virtualization.info Editors

Microsoft has released a whitepaper titled: "Running SQL Server with Hyper-V Dynamic Memory". The paper which contains 39 pages covers how to configure Dynamic Memory, introduced with the release of Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1, when running SQL Server workloads on top of Hyper-V.

For testing the scenarios a two-node IBM x3850 X5 Server with Windows Server 2008 R2 failover cluster was used, with 32 physical processor cores and 128 GB of RAM. Storage was provided by a dedicated HDS AMS2500 storage system.

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Veeam has announced the release of version 6.0 of its disaster recovery solution Backup & Replication.  This version includes the support for Microsoft Hyper-V which the company already announced in May this year.

Version 6.0 is the follow up of version 5.0 which was released in October last year, it included the SureBackup functionality which virtualization.info covered in March last year.

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VKernel, provider of performance and capacity management products announced that it will include support for Red Het Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) in an upcoming version of their vOperations Suite, expected in Q4 of this year. With this announcement the company now supports the virtualization products from VMware, Microsoft and Red Hat.

VKernel also announced that it has joined the Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA), a consortium of companies backing the use of the KVM hypervisor technology.

Oracle has released version 4.1.2. of its virtualization software VirtualBox. This version which is a maintenance release can be installed on top of VM VirtualBox 4.1.0 which was released in July this year.

This release fixes a problem with 64 bits guests on AMD Fusion CPUs and adds linked clone support to the VirtualBox Manager GUI, which Oracle couldn’t get done in time when releasing version 4.1.0.

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Rad Hat has announced the availability of the beta of the next version of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) platform version 3.0. This version will be the follow up of version 2.2, which was released in June last year.

RHEV provides functionalities for virtualizing servers (RHEVS) and since version 2.2. also desktops (RHEVD) based on the KVM hypervisor.

Some of the expected new features include:

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Beginning this week Quest announced the release of the first version of Foglight for Virtual Desktops, a monitoring application for Virtual Desktops. Although this is the first version, it is branded as version 5.6.0.

Foglight for Virtual Desktops provides visualisation and diagnostics for Quest vWorkspace 7.2 and 7.2 MR1 environments. It shows how the environment fits together – all the way from users, through brokers to the RD Session Hosts/Terminal Servers and hosted VM-based virtual desktops. And when issues occur, it provides insight into which users are impacted by that issue.

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The founders of FastScale Lynn LeBlanc and Richard Offer, which was acquired by EMC in January last year and integrated into the VMware portfolio in March last year have started a new company called HotLink, announcing a product which they call SuperVISOR.

SuperVISOR is software which abstracts the virtualization platform from the management tools used to manage them. By using this technology it is possible to manage a hybrid hypervisor environment using a single management tool solution, currently but not limited to VMware vCenter. It’s expected that HotLink will announce a plug-in for System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) next year.

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VMware has made available a tool which can help users who currently run vSphere 4 or Virtual Infrastructure 3.5. to calculate and determine their current vRAM usage and vRAM capacity as if they upgraded to vSphere 5.0.

The tool lets you connect to your current environment which it analyzes, based on that data the tool provides the vRAM capacity and usage for each vSphere 5.0 equivalent edition.

More information about the new licensing can be found in the whitepaper titled:"VMware vSphere 5.0 Licensing, Pricing and Packaging whitepaper"

VMTurbo has announced the August 2011 update of its capacity management solution appliance, introducing support for the Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor. The appliance can either run on vSphere where it is provided in the OVF fomat or on top of Hyper-V provided in the VHD format.

VMTurbo is available in three editions, each edition containing more functionality:

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Citrix today announced the acquisition of RingCube, provider of the OS virtualization platform called vDesk, which recently shifted from management of hosted virtualization to providing so called Containers for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) on top of VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

This acquisition follows the recent acquisition of Kaviza by Citrix in May this year, further extending the VDI solution portfolio. With the technology of RingCube, Citrix will be capable of providing personalization of virtual desktops, without providing a dedicated Virtual Desktop to each user which Citrix currently provided as a solution for this requirement.

vDesk provides a personal vDisk for each user, which only contains apps, data and settings unique for that user, providing users with their own unique desktop experience.