virtualization.info Editors

VMware provides free VMs disks manipulation tool

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Not happy enough to release WS 4.5.1 and GSX 3.0.0, VMware folks released a new free utility, called DiskMount:

With the VMware DiskMount utility, a VMware virtual disk file can be mounted as a Windows drive letter for read/write access to the files it contains. VMware DiskMount supports virtual disk files created with VMware Workstation 4, VMware GSX Server 2.5.1 and 3 and VMware ESX Server 2. VMware DiskMount can run on Windows 2000/XP/2003 hosts

It’s great, but there are two limitations:

1) It doesn’t work with Workstation 2.x and 3.x virtual disks generations (to mount them you’ll still need to use the optimum VDK tool from Kenji Kato)

2) VMware doesn’t provide support for DiskMount

Anyway a great release!

How an application can detect if is running inside a Microsoft Virtual PC virtual machine

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What if you are a developer and don’t want your application to run in a VM? Or what if you want your application to install (or behave) in a different way when target OS is a virtual one?

Paul Adare, one Virtual PC Most Valuable Professional (MVP), wrote a simple WMI query that verify if you are running on a VM:

On Error Resume Next

strComputer = “.”

Set objWMIService = GetObject(“winmgmts:\\” & strComputer & “\root
\cimv2”)

Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery(“Select * from Win32
_BaseBoard”,,48)

For Each objItem in colItems

if objitem.Product = “Virtual Machine”

Thanks Paul!

VMware customers strongly asking for official SUN Solaris support

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Old VMware products supported SUN Solaris 8 guests, but in the last generations don’t provide this support anymore (probably because only few customers use it).
Since some months a new thread started on official web forum about Solaris support, and a large number of customers are strongly requiring official support return.

What is really interesting is that these customers are asking support not only for guestOS, but mainly to have Solaris as hostOS, claiming that VMware server products would be used in large farms immediately.

VMware folks should reconsider Solaris support for guestOS and evalutating SUN platform use for hostOS, mainly because Solaris 10 is coming and SUN has already released AMD Opteron 64 bit servers where to deploy the new OS.
This events could bring Solaris to a key position in most wanted virtualization hardware platforms table.

P.S.: Even if official support for Solaris guestOS doesn’t exist, it’s proven that Solaris 8, 9 and 10 beta works well on VMware VMs.

Microsoft could offer P2V migration for free

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According to my previous post MS is preparing Automated Deployment Services 1.5 that will be able to provide P2V (and eventually V2P) migration at no cost (considering that ADS 1.0 at today is a free package).

If so and if ADS will work for VMware VMs also, all commercial P2V solutions available (from VMware itself, Platespin, Leostream) could become senseless.
Then the only reason to pay for a commercial P2V solution could be having the tool available for Linux platforms, but this will be enough to justify costs around $15.000…?

Posted at 11:43

Microsoft preps MOM and SMS and ADS updates for forthcoming Virtual Server 2004

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Taken from MSFN:

In spite of a significant delay in its release, Microsoft this week will tout its forthcoming Virtual Server 2004 as a key deliverable of its Dynamic Systems Initiative and plans to enable its existing management servers to manage virtual machines.

At the Microsoft Management Summit 2004 in Las Vegas, executives will discuss plans to make available during the second half of 2004 several new offerings for virtual machine management, including the Microsoft Operations Manager 2004 Virtual Machine Management (VM) Pack as well as Systems Management Server 2003 Service Pack 1 with virtual machine support, sources say. Additionally, Microsoft is readying to move into beta this May an Automated Deployment Services 1.5 upgrade that will ease deployment and management of multiple virtual images on a single server, sources say.

Microsoft would not comment on this story…

Read whole article at CNR website.

Releases: VMware Workstation 4.5.1 released!

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It seems VMware folks wanna really impress their customers with two new releases in a week.

Sincerely we was waiting for 4.5.0 release but seems an immediate minor upgrade was necessary so here the WS 4.5.1 and the new features available:

New in Version 4.5.1

– Updates to the EULA
The End User License Agreement in version 4.5.1 reflects support policies for customers who acquired version 4.5.1 as an upgrade to a previous version of VMware Workstation.

