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virtualization.info Editors A just appeared post on VirtualCenter newsgroup reports that GSX Server 3.1.0, expected for this week, is delayed cause a memory leak found in code.
This post also leak the information about a new VirtualCenter update, 1.1.0, expected to release at the same time. As consequence of GSX bug, VirtualCenter 1.1.0 is delayed too.
The new release date for both products seems to be the 9th July.
Finally VMware opened a newsgroup dedicated to VirtualCenter.
Go on and start sharing knowledge!
Quoting from official PlateSpin press release:
PlateSpin Ltd. the leading provider of solutions that bring flexibility and automation to the multi-architecture data center released a new version of PlateSpin Operations Management Cente (POMC) for the small-to-medium enterprise (SME) market. Designed and priced for SME data centers, POMC is a comprehensive and integrated provisioning, configuration, and application management solution for physical server and virtual machine infrastructures. Unlike other provisioning and data center management solutions, POMC’s comprehensive features allow data centers to future-proof their investment by offering full support for virtual infrastructure platforms such as VMware ESX Server and VMware GSX Server in addition to standard physical servers across the major hardware brands. Other solutions tend to treat virtual machines as though they are physical servers, losing many of the capabilities and advantages that come with using virtual machine infrastructures. By contrast, POMC is the only provisioning and server lifecycle management solution capable of managing the data center across multiple architectures, including native support for virtual machines.
POMC features all the base functions of more expensive server lifecycle solutions, but with comprehensive support for virtual machines as well:
– One management point for all physical server and virtual
infrastructures
– Bare metal provisioning of Linux or Windows on physical servers
– Bare metal provisioning of VMware ESX Server virtual host environments
and VMware GSX Server
– Flexible provisioning of virtual machines themselves
– Patch and configuration management
– Application deployment and updates
– Resource monitoring and alerting
– Hardware management at the BIOS and RAID levels
– Integration with PowerP2V, PlateSpin’s platform for infrastructure
conversion solutions
“PlateSpin Operations Management Center has become a critical component to our customers.” said Matt Stearly, President of Infinite Solutions. “It uniquely meets the requirements of provisioning and management for both physical and virtual environments in the datacenter, and as such, has become something that both Infinite Solutions and our customers have come to rely on.”
“As data centers begin to adopt new heterogeneous infrastructure technologies, we are seeing that the need for total server management and lifecycle solutions are increasing.” said Stephen Pollack, CEO of PlateSpin Ltd. “PlateSpin is addressing the need for more flexibility in the data center by providing the only provisioning solution capable of managing the multi- architecture data center, which is a prerequisite for building tomorrow’s on demand, autonomic business service management architectures.”
Pricing and Availability
PlateSpin Operations Management Center is generally available today. Pricing starts at $9,500 for a 25-CPU pack which provides full POMC functionality including support for bare metal and flexible virtual infrastructure provisioning.
Massimiliano Daneri posted new infos e screenshots about his Minime project, a virtual infrastructure management software similar to VMware VirtualCenter.
Here the news:
-) Minime support VMware ESX Server, VMware GSX Server and Microsoft Virtual Server
-) Minime don’t support at the moment VMotion (instead support movement of suspend guest)
-) Minime support HOT Backup and restore
-) Minime support “Standby cluster”
-) Minime support dynamic creation of REDO LOG disk
-) Minime add a more detailed guest configuration
-) Minime support various authentication service (LDAP, Active Directory, SMB).
Stay tuned cause this project is hot and I’ll post as many updates as possible in future.
Quoting from CRN:
VMware will deliver support for 64-bit operating systems for Advanced Micro Devices and Intel processors this week, as the virtual-infrastructure software provider rushes to have its 64-bit technology in place before Microsoft delivers its entry in the 64-bit operating systems sweepstakes.
The company said Monday that it will have “experimental support for 64-bit host operating systems designed for AMD64 and Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology [Intel EM64T].”
