virtualization.info Editors

VMware announces User Groups

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Quoting from official VMware newsgroup post:

VMware is planning to implement a User Group program to encourage and support communities of VMware users who want to hold regular meetings in their local area. The purpose is to provide a forum in which VMware users can share best practices and expertise, and for VMware to learn from its users.

Please take a minute or two to complete this brief online VMware User Group interest survey:

http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB2KYJ4TYR6

Your feedback is important and will help us design the program to best serve the user community. If you have questions or comments about VMware User Groups please send them to [email protected]

It really seems VMware is trying to wide spread its technology as fast as possible, maybe cause time is right, maybe cause Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 is really coming.
Let’s look how many UG will born… Let’s look if an italian UG can born…

Dunes Technologies SA announces availability of Dunes Policy

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Quoting from official sales announcement:

Since 2001, Dunes has been a leader in virtual machines management solution that enables enterprise IT, service providers and software vendors to rapidly, efficiently and cost-effectively supply customers and business users with personalized services.

Dunes S-Ops provides unified management and control of distributed heterogeneous virtual resources across the enterprise. Dunes S-Ops allows for aggregation of virtual resources, making them manageable as one single service, enabling multiple software, virtual and hardware resources to be managed as one pool of assets dedicated to a specific business activity.

Dunes Policy enables the definition, validation and implementation of custom scripted policies to automate service and operation level management. Dunes Policy provides the integrated development environment (IDE) and the tools to allow policies to be articulated, modeled, tested, implemented, evolved and re-used. Dunes Policy allows the policies to be implemented as wizards as well as traditional scripts.

“The combination of Dunes Policy with Dunes S-Ops for VMware Virtual Infrastructure allows us to capture those unique customer best practices to pro-actively orchestrate provisioning in a virtualized environment in real-time, based on their particular business needs” said Doug Weisberg president and CEO of Expert Server Group, a leading member of the VMware VAC program. ?We are pleased to provide a mean by which all VMware value added service providers can differentiate themselves? said Stephane Broquere, president and CEO of Dunes.

Key Features:

– Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for virtual machines automation.
– Integrated Java-script editor.
– Normalized scriptable objects throughout all virtual machines vendors.
– Actions templating for further usage in tasks (scheduled actions) and policies.
– Policy templating for virtual machines and infrastructure.
– Import/Export of actions and policies.

Benefits:

– Personalize and augment management system by creating custom actions.
– Apply policy and action templates using wizard.
– Enable virtual machine to be moved from one virtual machine host to another, even if the source host is unavailable (networked storage required).
– Virtual Machines fail-over with shared storage (NAS or SAN): automatically runs a clone of a virtual machine on another computer in case of virtual machine error detection. Both virtual machines share a single disk file.
– Virtual Machines fail-over without shared storage: automatically runs a copy of a virtual machine on another computer in case of virtual machine error detection. Each virtual machine runs from separate copies of a disk file.
– Backup automation: put virtual machines in such mode that it can be backuped (suspend or create redo log), creates a snapshot (if available) and drives the backup software at planned intervals.
– Workload management: automatically reallocates virtual machines on multiple servers according to workload.
– Alarm notification: Threshold values and e-mail/pager notifications can be set and users will be automatically notified.

Pricing and Availability

Dunes Policy is available today as an add-on to S-Ops 2.2. S-Ops 2.2 versions are available for both Windows and Linux host operating systems. Pricing for Dunes Policy is based on a per virtual machine basis. License prices are (in Swiss Francs):

– 149 Swiss Francs per VMware GSX Server virtual machine
– 299 Swiss Francs per VMware ESX Server virtual machine.

The electronic software distribution of S-Ops 2.2 is available via the Dunes Store.

