History

IBM just announced a new feature in its System p machines able to run unmodified x86 32-bit Linux binaries.

To do that IBM is using Transitive technology, QuickTransit, already popular for allowing execution of Sun SPARC binaries on x86 architectures.

Quoting from Transitive official announcement:

Transitive Corporation, the leading provider of software that enables transportability of applications across multiple processor and operating system (OS) pairs, today announced that its innovative QuickTransit technology is being deployed on IBM System p™ servers, allowing IBM customers to run thousands of native Linux/x86 applications on IBM’s POWER-based servers running Linux . A beta version of the software, named IBM System p Application Virtual Environment (System p AVE), was released this month by IBM.

Transitive’s QuickTransit technology serves as the foundation for IBM System p AVE, which is designed to enable Linux/x86 applications to be consolidated with AIX 5L™ and Linux on POWER applications on a single server, thus significantly expanding the software ecosystem for IBM System p servers, and saving software developers valuable time and resources to support the System p architecture…

As Mark Cathcart, Distinguished Engineer at IBM, reveals on his personal blog, IBM plans to release this technology in H2 2007.

Enroll for the IBM System p Application Virtual Environment (pAVE) here.

Ben Armstrong, Microsoft Virtual Machines Team Program Manager at Microsoft, published a very interesting article explaining how to encrypt a Virtual PC / Virtual Server virtual machine using BitLocker technlogy introduced in Windows Vista (despite a virtual machine doesn’t have a Trusted Platform Module to do that).

The whole process implies performing a special Vista installation process involving virtual floppy disk.

Read the whole article at source.

Quoting from the Surgient official announcement:

Surgient, the leader in Virtual Lab Management applications for software testing, training and evaluation, today announced the appointment of Fred C. Pazos to the position of vice president of worldwide sales.

Prior to joining Surgient, Pazos was vice president of sales and marketing for Exadel, a privately-owned software services and products company that provides rich application components to create business applications. At Exadel, Pazos developed and implemented a successful strategy to increase on-line sales that resulted in 275 percent growth in a 12 month period. Before Exadel, Pazos was vice president of sales and services at Everdream Corporation, where he developed alliances that grew the company’s channel business from zero to 35 percent in the first 18 months. Pazos also held vice president, sales roles at Intraware, a publicly-traded software company that provides electronic software licensing and delivery solutions. His experience also includes senior sales and marketing roles at IBM, Wyse Technologies and Hitachi America…

VMware just released a minor updated for Server 1.0.

This 1.0.3 release (build 44356) fixes five security vulnerabilities disclosed today:

• CVE-2007-1337
• CVE-2007-1877
• CVE-2007-1069
• CVE-2007-1876
• CVE-2007-1744

Check complete release notes here. Download it here.

VMware just released a minor updated for ACE 1.0.

This 1.0.3 release (build 44385) fixes five security vulnerabilities disclosed today:

• CVE-2007-1337
• CVE-2007-1877
• CVE-2007-1069
• CVE-2007-1876
• CVE-2007-1744

Check complete release notes here. Download a trial here.

VMware just released a minor updated for Workstation 5.5.

This 5.5.4 release (build 44386) fixes five security vulnerabilities disclosed today:

• CVE-2007-1337
• CVE-2007-1877
• CVE-2007-1069
• CVE-2007-1876
• CVE-2007-1744

Check complete release notes here. Download a trial here.

VMware just released a minor updated for Player 1.0.

This 1.0.4 release (build 44386) fixes five security vulnerabilities disclosed today:

• CVE-2007-1337
• CVE-2007-1877
• CVE-2007-1069
• CVE-2007-1876
• CVE-2007-1744

Check complete release notes here. Download it here.

After three months since launch of Converter, 3rd generation of its P2V migration tool, VMware is ready to launch first minor update.

