ESX Server and GSX Server hosts and use the Virtual Infrastructure SDK to automate management of GSX Server hosts.

“Virtual infrastructure has become one of the hottest IT topics around and our experiences with the technology have been very positive,” said Matthew Legg, ITDS technical consultant at UK-based Norwich Union. “It’s good to see VMware continuing to innovate to include features that customers are demanding for improved flexibility and data center management.”

With the VMware CIM SDK, independent software vendors can:

VMM simplifies day-to-day management and operation of virtual machines by providing host to VM association and remote access to VM control functions (including start, stop, suspend and reset). VMM also provides at a glance view of VM and host server resource consumption. Using VMM, IT administrators can easily identify VMs or host servers reaching high CPU, memory or disk utilization levels. VMM provides the ability to easily move VMs between host server resources to balance the workload across host servers and better optimize use of datacenter resources. In the future, VMM will also provide the foundation for automating Physical to Virtual (P2V) migrations.

Ideal for:

– ProLiant server customers adopting Microsoft Virtual Server 2005
VMM complements Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 with a robust VM management solution designed for multi-VM management

– VMware customers that want a unified view of ProLiant server and Virtual Machine resources
Integration with HP SIM leverages existing management structure to now control your virtual machines the same as your physical servers

It is always a nice an sunny day when it is time to test and write about beta software; especially when this application includes so many wonderful new features you can’t stop yapping about. VMWare has been a leader in the virtual machine world and they are about to increase the gap between them and the competition with Workstation 5.0. Being a long time user of VMWare Workstation, it is always a pleasure to experience such a great application get better. This new Workstation, though still in beta, has come with a bag of new goodies every user is sure to love.

Though there isn’t much difference in the user interface of VMWare Workstation 5.0 Beta when compared to Workstation 4.2, however, the new Beta includes a number of new features. One of the features which I found extremely useful is the ability to take more than one screenshot of your guest operating system. Now it is possible to have multiple saved screenshots of before and after a certain legacy software is installed. There is also experimental support for isochronous USB devices; so you can use a webcam or record multi-track audio in a guest operating system. Workstation 5 supports streaming audio and video from USB input devices.

New Features

Workstation 5 has further support for 64Bit host hardware. AMD64 Opteron, Athlon 64 and Intel IA-32e CPU (including “Nocona”) have found enhanced support in version 5. Workstation 5 also supports new 64-bit host operating systems, including SuSE 9.1, Windows XP (64-bit edition), and Windows Server 2003 (64-bit edition).

Workstation 5 also includes the ability to clone a virtual machine. You are given the ability to fully clone a virtual machine, in which it is a fully independent virtual machine with its own virtual disk; or you can also have a linked clone. Linked clones are new virtual machines that share virtual disks with the original virtual machine, saving space.

A few new operating systems have found support under Workstation 5, including Solaris 9 and 10, Longhorn, and new Linux distributions running the 2.6 kernel. Also, support has been added to Workstation 5 beta for Java Desktop Systems.

Under Linux, Workstation 5 now installs Linux Tools under X and also features support for wireless networking.

A new feature which is sure to have Microsoft themselves impressed is the ability of Workstation 5 beta to convert a virtual machine created in Microsoft Virtual PC for use with VMWare Workstation. The new V2V assistant guides the user through the entire process. To test the new V2V assistant, I setup a virtual machine in Virtual PC and later converted the virtual machine to use with VMWare Workstation 5 Beta.

The V2V assistant guides the user through the entire process; a heads up notice to users who wish to convert their VirtualPC virtual machines using the V2V assistant, make sure that the virtual machine is not paused within VirtualPC, or the conversion will not work. You are given the option to either make a copy of the entire virtual machine which will be later converted to use with Workstation, or to link the existing virtual machine. Though the linking process takes less time than the copying process, using the linked virtual machine with Workstation automatically invalidates it with VirtualPC; which means that you won’t be able to use the linked virtual machine with both. I chose to link the virtual machine first in order to see how effective it can be. The conversion took less than 1 minute, after the V2V assistant was done, I ran the newly linked virtual machine on Workstation 5 Beta. The Windows XP logo successfully loaded, however, I was presented with the infamous Blue-Screen Of Death (BSOD). The cause of this error is most likely associated with the sudden change of hardware that Workstation emulates; since we originally installed Windows XP using VirtualPC using its own emulated hardware. Using the copy feature only lasted 4 minutes; which really comes in handy if you want to preserve the virtual machine to run it on VirtualPC.