MSI Systems Integrators partners with VMware

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Quoting from Yahoo! Finance:

MSI Systems Integrators (MSI), a leading comprehensive solution provider of hardware, software and services, has been certified as a VMware Authorized Consulting (VAC) Partner. The new level in partnership with VMware allows MSI to offer VMware-certified consulting services in addition to VMware products. This specialization will enhance MSI’s current value to its clients by providing advanced virtualization design and infrastructure planning services of Intel server solutions.
“The demand for virtualization on Intel servers is growing rapidly and MSI’s partnership with VMware allows us to leverage the best virtualization products with industry-leading consulting services for Intel and VMware solutions,” said Joe Wurtz, Jr., vice president, MSI Open Systems Solutions. “MSI is thrilled to achieve this level of partnership and certification with VMware.”

VAC Partners are required to train and certify their consultants to ensure the highest levels of services and customer satisfaction. As part of the VAC Partnership, MSI consultants can provide the following benefits to clients:

– The ability to deliver pre-packaged consulting engagements, such as VMware Virtual Center Jumpstart, VMware ESX Server JumpStart, VMware Physical to Virtual (P2V) Migrations
– Access to online educational and technical resources and forums at VMware Channel Connect
– Exposure and credibility as a recommended service provider

MSI’s systems engineering staff completed the rigorous training required for Authorized Consulting Partner certification. MSI’s certified consultants will assist in providing the necessary resources to help customers build and maintain a virtual infrastructure that maximizes efficiency. For its customers, MSI works to achieve total solutions from a single source in an on demand environment.

“Our goal is to simplify IT for companies whose priority is controlling costs while responding faster,” said Phil Sauvageau, vice president – Solutions and Services. “Implementing the right virtual infrastructure means assessing workloads and customizing the solution to fit the particular need.”

ClearCentral announces version 2.0 of VMware Knowledge Module for PATROL

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ClearCentral Software Inc. has released version 2.0 of its VMware Knowledge Module for PATROL. This is a plug-in to the PATROL monitoring toolset from BMC Software that provides full monitoring of ESX Server version 2.1 and 2.0.1.

The software consists of a small proxy agent that installs in the Linux Service Console and the VMware Knowledge Module that installs on a PATROL agent on a separate server.

The module autodiscovers all virtual machines and monitors their allocation and usage of CPU, Memory, Disk and Network resources through the collection of over 50 monitored parameters per vm.

All metrics are brought into the PATROL agent where they can be viewed, graphed and alerted upon.

Special parameters are included specifically for alerting. One is called EcpuUtil100. This parameter shows the total server’s usage of effective available cpu (total cpu – sum of all minimum cpu allocations) measured as a percentage out of 100. If this parameter hits 100, there is no more available CPU.

Version 2.0 elimates the use of SNMP to collect data, adds 18 new metrics over version 1.2 and provides more flexible configuration over monitoring and alerting of virtual machine state and guest OS status.

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 hits Release Candidate phase

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The long waited VMware competitor seems to be (quite) arrived. Today Microsoft announced general availability of VS2005 Release Candidate. Just register and download it! (it expires January 1, 2005)

The big news it that there will be two different editions:

– Standard Edition, supporting up to 4 processors
– Enterprise Edition, supporting up to 32 processors (not available for download)

This is the only real difference.

Here the Standard Edition minimum requirements:

– Minimum CPU Speed
550 MHz or faster; 1.0 GHz or faster recommended

– Processor
Computer with up to 4 physical processors
Celeron, Pentium III, Pentium 4, Xeon, Opteron, Athlon or Duron processor required

– Memory
256 MB minimum; additional memory needed for each guest operating system

– Hard Disk
2 gigabytes (GB) of available hard-disk space; additional disk space needed for each guest operating system

– Display
Super VGA (800 × 600) or higher resolution recommended

– Host Operating System
Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition
Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition
Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition
Windows Server Small Business Server 2003, Standard Edition
Windows Server Small Business Server 2003, Premium Edition
Windows XP Professional (for non-production use only)

Microsoft also kindly adviced about not-Windows operating systems availability:

Virtual Server 2005 guest virtual machine environments are optimized for Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Server, and Windows NT 4.0 Server, yet enables users to run a broad range of x86-based operating systems.

