History

ComputerWorld published a brief but interesting comparison between Apple Mac OS most popular virtualization solution, Parallels Desktop, and the upcoming solution from virtualization market leader, VMware codename Fusion, providing following conclusion:

Both Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion are good products. However, it is clear that Fusion still needs some work in terms of its performance and to fully implement its feature set. It also isn’t quite as stable and reliable as Parallels.

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It is also worth noting that the next release of Parallels is slated to offer at least two of those features — drag and drop and USB 2.0. It is also slated for several more advances including the ability to use a Boot Camp partition as a Windows boot disk instead of a hard drive image file, greatly enhanced network options and full support for CD/DVD drives (including burn capabilities and access to copy-protected discs). There will also be a new mode called “coherence” that will allow Windows applications to run alongside Mac applications without the need for a separate Windows interface…

As a result, it seems that for the foreseeable future, VMware will remain a generation behind Parallels.

Read the whole comparison at source.

Despite the unfair competition (VMware codename Fusion is still in beta), which has been admitted by reviewer, conclusion is relevant: Fusion has been annouced since August 2006 and still has to reach Release Candidate status. Before such milestone Parallels is expected to release Desktop 2.5 and to already start working on 3.0 beta.

The VMware Performance Team posted on its corporate blog some results obtained comparing ESX Server performances in NUMA and non-NUMA architectures:

recently performed some NUMA characterizations using VMmark on an older HP DL585 with 4 2.2 GHz dual-core Opterons. In the DL585, each dual-core processor is in its own NUMA node. I wanted to measure how heavily we stress the NUMA interconnect links, known as HyperTransport (HT) on the Opteron. I ran tests with one VMmark tile (6 VMs), two VMmark tiles (12 VMs), three VMmark tiles (18VMs), and four VMmark tiles (24 VMs). The tests consumed 27%, 58%, 90%, and 100% of the system CPU resources, respectively.

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The most important result is that the HT utilization remains below 20% in all cases. This implies that we have a large amount of headroom in the memory subsystem, which can be used as processor speeds increase. More importantly, the transition to quad-core systems should also be smooth, especially since newer versions of the HT links should provide even better performance.

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I then repeated the experiment with the DL 585 configured in memory-interleave (non-NUMA) mode in order to quantify the benefits of using NUMA on this system…The tests also consumed slightly more CPU resources than the NUMA configuration at each load level due to the higher average memory latencies caused by the high proportion of remote accesses. The average CPU utilization was 30%, 62%, 95%, and 100% with 6 VMs, 12 VMs, 18 VMs, and 24 VMs, respectively…

Read the whole article at source.

VMware continues to collect successes with ESX Server 3 and VirtualCenter 2 powerful combination.

In January 2007 products has been named Disaster Recovery solution of 2006 by SearchWinComputing.

In February 2007 the bundle has been named first product for building the New Data Center by Network World.

Is this the best moment to use IT 2.0 hype for virtualization marketing?

Quoting from the Double-Take official announcement:

Further broadening its offerings for VMware environments, Double-Take® Software today announced Double-Take for VMware Infrastructure, a solution that protects entire VMware virtual machines.

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Double-Take for VMware Infrastructure runs on a single Windows® server in a virtualized environment, and allows administrators to centrally manage and monitor multiple virtual machine protection jobs from any Windows desktop using the client management console. Double-Take for VMware Infrastructure captures changes regularly, keeping the target virtual disks up to date and ready for failover, recovery and backup at any time. During an outage, the replicated virtual machine can be started on the target server with the latest replicated data available.

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Double-Take for VMware Infrastructure is compatible with VMware ESX Server versions 3 and later, and VirtualCenter version 2 or later.

Quoting from the SWsoft official announcement:

SWsoft, Inc. has signed an agreement with Microsoft Corp. that helps SWsoft enhance its customers’ experience. The agreement is for a three-year period and benefits SWsoft enterprise and hosting customers running Virtuozzo for Windows Server virtualization software.

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As part of the agreement, SWsoft will receive 24-hour, 7-day support from Microsoft for its enterprise and hosting customers operating Windows-based applications within Virtuozzo virtual environments…

The russian startup Veeam continues to release free tools to simplify VMware power users’ life.

