History

Tony Bailey, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft, discloses the VHD Test Drive program launched in November achieved 300,000 downloads of VHDs.

Microsoft is expected to extend the program before end of year, publishing more of its backend servers as well as other Windows-based virtual machines charged with partners solutions.

A great help for customers would be releasing a WSUS virtual appliance alread updated with latest Windows patches.

IBM RedBook department released a new whitepaper (actually a Redpaper) about virtualization management features included in System p5 servers:

The IBM Virtual I/O Server Version 1.2 provided a hardware management function called the Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM). It handled the partition configuration on selected IBM System p5, IBM p5, and IBM OpenPower systems without the need for dedicated hardware, such as a Hardware Management Console. The latest version of VIOS, 1.3.0.0, adds a number of new functions, such as support for dynamic logical partitioning for memory and processors in managed systems, task manager monitor for long-running tasks, security additions such as viosecure and firewall, and other improvements.

The Integrated Virtualization Manager enables a more cost-effective solution for consolidation of multiple partitions onto a single server. With its intuitive, browser-based interface, the Integrated Virtualization Manager is easy to use and significantly reduces the time and effort required to manage virtual devices and partitions.

This IBM Redpaper provides an introduction to the Integrated Virtualization Manager, describing its architecture and showing how to install and configure a partitioned server using its capabilities.

Read the whole whitepaper at source.

The new website vmToolkit released its first handly tool: a converter for Windows able to translate a VMware virtual machine format (.vmdk) in a Microsoft virtual machine one (.vhd).

The opposite migration is already possible thanks to VMware Workstation native capability to import Virtual PC and Virtual Server images, but also thanks to VMware Importer 2.0 and upcoming VMware Converter 3.0 free tools.

So far Microsoft never released a tool for achieve similar migration and customer had to rely on commercial virtual to virtual (V2V) solutions.
Now worldwide Microsoft customers using Virtual Server can convert for free hundreds of VMware virtual appliances.

Andrew Dugdell already published a positive comment on it:

The VMDK was 1,986 Mb and it converted to a 2,001 Mb VHD in about 15 minutes on my aging T41p laptop.
…
Everything is working nicely, I have a couple of errors in the VM eventlog – but humming along smoothly.

Download it here.

rBuilder is the innovative platform offered by rPath able to simplify and partially automate creation of Linux-based appliances.

Since ever rBuilder supports (live and installable) ISOs and VMware .vmdk output formats, becoming one of the preferred solution to develop new virtual appliances. But if you are not using VMware products you had to convert these images in a more flexible format, with a so-called virtual to virtual (V2V) migration.

Now rBuilder allows users to save their distros in raw hard disk image format, permitting to use them in other virtualization platforms like Xen, Parallels or QEMU.
And, not being enoug, rPath is now extending support to Microsoft .vhd format, allowing everybody to create virtual appliances for current Virtual Server 2005 R2 and upcoming Windows Server Virtualization.

Macworld published its annual list of preferred software, hardware and online products for this 2006. Among 29 winners of Editors’ Choice Award appear Parallels, which conquered Apple customers with its Desktop virtualization product.

At the moment Parallels has no competitors on virtualization market for Apple: Microsoft retired its Virtual PC for Mac OS and VMware still has to deliver something concrete after its announcement, but customers want more. In particular they are demanding for 3D support in virtual machines, and Parallels may announce something in this direction at imminent MacWorld 2007 in January.

Quoting from the Altiris official announcement:

Altiris, Inc., a pioneer of service-oriented management solutions, today announced the addition of new Linux patch and virtual server management capabilities to help secure and manage heterogeneous server environments.
…
Altiris provides a suite of server management solutions to help improve system availability and reliability, monitor performance, maintain operations and remediate security vulnerabilities. New features will include:

• Improved support of VMware virtual server resources now includes expanded deployment, inventory and software delivery for VMware ESX Server and GSX Server

…
Altiris® Server Management Suite software is now available starting at an MSRP of $253 USD per node with volume discounts available…

Mark Wondratschek, member of SAP’s High Availability Initiative, created a great 6-parts how-to for installing SAP inside a Sun Solaris 10 zone and cloning it inside other zones for high availability purposes:

This is the first part of a blogger series describing how to easily create runable shadow copies of productive systems using Sun Solaris 10 native OS virtualization functionalities (Solaris Zones).
These shadow systems can be used for applying updates, patches or similar tasks which would result in a downtime of the productive system usually.
After the desired task was performed successfully the shadow systems can be switched with the productive systems. This way the planned downtime of the productive system landscape can be reduced dramatically.

In this part you will get a short overview about the general concepts. The following parts provide a step-by-step approach based on a SAP NetWeaver 2004s SR1 system (usage type EP) running on Solaris 10 operating system…

Worth to read both Installing SAP systems in Solaris 10 Zones and Creating SAP system clones using Solaris 10 virtualization concepts.

Quoting from the Kidaro official announcement:

Kidaro, provider of virtual desktop computing for the enterprise without boundaries, has announced the closing of a $10-million financing round. New investor Opus Capital led the round, joining existing investors Genesis Partners and Storm Ventures. Opus Capital General Partner Dan Avida will join Kidaro’s Board of Directors…

In an interview with Parallels Marketing Manager, Ben Rudolph, Inside Mac Games discovered the company is going to offer 3D capabilities inside virtual machines since next year:

…
Inside Mac Games: What’s your view on similar virtualization software such as Boot Camp, Cross Over etc.?

Rudolph: Well, neither are virtualization solutions, and both have productivity problems. Boot Camp is fast and offers a true native experience, but you can’t use it at the same time as OS X, so you’re effectively killing the productivity of your Mac.

CrossOver is cool at first glance, since you can run Windows apps without Windows, but there are some real problems when you get to work. No device support, slow performance, and a very limited program set.

One of the features missing in Parallels I believe is 3D gaming support for games such as Battlefield 1942, Unreal Tournament, etc.

Inside Mac Games: Do you plan to implement this key feature in the future?

Rudolph: This is something that we’re already working on. The goal is to have OpenGL and DirectX support in our next version, which should be in beta around the turn of the year…

Read the whole interview at source.

Is Parallels going to beat on time VMware once again?

Citrix arranged for December 14th a new webcast about its current approach to Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI):

Perplexed by what kind of virtual desktop to deliver to your users? Join us for this month’s TechTalk webinar as Sunil Kumar, discusses how you can deliver a flexible, personalized desktop experience to your users through the new Desktop Broker feature of Presentation Server. Find out how Desktop Broker works and what components are needed for implementation. Learn step-by-step instructions on how to deploy and configure desktop broker in your Presentation Server environment. How can Desktop Broker help your IT organization?–By moving the user desktop closer to IT while giving your users the desktop experience they need.

In this session you will learn about:

• Mapping users to the “right desktop”
• Architectural vision behind desktop broker feature
• Desktop broker configuration and interactions
• Planning and deploying desktop broker in you IT environment

Register for it here.

The virtualization.info Events Calendar has been updated accordingly.