Just remember: Microsoft doesn’t support any OS but Windows.

Microsoft hopes to go in RTM before end of summer and broadly distribute VS2005 before the end of the year.

Microsoft TechEd 2004: Slides, Videos and Hands On Lab about virtualization products available

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Maybe you know San Diego TechEd 2004 is closed. Maybe you also know that during TechEd few sessions were about Virtual PC 2004 and upcoming Virtual Server 2005.

To be exact here the sessions list about both products and relative slide, videos and hands on lab:

Virtual Server 2005 Technical Overview Slides & Videos HoL
Advanced Configuration Scenarios for Virtual Server 2005 Slides & Videos HoL
Using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 to Install a 2-Node Cluster of Virtual Machines Slides & Videos HoL
Advanced Desktop Testing Scenarios with Virtual PC 2004 Slides & Videos HoL

VMware introduces advanced virtual disks manipulation tool: Virtual Disk Manager

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With the release of Workstation 4.5.2, VMware stopped virtual disks and partitions “home-made” operations like moving from a smaller vdisk to a larger one, changing vdisk type, and so on.
The new Virtual Disk Manager do all of these tasks and more:

– Automate the management of virtual disks with scripts.
– Create virtual disks that are not associated with a particular virtual machine, to be used as templates, for example.
– Switch the virtual disk type from preallocated to growable, or vice versa. When you change the disk type to growable, you reclaim some space on the virtual disk. You can shrink the virtual disk to reclaim even more disk space.
– Expand the size of a virtual disk so it is larger than the size specified when you created it.
– Defragment virtual disks.
– Prepare and shrink virtual disks without powering on the virtual machine. (Windows hosts only.)

VDM will work on vdisks created with VMware GSX Server, VMware Workstation and VMware VirtualCenter (provided the virtual disk was created on a GSX Server host managed by VirtualCenter).
The only spot is that there is no GUI for it: just command line program.

Anyone wanna develop a GUI frontend for this, uh?

Release: VMware Workstation 4.5.2 released!

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VMware just releases a minor upgrade for its most famous product: VMware Workstation.
Ok, I’m joking: this is a minor release only for release number. But it’s a really big improvement in virtualization technologies.

Here the changes:

– VMware Virtual Disk Manager
You can create, manage and modify virtual disk files from the command line or within scripts with the VMware Virtual Disk Manager utility. For more information, see Using VMware Virtual Disk Manager.

– Experimental support for 64-bit host computers
This means you can install this release of VMware Workstation on a 64-bit host computer that uses an AMD64 Opteron, Athlon 64 or Intel IA-32e CPU. Virtual machines you create on these hosts have 32-bit CPUs and can run 32-bit guest operating systems.

– Experimental support for Solaris guest operating systems
This means you may install the x86 platform edition of Solaris 9 and of Solaris 10 beta as guest operating systems in this release of VMware Workstation. VMware Tools is not available for Solaris. If you want to run the guest operating system’s X server, you may do so in 16 colors.

– Experimental support for SUSE LINUX 9.1 guests
This means you may run SUSE LINUX 9.1 as a guest operating system in this release of VMware Workstation.

– Enhanced VPN support over NAT
VMware Workstation now supports PPTP over NAT.

Solaris users come back to the family! (and please, please: someone develop a new unofficial VMware Tools for Solaris 10…)

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Update: I just tried a Windows Server 2003 GuestOS inside new Workstation 4.5.2. It seems much faster than before. Even faster than a real machine. Comment this post and tell me if I’m the only one having this impression.

VMware launchs its own conference: VMWorld 2004

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Virtualization market is mature enough to accept a dedicated event. This is what VMware managers probably thought when created VMWorld conference.

So we now have the First Annual VMware User Conference, organized in San Diego, California for October 27-29, 2004.
Actually registrations are still closed, but you can sign up announcements newsletter to be informed when you can register.

Still no informations on prices, sessions, tracks and so on. Stay tuned for updates.

Maybe we’ll meet there, who knows.