virtualization.info Editors

So what do you have to do to run both these products on XP. Well you have to install IIS of course and if you don’t secure IIS with the IIS lockdown tool then all will be fine. However once you run this tool you will get a ‘404 server not found error. To fix this you have to modify the urlscan.ini file to allow .EXE’S to be served by IIS. So do the following:

Navigate to \windows\system32\inetsrv\urlscan and open urlscan.ini
Find this section:
; Deny executables that could run on the server

.exe

.bat
.cmd
.com
.dll

The IT industry continues to seek ways to use the newest in technology (processors, storage, memory, communications, and software) to improve the application environment by increasing performance; optimizing processor utilization through workload management, scalability, and reliability; increasing organizational efficiency by reducing costs of hardware, software, and staff; and reducing both the number and the impact of system outages regardless of the underlying reason. That’s where Unicenter® Network and Systems Management Advanced System Management Option (ASMO) comes in with real-time analysis of the virtualization environment, and dynamic allocation and de-allocation of over or under utilized resources

Unicenter NSM Advanced Systems Management Option leverages the intelligence in Unicenter NSM and Agent technology to create a centralized, uniform infrastructure that allows you to discover and manage clusters, dynamically reconfigure resources, and discover and manage virtual machines.
The three business process views (CMO, DRO, VMO) created by Unicenter NSM Advanced Systems Management Option provide a fast, easy, and intuitive way of locating and organizing all of your clusters, resources, and virtual machines and their associated virtual machine instances. You can also get detailed views using the Unicenter Explorer or Unicenter 2D Map.

You can view and manage your environment from the Unicenter NSM System Command Center (SCC), and use role-based management to add users and assign rule-based roles to those users–role based management can be tailored to a user’s specific function. From the System Command Center (SCC), you can:

   Distributed Workload Management: Manage your Microsoft and Linux clusters in an end-to-end eManagement environment-this includes discovery, visualization, health monitoring, active management, availability, performance monitoring, integration with third party cluster tools, and event management.

   Distributed Resource Management: Dynamically reconfigure resources using Sun’s Dynamic Reconfiguration technology running on:
      SUN’s Sun Fire and Starcat line of processors
      VMware’s virtual machine environments for Linux or Windows
      IBM’s LPAR environment for the pSeries systems

   This reconfiguration of resources includes discovery of all of the elements in the infrastructures to make them available for management from the Unicenter NSM World View and provides real-time resource analysis which allows the DR Option engine to continuously balance utilization by allocating or de-allocating resources.

Opsware’s automation software for VMware virtual infrastructure automates the provisioning and management of VMware’s server product line, including VMware ESX Server and VMware GSX Server. Opsware demonstrated the new automation capabilities at the VMware user conference, VMworld 2004, held in San Diego, October 27th to 29th.

“VMware is the leading virtualization software on the market today, and a growing number of customers are asking for the ability to manage their virtual infrastructure as part of their broader environment,” said Tim Howes, CTO and EVP of Development for Opsware Inc. “The Opsware System enables customers to rapidly deploy VMware platform products and automate management of their virtual and physical infrastructure.”

“Demand for VMware virtual infrastructure continues to grow as IT organizations look to optimize server utilization rates, consolidate servers and achieve consistency in their environments,” said Brian Byun, Vice President of Alliances at VMware. “With Opsware automation, companies reduce costs by rolling out virtual infrastructure faster.”

The Opsware System automates provisioning of VMware virtual infrastructure. It also automates lifecycle management of each VMware virtual machine.

VSM: Could you briefly describe your role regarding MSVS 2005, and how long you have been working with server virtualization?

EB: My role is the group product manager in our Windows Management team and Virtual Server is one of the products that my team manages. Personally I have been involved with virtual machine technologies for about 4-5 years, including time with this product at Microsoft and with my previous company.

VSM: Can you tell us why Microsoft thinks it is important to be in the server virtualization arena?

EB: We have a broad initiative called the Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), which is a holistic approach we are taking to help customers lower their costs and improve responsiveness associated with developing, deploying and operating their IT systems. A critical part of DSI is how we enable customers to more flexibly use the hardware on which they run their applications. A virtual machine solution like Virtual Server 2005 is a critical technology that addresses this need, and helps companies save up to 50% on hardware costs and improve IT responsiveness by reducing provisioning times by 50-85%.

VSM: What are the important features of MSVS 2005?

EB: In addition to the standard capabilities of virtual machine solutions such as hardware resource virtualization, policy based resource management, and support for a wide variety of storage and clustering options, the differentiating features of Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 can be categorized in a few areas:

Easy to Deploy and Configure: With our rich scripting interface, called the COM API, we make it very easy for customers to automate the deployment and configuration of one or many virtual machines in their environment, and our flexible virtual networking support makes it simple to connect those virtual machines in a variety of combinations.
Easy to Manage: Virtual Server 2005 provides an easy-to-use Web-based administration tools for simple, out of the box management. In addition we have responded to the customer’s desire to manage physical and virtual machines from one console, and have integrated support for virtual machine management into our and partners’ standard management products, including Microsoft Operations Manager 2005, Systems Management Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003, Automated Deployment Services.
Easy to Use: With a unified, common Windows experience across the Virtual Server 2005 host and guest environments, we enable customers to leverage their experience and familiarity with working in a Windows environment.

VSM: How does it work?

EB: Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 installs on Windows Server 2003 and allows you to create independent, fully isolated virtual machines that run their own copy of the OS and applications – allowing you to more effectively utilize your existing hardware.

VSM: How complicated is the installation and deployment process?