– Updates to resolve several reported problems
Updates in version 4.5.1 include the following:

A more reliable SCSI implementation that makes it easier to move virtual machines created on other VMware products to Workstation.
Additional improvements in support for Linux guest operating systems using kernels in the 2.6 series.
Support for Windows 95 guest operating systems on host computers with high-speed processors — such as Pentium 4 processors with speeds of 3GHz and higher.

New in Version 4.5

– Increased memory size for virtual machines
This means you can create individual virtual machines with up to 3,600MB of memory and use up to 4GB of memory for all running virtual machines.

– Experimental support for Longhorn
This means you can install and run beta versions of the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn. Because Longhorn is still in the beta stage of development, you should expect it to install and run more slowly than other guest operating systems.

– Improved support for guests using Linux kernels in the 2.6 series
This means better performance for virtual machines running manually installed 2.6 kernels and also for virtual machines using some of the later releases of Red Hat Linux 9, which incorporate some components from the 2.6 kernel.

– Support for PXE
This means that if you use a preboot execution environment (commonly known as PXE) to boot and install operating systems into new virtual machines, you can do so without any add-on software.

– Tip of the day
A pop-up tip introduces you to a key feature of VMware Workstation each time you launch the program. You can turn the tips off if you prefer not to see them.

– USB device installation for nonadministrators
Any user on a Windows host can connect USB devices for use in a virtual machine. You no longer need administrative privileges on the host to connect a USB device to a virtual machine.

– Automatic check for product updates
VMware Workstation now checks automatically to see if updates for the product are available. You can adjust the interval between the automatic checks or turn off automatic checking.

– New Operating System Support
Version 4.5 provides support for the following additional operating systems:

Novell NetWare 5.1, 6 and 6.5
SUSE LINUX 9.0

Don’t wait and run to get it here!

VMware ESX Server backup script

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Oh yeah: everybody here doing great things with virtualization softwares sooner or later needs to think about backupping (that great things), but VMware doesn’t provide a complete backup support or strategy. So many customers tried to find effective solutions with 3rd parties softwares or custom scripts.

The best example of this is provided by an italian technology analyst, Massimiliano Daneri, who created a wonderful perl script for ESX backup: vmbk.pl
It’s just released version 2.0 and these are the features:

– Hot Backup (without suspend vm guest)
– Schedule Backup
– Interactive Backup
– NFS support
– SMB support
– FTP support
– Virtual Center support
– vmbhax:y:n:m form support

Great work Massimiliano! Many thanks!

Virtual Server 2004 will support Microsoft Operation Manager

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This is the claim of Paula Rooney, Desktop Pipeline writer, after attending a Microsoft presentation, in occasion of beta release for 30 partners two weeks ago.
I hope MS is talking about upcoming MOM2004.

Microsoft also said that Virtual Server 2004 will support Active Directory 2000/2003, according to Paula’s article, so we can imagine will be possible assign VMs to Organizational Units by GPO.
Would be great!

Dell expands relationship with VMware

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Taken from Information Week:

Dell on Monday began revealing its plans for the enterprise virtualization market, disclosing an expanded partnership with VMware Inc.
Dell will use VMware software to enable single physical servers to act as two or more separate or “virtual” systems. The platform will be deployed on Dell two- and four-processor servers.
…
The partnership with VMware will enable Dell to expand on its strategy of creating two- and four-processor server offerings that can scale up to meet performance demands of customers, as opposed to solutions by competitors that are geared to scaling up to higher performance with associated higher cost.
…
The Dell-VMware virtual infrastructure configurations, tested and supported by Dell, include its PowerEdge 6650 servers running VMware ESX Server 2.0.1, Virtual Center, and VMotion; the Dell/EMC CX300 and CX500 storage systems to enable VMotion capability; and a single PowerEdge 1750 running the VMware Virtual Center Management Server.
The configurations are available now; pricing starts at $30,579.

Now it’s evident that EMC prefers to push on the low-cost SAN solutions by DELL, instead of producing them with its own brand alone. And it’s also evident that EMC-DELL-VMware group will converge in a single all-in-one solution very soon.
Now I expect to see a new Legato (just acquired by EMC) NetWorker version specific for VMs backup with native VMware support…