One observer of the 64-bit processor world, Nathan Brookwood of Insight 64, is looking for 64-bit extensions to come this summer from Microsoft, when it delivers a version of its Windows XP Service Pack 2. Microsoft last week released a version of SP2, but hedged on a date for its final release.
“Microsoft has been trying to get 64-bit extensions down,” said Brookwood in an interview. He noted that the extensions for robust 64-bit applications have been held up because Microsoft has been working harder than ever to include improved security features in its software.
VMware said it will have preliminary 64-bit support available for VMware GSX Server 3.1 and VMware Workstation 4.5.2, with support for Windows Server 2003 (Beta) for 64-bit extended systems. VMware support will also be available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 64-bit host operating systems. VMware GSX Server customers and VMware Workstation 4.x customers will be provided free updates in most instances.
“The introduction of support for 64-bit computing marks the first milestone for VMware’s 64-bit roadmap,” the firm stated. “Future milestones will include the ability to concurrently run 32-bit and 64-bit virtual machines on AMD64 and EM64T architectures.”
The 64-bit software from both Microsoft and VMware would be of immediate benefit for AMD, which has been marketing its 64-bit Athlon and Opteron PC models for several months. Intel has been slower to move in the 64-bit PC market, although its high-end Itanium processors have powerful 64-bit capability.
VMware, which is a unit of EMC, said the 64-bit updates unveiled this week enable its users to continue using their 32-bit guest operating systems while migrating to 64-bit host operating systems.
VMware noted that its virtual infrastructure abstraction layer between computing, storage, and networking hardware and software enables “software to be installed on or moved from any physical system to another without requiring reconfiguration of the software.”
Massimiliano Daneri, italian technology analyst and Certified VMware Professional, just started a new project on his website: Minime.
He just posted some screenshots and no details, but if I understand well this really seems a “poor man VMware VirtualCenter” !!
Massimiliano we all wait for more details about this thing. Let us know!
Here an interesting project just found in the Net:
VMware Workstation can redirect a bidirectional serial port to a named pipe of Windows NT/2000/XP. But currently I do not know of any terminal program which can connect to a named pipe (is it time to write one???). So the easiest way was to implement a gateway, redirecting the named pipe to a tcp port and vice versa. The result is a tiny server which can run as an NT service. Currently, it only allows a single tcp connection and supports only one fixed pipe name.
It’s very old and I dunno if it still works with actual VMware products.
Quoting from official announcement:
Learn how to improve your existing backup and disaster recovery strategy, eliminating hardware issues and repetitive tasks through VMware virtual infrastructure.
If any of the following sounds familiar, you need to come to this seminar:
– You?ve never had a disaster, you run on hope: you simply run backup processes every week and hope that you?d be able to recover systems if disaster struck
– You?ve never tested recovery due to hardware limitations: you would love to test your systems, but coming up with that many servers is impossible
– Testing your recovery plans is a painful, manual process: your backup software has great intelligence, but to utilize it you need to first spend hours installing the operating system and backup agents on the systems to be recovered
– Any hardware failure is synonymous with ?days of downtime?: ordering the replacement hardware and getting it shipped takes days, and there is still only limited assurance of a 100% successful recovery
– VMware and partners will draw examples from leading companies who have implemented virtual infrastructure in their Disaster Recovery & Backup environments.
We will show you how to:
– Make your existing backup and recovery strategy faster and more foolproof by using Virtual Machines
– Make your recovery process faster, more reliable and easier to test by using templates and other advanced features of virtualization
We will explain:
– How virtualization software integrates with market leading backup packages
– How the return on investment of your disaster recovery solution improves with the addition of virtual infrastructure
We will give you:
– Examples of successful deployments in both large and smaller enterprises
– Step-by-step blueprints of how to deploy in your environment
– Together, we will demonstrate virtualized target recovery environments and show you how virtualization plays into backup and recovery solution.