EB: The setup and installation process is simple and straightforward.

VSM: What expertise is needed to do this successfully?

EB: IT professionals and developers should be able to successfully install and deploy Virtual Server with little additional expertise.

VSM: What is the expected consolidation ratio for physical to virtual servers?

EB: This is heavily dependent on which workload/application a customer is running in a virtual machine, but on average we see customers consolidating 3-4 virtual machines per CPU (not per server).

VSM: Are there any performance standards for applications running on virtual servers?

EB: Again, performance varies depending on the type and characteristics of the workload you are running. We do provide customers guidance in our “Solution accelerator for migrating and consolidating line of business applications” that helps them identify which applications are well suited to be run in a virtual machine.

VSM: What are the network capabilities for virtual servers?

EB: Virtual Server has very flexible networking capability that enables users to configure their virtual machines with a guest to guest, guest to host, and guest to external network configuration, depending on their needs.

VSM: Does your solution help customers with business continuity or disaster recovery?

EB: Virtual Server is used by some customers as a more cost effective way to provide a disaster recovery environment that mirrors their production configuration.

VSM: Can you give us any examples of how MSVS 2005 is being used to deliver specific business value?

EB: One example is Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 customer Jack in the Box, one of the best-known fast-food chains in the United States, who recently determined that it needed to upgrade the technology it used in nearly 2,000 restaurants. Rather than launching a massive code rewrite, Jack in the Box decided to host the older applications and operating system on virtual machines using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. The company has long-term plans to base the applications on the Microsoft .NET Framework, and to run them on the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system. Currently, however, the use of Virtual Server 2005 makes it possible for Jack in the Box to immediately migrate old applications to new hardware, while also reducing restaurant servers by 50% and reducing server maintenance costs.

VSM: Why should a customer look to Microsoft as they consider some of the advantages of server virtualization?

EB: Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 is the most cost effective virtual machine solution for Windows Server 2003. It enables customers to reduce hardware costs by at least 50% and decrease server provisioning times by 50-85%. Because we develop and support the operating system and virtual machine software, customers have one point of contact for support of their entire stack.

VSM: How does MSVS 2005 compare to VMware products?

EB: There are some pretty significant differences between the two technologies. Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 offers:

Close integration with Windows Server 2003 as the host operating system provides customers the broadest, most robust compatibility with industry-standard hardware, device models, protocols, remote access methods, automation environments.
Rich support of open standards such as COM/COM+, HTTP/S, SSL/TLS, RFB+, RDP, XML.
Higher level of automation (richer API with significantly more calls) enables customers to automate the configuration, integration and management of Microsoft Virtual Server 2005.
Leverages a single, continuous architecture that spans desktop and server lines.
Management strategy targeted at leveraging existing server management tools (MOM 2005, SMS 2003, and 3rd party management tools) rather than creating yet another management tool specifically for virtual machines.
By being part of Windows Server System, Microsoft is assuring its customers greater interoperability. Furthermore, the Windows Server System Common Engineering Criteria requires WSS product to run on Virtual Server 2005. This ensures customers will have a consistent and predictable experience across their investments in the Windows Server System.

VMware’s architecture is characterized as follows:

VMware’s proprietary host operating systems severely limit device compatibility and support.
VMware has a proprietary remote console and security model.
Limited API set limits ability to automate configuration, integration and management.
Virtual Center is a proprietary, Virtual Machine only management console that does not integrate with existing server management tools.

VSM: Who do you perceive as your other key competitors?

EB: VMware and others provide similar virtualization technology; however Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 is uniquely positioned to provide customers with a powerful, cost-effective virtual machine platform, especially for Windows Server 2003 environments.

VSM: Who are the recommended hardware vendors for MSVS 2005?

EB: We are working with a broad range of partners on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, including hardware vendors such Dell, HP, IBM, NEC and Unisys.

VSM: Server virtualization is really in its infancy. Can you share with us where you might see this technology leading us in the future?

Two initiatives, called Pacifica and Presidio, are under way at the chip maker, said Fred Weber, AMD’s chief technical officer. Pacifica is a virtualisation technology, while Presidio involves security features, an AMD spokeswoman said.

Weber did not provide any details about either technology during his presentation, except that both are expected in 2006.

Virtualisation technology has been used on mainframes and high-end servers for years, but IT departments are starting to use the technology on low-end servers as well, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst with Insight 64.

IT managers use virtualisation software from companies such as VMware to create virtual operating environments on servers where computing resources can be allocated to various tasks based on changing workloads. The idea is to have multiple applications running different operating systems operating on a single server technology, such as AMD or Intel’s processors, rather than having to run those applications and operating systems on separate servers, Brookwood said.

However, this is a demanding task for software, Brookwood said. Companies like IBM and Sun Microsystems have built specific hardware technologies into their Power 5 and UltraSparc chips that can offload some of the virtualisation tasks onto the hardware, he said.

“In order to virtualize technologies within a processor, a little bit of hardware goes a long way,” Brookwood said. Users still need virtualisation software, but that software will run much faster with hardware support, he said.

Neither Intel nor AMD has built such technology into their processors for low-end servers, but both are now talking about having that capability available around 2006. Intel has discussed its Vanderpool virtualisation technology at recent conferences, but like AMD, has not provided specific details about the technology.

Security is a primary concern of many server users and is being addressed by both hardware and software vendors. AMD is working with several partners on the Presidio project, which will bring hardware-based security features to server chips in 2006, the AMD spokeswoman said. Some of those features will also be incorporated into PC chips, she said.

Intel also has plans for chips with hardware-based security features around 2006.