After Veeam Monitor (which is free when used with VMware Workstation) and Veeam FastSCP, the company launches Veeam RootAccess:

By default ESX Server 3 does not allow remote shell access (ssh) for the root account. Veeam RootAccess Wizard helps you to enable or disable remote root access, or create a regular non-root user account. The newly created non-root user will belong to the default ‘users’ group and will be automatically granted remote ssh access. Su or sudo commands can then be used to elevate to the root account for privileged operations.

Download it here.

Microsoft just released a refreshed build (05.0.4000.0000) of its Virtual Server 2005 Management Pack for Microsoft Operation Manager (MOM).

The new version just includes an updated report which will import successfully on SQL Server Reporting Services 2005.

Download it here.

Thanks to Andrew Dugdell for the news.

After launching its own virtual appliances delivery facility and bundling for the first time an appliance with its plaftorm, Virtual Iron (in collaboration with rPath and the Barton Group) is arranging a new webcast about the topic for February 21th:

The growing acceptance of virtualization technology is about to revolutionize the way IT consumers deploy applications. A major part of this shift is being driven by software vendors who provide “virtual appliances.”

Virtual appliances represent a new opportunity to streamline and simplify software distribution for virtual environments. With a virtual appliance, software vendors can ship thoroughly tested, standard configurations that require minimal installation effort. Users are spared the complication of installing multiple supporting systems, since everything is contained in the virtual appliance package — the operating system, services and applications. This dramatically decreases potential support issues related to incorrectly configured software or hardware. Users can simply download the virtual appliance and run it with virtualization software.

In this online panel discussion, industry experts from the Burton Group, rPath and Virtual Iron will discuss best practices in virtualization and the use of virtual appliances.

Attendees will learn:

• Best use and deployment of virtual appliances
• Leveraging ready to run virtual appliances that you can take advantage of today
• Using virtual appliances to enable maximum operational efficiency and the smallest hardware footprint possible

Register for it here.

The virtualization.info Events Calendar has been updated accordingly.

After 4 years since Virtual PC 2004 and 4 months since first public beta Microsoft finally release Virtual PC 2007, probably the last virtualization platform based on Connectix technology before the launch of brand new Windows Server Virtualization (codename Viridian).

This new version is released free of charge like Virtual Server 2005 and introduces some notable improvements like:

• 64bit host OS support
• AMD SVM and Intel VT support
• Vista support (both host and guest OS)
• PXE booting support

but continues to lack on some critical aspects like 64bit guest OSes support.

Anyway the biggest change in this release is dropping of support for Windows 95 (while support for OS/2 Warp is still there).

This may seem a contraddiction: one of the first purposes of virtualization was supporting legacy applications and environments, and Microsoft more than anybody else on the IT industry could benefit from it to grant extended support to its customers. Instead it’s the market leader and competitor VMware which provides such support.

Download Virtual PC 2007 here (both 32 and 64bit).

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

Microsoft takes another step towards licensing restyling for virtualization scenarios with release of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2.

Quoting from the official announcement:

Microsoft Corp. today released Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP2, an update to its award-winning data management and analysis platform. Customers can now take advantage of enhancements in the familiar and easy-to-use Windows Vista operating system and 2007 Microsoft Office system to easily connect and integrate with the power, security and reliability of SQL Server 2005.

In addition, Microsoft announced that it is expanding virtualization use rights to allow unlimited virtual instances on servers that are fully licensed for SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition. For customers who want maximum flexibility in their use of virtualization technology, now or in the future, SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition is the ideal choice.

This is an impressive move from Microsoft: at this point buying a Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter Edition and a single SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition means having limitless databases in your infrastructure.

Previous evaluations of company strategy about virtualization are now to be reconsidered: when Microsoft released for free its Virtual Server 2005 R2 and subsequently unlocked its licensing model in virtualization scenarios for Windows Server 2003 R2, several analysts highlighted those moves as part of a sharp tactic to sell more back-end servers licenses (mainly for SQL Server and Exchange Server).

But looking at this announcement and remembering the new Exchange Server 2007 isn’t supported in virtual machines at the moment, such reading is far to be confirmed.

Please note this new licensing model applies to any virtualization platforms, not only Microsoft Virtual Server 2005.