History

German consulting firm Mightycare is working on a new tool for VMware ESX Server 3.0 aimed to simplify hypervisor patching: esxPatcher.

This tool, still in beta, manages a given webserver as a central repository for patches, querying single ESX Server and automatically installing missing patches.

Download esxPatcher beta here.

The Aberdeen Group just published a 21-pages report about server and storage virtualization trends called Justifying the Cost of Uptime.

Reports key findings are:

• Best-in-class companies are three times more likely to enjoy a reduction in staff overhead and twice as likely to experience an increase in server utilization rates
• Best-in-class companies had almost three quarters of their server infrastructure virtualized (twice that of the average and laggard performers) and three times as much of their storage infrastructure virtualized
• Best-in-class companies experienced better cost savings the more they expanded virtualization throughtout their environments
• 65% of end-users surveyed have no plans to deploy virtualization within remote offices
• Types of virtualization architectures did not prove to be a differentiator for best in class, industry average and laggard firm

The analysis, conducted among 140 end users, is available for free (only for a limited amount of time) thanks to virtualization startup InovaWave sponsorship.

Read it here.

Quoting from the Sentillion official announcement:

Sentillion, Inc., with its packaged desktop virtualization solution, vThere, has been included in the list of “Cool Vendors” in the “Cool Vendors in PC Technologies” report by Gartner, Inc. written by Brian Gammage, et al., March 7, 2007. The five vendors listed in the report provide products “that enable PC users to perform their jobs with ease, flexibility and mobility.”…

One of virtualization.info most visited articles since February has been VMware ESX Server 3.0.1 vs Xen 3.0.3 performance comparison.

In that article I reported about a VMware paper highlighting ESX Server 3.0.1 commercial hypervisor performances superiority over Xen 3.0.3 open source hypervisor.

Such claims from VMware cannot be easily confuted because of company’s EULA, which prevents anybody publishing of any comparison without explicit permission. But XenSource, which founded the Xen project and is currently offering a commercial solution based on it, found such behaviour pretty unfair and VMware paper’s conclusions misleading, so that, in March, challengingly published a similar paper, this time comparing ESX Server 3.0.1 against its XenEnterprise 3.2.

To avoid any lawsuit XenSource ripped off ESX Server benchmarking, and asked VMware for full publishing permission.

Now VMware, possibly under the community pressure waiting to see real numbers or just to limit negative advertising its EULA is providing, allowed publishing of XenSource complete comparison.

This document reveals very similar performances between two virtualization platforms, and in some tests shows XenEnterprise 3.2 (which is still in beta and it’s based on Xen 3.0.4) outperforming ESX Server 3.0.1, so that you can read in conclusion:

VMware appears to have failed to appreciate the difference between our Xen open source code base and our commercial XenServer products. For example, had they read the release notes for Xen 3.0.3, they would quickly have established that Intel VT was only partially supported in that release. Moreover, XenSource’s Xen Tools for Windows, which optimize the I/O path, were not installed. The VMware benchmarks should thus be disregarded in their entirety.

Our performance results show convincingly that XenEnterprise 3.2 performs equally well or better than VMware ESX Server 3.0.1 in all but a couple of tests. Given that we have not spent much time on optimizing our product for traditional benchmarks we are pleased to see that there is essentially no difference between the two products. Our tests highlighted a couple of areas in which ESX marginally outperforms XenEnterprise, namely on compile time, and for Netperf TX. XenEnterprise outperforms ESX on the Passmark memory operations. XenEnterprise scales well to utilize multiple CPUs to allow a wide variety of workloads to be run. Additionally the scalability testing found that XenEnterprise
provides similar scalability to ESX when additional virtual machines are added to the platform.

VMware also appears to have under-appreciated the performance advantages of the latest generation of Intel and AMD processors with built-in support for virtualization. Although VMware’s legacy technology cannot exploit these features, XenEnterprise’s high performance is proof that these technologies deliver tremendous price/performance advantages to end users…

Read the whole comparison whitepaper here.

In its endless effort to support any existing virtualization platform on the planet, rPath just added Xen-based Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to its long list.

Quoting from the official announcement:

rPath, provider of the first platform for creating and maintaining software appliances, today announced rPath’s rBuilder™ support of the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) from Amazon Web Services. rPath’s integration with Amazon EC2 marks the first time that software appliances have been combined with an on-demand computing infrastructure.