Performance

It isn’t exactly fair to compare the performance of an application in beta phase and expect improvements over previous versions. Workstation 5 Beta did not match up well against its previous version, Workstation 4.5.2. Running a few benchmarks using PassMark PerformanceTest v5.0, we see no improvements in performance as of yet in this beta release. In fact, Workstation 5.0 Beta performed rather slowly when compared to its predecessor (or soon to be). Again, Workstation 5 is still in beta phase and has tons of tweaks and performance enhancements to go before its final release. Below are the benchmarks which were performed on both Workstations 4.5.2 and Workstation 5.0 Beta. The host machine’s specs are as follows:

Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz HT
Abit IC7-G Motherboard
Two 512MB Corsair RAM
Seagate 160GB Sata Drive
ATI Radeon 9550 256MB

Performances are here.

It is clear how the beta version lags in many of the test.

More New Features & Conclusion

Probably the best of the newest features available in Workstation 5.0 is the ability to capture movies. Similar to capturing a screenshot of the virtual machine, this new beta gives the user the opportunity to record a movie. The movie is captured as an AVI file and the user if given the option on the movie quality. Using the medium setting, I was able to record 28 seconds of video which made the movie nearly 3MB in size. Capturing another movie of about the same size in the highest quality increased the size of the movie file to about 9MB; however, the quality of the video is highly noticeable capturing more frames per second than the medium setting. I can think of multiple uses for this new feature, including How-To videos on slip-streaming your Windows Service Packs into Windows CD; or just to show off a new release of a Beta operating system, such as Windows Longhorn.

Another nice feature built into this release is the ability to start, stop and suspend groups of virtual machines as if they were one object. This new feature, dubbed Teams in Workstation 5.0, is very easy to setup and maintain and serves handy when a cluster of virtual machines are needed to manage.

Workstation 5.0 Beta also allows the user to capture and save more than a single snapshot. A snapshot manager was added to Workstation 5.0 Beta in which the user is presented with a chronological view of each saved snapshot. Capturing a snapshot in this Beta version did prove a bit time consuming. Workstation 5.0 Beta seemed to freeze and pause for a few seconds before starting again.

Improved support for raw LUNs as virtual disks using Raw Device Mappings (RDMs) in Physical and Virtual compatibility modes.
ESX Server version 2.5 includes new features for using RDMs:

– Allows raw disks to be managed as easily as virtual disk files
– VMotion can now be used to migrate virtual machines using raw LUNs
– Improves VirtualCenter support of clustered virtual machines
– Physical compatibility RDMs enable SAN replication software to run inside of virtual machines
– Virtual compatibility RDMs enable backup offloading solutions so that ESX Servers can be backed up faster without any load placed on the virtual machines or the on Service Console
– Allows REDO logs to be added to raw disks
– Enhanced support for scripted installations
– Allows third-party systems management products to remotely install and configure ESX systems.

Improved Support for Clustered Virtual Machines
MSCS clustering of virtual machines using shared disk access is now more reliable.

Additional Support for Disaster-Recovery Backups or Virtual Disks
Virtual disk snapshot scripts added to the Service Console to enable crash consistent backups of entire virtual machines.

Revised Compatibility Guides
This release includes updated compatibility guides listing the new hardware supported by ESX Server 2.5

Support for Additional Guest Operating Systems
ESX Server version 2.5 now supports these operating systems in virtual machines.

FreeBSD 4.9 (Uniprocessor mode only)
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9
Windows 2003 Small Business Server