Here the event details:
DATES: July 20 to 22, 2004
LOCATION: click here for a list of locations
AGENDA: 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. – Presentation, Demonstration, Customer speaker, Q&A
Quoting from CRN:
While server virtualization is nothing new, with the forthcoming release of Virtual Server 2005, an application that virtualizes the Windows 2003 Server operating system, Microsoft promises to ease server application migration and simplify testing environments using a unique take on the technology.
Virtual Server 2005 creates virtual machines on top of the Windows 2003 Server operating system, instead of at the hardware level like many of its competitors. Hardware-level virtualization ensures that the technology is compatible with nearly every operating system, but this approach often lacks seamless integration with host operating systems. Virtual Server 2005 leverages the management and performance tools included with Windows 2003 Server, making virtualization an almost transparent process.
CRN Test Center engineers installed Virtual Server 2005 on an HP TC100 server running Microsoft Small Business Server 2003. The server was equipped with a 2.66GHz Pentium 4 processor and 2 Gbytes of RAM, far exceeding the minimum requirements of a 550MHz Pentium III and 256 Mbytes of RAM.
Installation was straightforward and uncomplicated. Virtual Server 2005 requires that Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) be installed and active on the target server, since the product is managed through a Web site created under IIS. Once the management Web site is created, administrators can use Microsoft Internet Explorer to access and manage virtual machines. This management approach allows administrators to manage virtual machines from almost anywhere there is an IP connection to the server and Internet Explorer. The browser-based management console offers a clean interface that follows Microsoft’s standard conventions, making the product quite easy to master.
Virtual Server 2005 is simple to use, since most tasks are wizard-based. New virtual machines can be created in a matter of minutes with just a few mouse clicks. Administrators can connect remote drives to a Virtual Server management session, allowing the remote installation of new operating systems and applications.
Microsoft’s Virtual Server is an excellent tool for migrating legacy applications that run under previous versions of the Windows Server operating system. For example, an organization that deploys a Windows 2003 Server platform could use virtual machines to run legacy Windows NT 4.0 applications. Even legacy versions of other operating systems such as Novell’s NetWare or Unix variations will run under Virtual Server 2005, but Microsoft only offers support for its proprietary platforms.
Other notable features include the ability to create virtual networks and virtual disks, a must for software developers and deployment testers. Virtual networking allows for creation of a pseudo network that is isolated from the host machine’s primary network. Virtual disks allow on-demand disk resizing for virtual machine sessions. Administrators can also save an image of a virtual machine for backup or testing purposes or to move a virtual machine over to a new virtual server.
All things considered, Microsoft’s stab at creating a virtual server product seems to be right on track. Microsoft’s Virtual Server 2005 is a tool that almost any administrator can find a use for.
VMware just released its second edition P2V migration tool, called P2V Assistant.
Here the changes:
– Better support for cloning and reconfiguration of Windows NT systems. If you plan to convert a Windows NT system, run P2V Assistant on a Windows NT host or helper virtual machine.
– Bug fixes in the area of international support. Some non-English versions of Windows operating systems that were not properly recognized by P2V Assistant version 1.0 are detected in version 2.0.
– New graphics and icons for application screens.
– Miscellaneous bug fixes in the user interface.
– Support for advanced configuration and power interface (ACPI) multiprocessor technology.
– Support for new guest operating systems: Volume License versions of Windows XP Professional and Windows 2003 Server
– Support for new VMware platforms: ESX 2.x, Workstation 4.x, and GSX 3.x
– Support for virtual standard multi-processor (SMP) on ESX 2.x if the guest operating system is SMP-capable or SMP-upgradable
– Better usability: service pack and hotfixes are no longer needed for any guest operating system except Windows NT Server. Application displays custom virtual machine creation and configuration instructions specific to the guest operating system and the selected target platform.
And here an interesting supported platforms matrix for souce/target OS: http://www.vmware.com/support/p2v2/doc/p2v_SupportMatrix.html