virtualization.info Editors

A lab is a great tool to have at your disposal. You can use it to test a new software release or security patch or possibly a new printer driver that a client is requesting. Perhaps you just want an environment where you can learn more about the inner workings of Citrix, Web Interface or Secure Gateway. If you’ll be faced with upgrading your production environment to MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0, it’s best to do a “dry run” in a lab before victimizing your production environment and possibly causing serious downtime.

With PlateSpin PowerP2V, users simply connect to the network, select a physical or virtual source server, and drag it to a VMware ESX Server, GSX Server, or Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 host. There are no agents, pre-requisites to install, or manual work to be done to prepare for the conversion. Users simply connect to the network and start their conversion projects for Windows and Linux platforms. PowerP2V can also move machines within the data center or across geographical boundaries without requiring physical contact with source or target servers, which is a key benefit with today’s distributed computing models.

PlateSpin PowerP2V 3.6 offers the following product features and enhancements

Remote discovery and hardware/software inventory of network machines
No agents to install, no boot CDs – simply connect and start converting servers
Fully automated conversions with no manual intervention
Reconfigure target virtual machine resources such as CPU allocations, memory, and disk space on-the-fly
Convert Windows and Linux operating system servers to virtual machines
Support for converting systems with dynamic system and data disks
Static IP address support, for data center network environments that don’t use DHCP servers to configure IP addresses
Usability enhancements through the drag-and-drop graphical user interface
Selective network discovery, which allows users to isolate discoveries by domain for very large networks
File transfer network management and performance enhancements

PlateSpin customers use PowerP2V for server consolidation, where many physical servers are converted to virtual machines residing on fewer numbers of physical server hardware. This allows data centers to achieve more efficient utilization for CPU, disk, memory and network resources. It is also used for rapid replication of production environments in test labs using virtual machines, or for replicating virtual machines for managed availability and hot standby environments.

“Data centers want solutions that give them the ability to adapt to new or changing business situations as fast and as easily as possible.” said Stephen Pollack, CEO of PlateSpin Ltd. “With PlateSpin PowerP2V, customers adopting virtual infrastructure will experience dramatically increased amounts of flexibility in their data center because they are able to automatically convert servers and their associated customer facing applications to any physical or virtual environment at will.”

“PlateSpin is the only software provider we have found that addresses server conversion, provisioning, and management between multiple data center architectures. PowerP2V’s unique ability to convert between physical and virtual environments allows us to adapt data center infrastructures to today’s rapidly changing conditions faster than ever before.“ – Richard King, President of Xcedex

Pricing and Availability

The new options, slated to become available next year, are part of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based software vendor’s strategy to increase the virtualization of services in the data center, VMware CTO and founder Edouard Bugnion said at VMWorld, held this week in San Diego.

The first module, Distributed Resource Schedule, automates the pooling of resources such as blade servers to better scale them out, according to Bugnion. VMware’s VMotion application currently allows pooling of resources, but it’s a manual process, he said.

With Distributed Resource Schedule, administrators can specify the type and amount of server resources needed, and those resources are made available without the administrator knowing where they are physically located. The goal is to reduce manual intervention in building servers while increasing server utilization by up to 80 percent.

You can use VSMT to create images of physical computers and deploy them in virtual machines running on Virtual Server 2005. With VSMT, you can migrate source computers running the following operating systems to virtual machines in Virtual Server 2005:

• Windows NT 4.0 Server with Service Pack (SP) 6a, Standard and Enterprise Editions

• Windows 2000 Server SP 4 or later

• Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP 4 or later

• Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition

Note: VSMT is intended to be used by IT professionals and consultants and requires use of a combination of native and add-on tools for Windows Server 2003. Users of VSMT should have proficiency with Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), PXE, and Windows Server 2003 Automated Deployment Services (ADS). Additionally, you must have knowledge of the operating system that you are migrating, some scripting knowledge, and knowledge of the legacy hardware environment from which you are migrating

– System Requirements
To use VSMT, ADS 1.0 and Virtual Server 2005 must be deployed in the environment where the migration is to be performed.

In addition, the following are required:

• One x86-based computer to host VSMT, ADS 1.0, and Virtual Server 2005. Virtual Server 2005 can be running on a separate computer.

Note: ADS is not supported on the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition.

• One or more processors with a recommended minimum speed of 1 GHz. Processors from the Intel Pentium/Celeron family, AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processors are recommended.

Note: ADS is not supported on Itanium-based computers.

• English version of Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, and installation CD.

• A hard disk partition or volume with 2 gigabytes (GB) free space to accommodate the setup process, plus enough extra free disk space for the images themselves.

• For ADS 1.0, 512 megabytes (MB) of RAM recommended minimum (348 MB minimum supported, 32 GB maximum).

“I have a lot of respect for the market leaders. But we have a value proposition which allows us to compete. Part of our strategy is to go into areas not well served by other products,” according to Bob St.John, Director of Business Development for SSI. “For example, some Citrix® users have tested the product and found it to be surprisingly responsive in that environment.”

This opens the door for organizations running Citrix on thin clients to extend the application support available. By providing these users with a complete desktop, including the complete operating system, applications which run on fat clients or additional versions of Windows, including NT 3.51, NT4, and Windows 3.1, can be supported. SVISTA also supports DOS, Linux, OS/2, and FreeBSD, greatly increasing the applications available to thin client users which, in turn, may significantly improve the return on their investment in Citrix products.

What allows SVISTA to be so Citrix friendly is the relatively small hardware footprint required. This is combined with an architecture which allows multiple VMs to run on the same hardware while providing a responsive desktop to the user. This has some value to every user but it makes SVISTA especially useful in shared environments, like Citrix and Linux Terminal Services .

In fact, the greatest interest in SVISTA has focused on its support for Linux Terminal Services. Likely because this provides these users with support for Windows and other non-Linux applications. “There is a very interesting presentation on our homepage and on http://www.serenityvirtual.com under Presentations and other information. It is called IBM EWWS presentation on Desktop Virtualization (PDF, 500 kB). It is a presentation by IBM which accurately represents how SVISTA is being implemented by IBM Global Services in several financial organizations in Germany and Austria.” according to St.John.

The 4-CPU version of VMware Virtual SMP addresses the anticipation of Intel-based multi-core processors becoming standard late next year, as well as further extending out the advantages of the “virtual infrastructure” to handle data-intensive enterprise workloads, according to company officials.

“We see this announcement as ‘feature-proofing’ our customers, given the recent shift by Intel and AMD away from clock speed as a way to get more performance out of a chip and towards multi-core processors. If you are [in] the virtualization business as we are, you better start finding ways to run workloads on multiple cores at a time,” said Michael Mullany, VMware’s vice president in charge of marketing at the company’s VMworld 2004 conference in San Diego.

VMWare already has a 2-CPU Virtual SMP capability on the market in its VMware ESX Server, which it delivered last year. The upcoming 4-Way version is not expected to ship until the second half of 2005 when the company expects the first dual-core processors to hit the market. The first such chips should be versions of the Opteron from AMD, and then in either late 2005 or early 2006 from Intel, according to industry analysts.

Some analysts believe the intention to deliver a 4-CPU version should bolster the VMware product’s competitive position against Microsoft’s Virtual Server 2005, which Microsoft sent to manufacturing last month and is expected to be available shortly. Presently, Microsoft’s virtual server product supports only uni-processors.

• We believe this is not a technical issue. The reality is that Microsoft has responded to support calls from customers, running applications in virtual machines.
• IBM, Dell, and HP all have support offerings for Windows running in a VMware virtual machine.
• There are tools and procedures available to replicate virtual machine workloads on physical platforms.

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