…

It will work like this: software developers use rBuilder to build an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) that is stored using the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Then, with a single click, rBuilder and rBuilder Online users can boot their software appliances on Amazon EC2. No more waiting for downloads or fighting with complex installation procedures…

Quoting from the LANDesk official announcement:

LANDesk Software, a leading provider of systems, security, and process management solutions for desktops, servers and mobile devices across the enterprise, today announced an OEM relationship with Thinstall, a leading application virtualization solution provider. The two companies have agreed to collaborate on the integration of Thinstall’s application virtualization technology into LANDesk’s systems management solutions.

…

The product will be available as a stand-alone solution from LANDesk Expert Solution Providers (ESPs) in Q2 2007. The pricing will start at a manufacturers suggested retail price (MSRP) of $39 (USD) per node…

Quoting from the IDC official announcement:

It is clear that x86-based server deployment patterns are changing dramatically in the market today. The rapid emergence of multicore architectures and virtualization technologies is significantly restricting worldwide x86 server shipments. According to IDC’s updated forecast, multicore and virtualization will cost the x86 market more than 4.5 million shipments and $2.4 billion in customer spending between 2006-2010. Overall, x86 shipments that were once projected to increase 61% by 2010 are now facing just 39% growth during that same period.

…

Other highlights from this study include:

• Server revenue growth rates will be lower in comparison, but are reduced to a lesser extent than shipment growth rates as customers deploy more richly configured systems in terms of memory, disk, and I/O to balance the increase in processing and server utilization
• Despite the decline in the number of physical shipments, over the forecast period, growth in the number of effective processors continues to climb at a 25% annual rate due to multi-core technology advances
• The number of virtual servers rises dramatically at a CAGR of 40.6% during 2005-2010 so that by the end of the forecast period, more than 1.7 million physical servers will be shipped for virtualization activities resulting in 7.9 million logical servers. This represents 14.6% of all physical servers in 2010 compared to just 4.5% of server shipments in 2005

…

VMware published a remarkable 219-pages free book about storage tecnologies, design principles and implementation in VMware Infrastructure 3 environments:

This guide, or “cookbook,” describes how to design and deploy virtual infrastructure systems using VMware Infrastructure 3 with SANs (storage area networks). It describes SAN options supported with VMware Infrastructure 3 and also describes benefits, implications, and disadvantages of various design choices. The guide answers questions related to SAN management, such as how to:

• Manage multiple hosts and clients
• Set up multipathing and failover
• Create cluster-aware virtual infrastructure
• Carry out server and storage consolidation and distribution
• Manage data growth using centralized data pools and virtual volume provisioning

This guide describes various SAN storage system design options and includes the benefits, drawbacks, and ramifications of various solutions. It also provides step-by-step instructions on how to approach the design, implementation, testing, and deployment of SAN storage solutions with VMware Infrastructure, how to monitor and optimize performance, and how to maintain and troubleshoot SAN storage systems in a VMware Infrastructure environment. In addition, Appendix A provides a checklist of SAN system design and implementation.

Table of Contents

• Introduction to VMware and SAN Storage Solutions
• Storage Area Network Concepts
• VMware Virtualization of Storage
• Planning for VMware Infrastructure 3 with SAN
• Installing VMware Infrastructure 3 with SAN
• Managing VMware Infrastructure 3 with SAN
• Growing VMware Infrastructure and Storage Space
• High Availability, Backup and Disaster Recovery
• Optimization and Performance Tuning
• Common Problems and Troubleshooting

It’s a worthwhile reading before your first project, the VCP certification exam, and even non-virtualized implementations.

Read it here.

Quoting from the Virtual Iron official announcement:

Virtual Iron Software, a provider of enterprise-class software solutions for server virtualization and virtual infrastructure management, today announced that EqualLogic’s PS Series storage arrays are now certified for use with Virtual Iron virtualization and management software…

Microsoft published the definitive agenda for imminent Management Summit (MMS) 2007, taking place in San Diego March 26-30.

It contains a whole track about virtualization with several introductory sessions, mostly focused on SoftGrid and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM).

Latter product may be the key of this year’s edition, with the announcement of beta 2.

Register for MMS2007 here.