Anyway Converter 3.0.1 (build 44840) is not just a bug fixes release, since it introduces some remarkable new features:

• Capability to import VMware Consolidated Backup images
• Partial capability to import StorageCraft ShadowProtect images
• Experimental command line interface (for Enterprise Edition only)

First feature is particularly important: VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB), introduced with VMware Infrastructure 3, is not a real backup solution, but more a sort of proxy, helping 3rd party backup solutions to access virtual machines stored in SANs facilities.

VCB anyway is not currently providing any help in restore saved virtual machines, and customers have to find their own way to perform this operation.

Introducing this new capability in Converter, VMware is seriously simplifying restore but it’s also showing future directions for disaster recovery: possibly in near future VMware Converter will be the only backup solution, performing a virtual to image (V2I ?) migration for backup, mimicking approach currently taken by PlateSpin.

Download the free Started Edition here.

Zeus Technology started looking at the virtualization market in November 2006, extending support for its load balancing solution, ZXTM, in VMware virtual machines.

Now with an unexpected move the UK company enters this market as player, launching a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) broker.

In this first version Zeus supports for VMware ESX Server and Microsoft Virtual Server platforms, introducing some interesting features like:

• Connection rules engine
  Users are connected to desktops based on rules defined by the administrator. In the simplest case, users are assigned to particular pools and are connected to an available virtual desktop. More complex rules based on a number of parameters can be created using a powerful rules engine
• Connection draining
  Allows the administrator to take virtual machines out of service for maintenance or upgrade without disrupting logged-in users
• Fault monitoring
  ZXTM VDB monitors availability and will only connect users to desktops known to be working correctly. If a virtual desktop fails, ZXTM VDB will raise an alert and will not try to connect users to that machine until it detects that it is working properly again

Despite interesting features, Zeus (like other VDI providers) may be unlucky since VMware, previously just providing the VDI platform, decided to rule the its own market created one year ago and just acquired VDI broker provider Propero, as virtualization.info has revealed last week.

Zeus Technology has been included in the virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Radar.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

After first announcement made at VMworld 2006 in last November, VMware customers had few chances to really understand how the new Record/Replay feature is really going to work in upcoming Workstation 6.0.

Now Steve Herrod, Vice President of of Technology Development, finally writes a long article on its corporate blog describing what can be done with it:

…

When you enable the Record/Replay feature, VMware Workstation immediately takes a snapshot of the full VM state, continues guest software execution, and begins tracking its execution behavior. We’re not talking about a movie of what’s on the screen, but the full system behavior including all CPU and device activity. It notes the exact point in time when every device interrupt or other asynchronous event occurs and records this information to a compressed log file until you tell it to stop. It actually has to save a few other things such as the contents of all incoming networking packets, too.

…

When you choose to replay the recording, it restarts the VM from the snapshot and faithfully re-creates the recorded execution by feeding the logged events and data back to the VM at the exact points in time when they occurred during the original execution. The result is that the exact same execution path is followed during replay. And since the log is saved to disk, you can share the exact execution scenario with others and replay it over and over and over again.

This behaviour makes Record/Replay feature incredibly useful for software debugging, but so far was unclear if it’s suitable also for other purposes. Steve finally clarifies:

We also allow you to “go live” at any time, aborting the rest of the replay and allowing new interactions and new behaviors to proceed. One analogy is autopilot for an airplane. You can disengage it at any point in the trip, go to manual control, and head off in a new direction from that point.

…

We’ve also added “in-guest recording control”. This lets guest software start and stop VM Record/Replay itself…

Capabilities to go live at any point during replay and to invoke recording from inside the guest OS, suddently make Record/Replay the most wanted feature in security industry as well.

While it has limited application in Workstation, imagine this feature available in Server and ESX Server, used for production virtual datacenters: a new class of intrusion detection systems (IDS), sitting at host or guest level and recognizing incoming malicious or anomalous traffic, may activate virtual machines recording. After attack, during forensic analysis of compromised systems, security admins may replay the whole attack and go live immediately after break in, to check which kind of exploiting technique has been used, which kind of files have been injected, etc.

Despite Record/Replay is still an experimental feature, still planned for Workstation 6.0 only, one day it could really change the way we do forensic analysis.

Read the whole article at source.