History

Initially announcing it at WinHEC 2006 conference, Microsoft has finally made available beta bits of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2007, the tool aimed to satisfy virtualization management need in Virtual Server 2005 and upcoming Windows Server Virtualization infrastructures.

The tool also directly addresses competition with VMware VirtualCenter, able to perform highly complex tasks on ESX Server datacenters.

Virtual Machine Manager brings in its first beta several notable features:

• Hosts management by groups (including resources reservetion, permissions assignment and tasks issuing)
• Virtual machines scripts, templates and profile repository (Virtual Machine Manager library)
• Virtual machines automated creation and management by advanced scripting (with Windows PowerShell)
• Virtual machines assisted placement among available hosts (with automated rating system)
• Virtual machines centralized backup managment (with checkpoints)
• Virtual machines assisted provisioning by web interface and pre-defined policies (Self-Service Portal)
• Fibre Channel (FC) Storage Area Networks (SANs) integration (including virtual machines host-to-host migration)

In this build some much wanted features are not available:

• physical to virtual (P2V) migration
• clustered hosts support
• virtual machines automatic migration between hosts
• command line management

All of these are expected for beta 2.

A note about security: Virtual Machine Manager, like most Microsoft back end servers, needs an Active Directory domain for itself and controlled host OSes, creating serious problems in all scenarios where Virtual Server 2005 has been deployed in DMZ with a hardened configuration.
Hopefully Microsoft will reconsider the choice proposing a version for untrusted networks (like it’s doing with Exchange Server 2007).

The beta program is public: register for it here.

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

Quoting from BetaNews:

In a statement provided to BetaNews Monday, the company said its Macintosh Business Unit has decided not to go forward with a version of the software native to the Intel platform.

“Developing a high-quality virtualization solution, such as Virtual PC, for the Intel-based Mac is similar to creating a version 1.0 release due to how closely the product integrates with Mac hardware,” a Microsoft spokesperson said…

Read the whole article at source.

So, while Parallels is dominating virtualization on Apple market and VMware is approaching, Microsoft gives up lamenting porting the product is like writing it from scratch.

Apple has been able to port on Intel the whole software offering, including operating system, in 210 days, and Redmond giant has problems to port a single product on an architecture it mastered for more than 20 years. This while is spendind millions in the Windows virtualization strategy.

Microsoft could find in virtualization a new unexpected help to put Windows on every computer on the planet, but it’s wasting the opportunity not producing virtualization solutions for other operating systems, including Linux, MacOS, Solaris, BSD.

This year LinuxWorld conference dedicates a whole track to high performance computing and virtualization, with notable speakers, including presenters from IBM, Intel, Microsoft, SWsoft, Virtual Iron, VMware, XenSource.

• HPC101: Building Blocks and Standards
  Gary Tyreman, noted Grid technology expert, makes an exciting announcement about a new standard that will shake up HPC and grid technology as we know it.
• Grids: Computing Infrastructure for Today’s Applications
  Dynamic environments, enabled by various virtualization mechanisms, date back to the early days of mainframe computing. As enterprises increasingly leverage virtualization techniques (IDC is reporting more than 60% growth from last year), IT professionals need to better understand how virtualization and Grid relate to one another. Virtualization is not a complete resource management solution. However, it does provide useful capabilities for isolating operating system environments from each other and allowing them to be moved among different hardware resources. Like Grid, virtualization is a trend that’s being driven by economics: Grid infrastructure addresses the operating costs associated with managing multiple IT resource islands within the enterprise, while virtualization allows companies to improve utilization of existing hardware rather than having to overprovision to meet peak demands. This session will present how Grid infrastructure technologies are used to enable effective management of shared resources and address how organizations can create a dynamic IT environment.
• Linux Virtualization in the Datacenter
  With over 20,000 enterprise customers, VMware has a unique view into how Linux virtualization is being deployed and managed in production datacenters. In this session, we will discuss the variety of virtualization-based solutions that have been implemented using VMware Infrastructure, including server consolidation, business continuity, test and development, and virtual desktops. We will also explore Linux-specific requirements for virtualization platforms and management, and the ways in which paravirtualization and the OS-hypervisor interface can evolve to meet those needs.
• Xen: Success Stories for Enterprise Open Source Virtualization
  At XenSource we have been working with enterprise users of Xen 3.0 for over a year. Many large enterprise users are beginning to experience the benefits of Xen 3.0 for Linux deployments as a cost effective, very high performance virtualization infrastructure solution. This talk will present some use cases for XenSource’s flagship product in the enterprise, based on our experience with Linux users’™ virtualization needs, both in the hypervisor and control and automation tools. We will discuss the key issue of integration with storage virtualization, which enables provisioning of any virtual server on any box, any time, as well as snapshotting and cloning of virtual machines. We will draw on specific use cases and best practice that we have accumulated working with our customers.
• Virtualization and the Next Generation Data Center
  Virtualization holds great promise, but many first and second generation virtualization technologies compound the problem by adding cost and complexity in the form of virtual server sprawl, new management requirements and performance overhead. Emerging virtualization technologies are addressing these shortcomings and enabling leading enterprises to take virtualization to the next level. Virtualization has become a key strategy to reduce the complexity and cost involved with managing and operating data centers. This panel session will discuss these emerging technologies and examine how they can be leveraged to make the data center more efficient, flexible and agile while dramatically reducing cost and complexity.
• Are SaaS and Web 2.0 Defining the Future of the Datacenter?
  The rapid growth of SaaS and Web 2.0 is influencing data center infrastructure providers. Despite their relative youth, these demanding users have unique requirments because of their rapid growth and constant change, and they’re avid users of virtualization. The panel will discuss SaaS and Web 2.0 needs, how they’re using current virtualization offerings, and the effect these young companies are having on the product roadmaps of data center infrastructure vendors.
• Real World Consolidation Through Server Virtualization
  Under-utilized server resources didn’t seem like such a big deal until the recent economic slump forced a harder look at technology budgets. Now the focus is on consolidating workloads (applications, servers, etc.) to do more with less. This session will look at a case-study example of real-world scenarios dealing with issues such as server consolidation, disaster recovery, application management and routine task automation and how they help ensure the high availability, high performance and low cost that virtualization promises.

  Arvato mobile, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann AG, is the leading mobile entertainment provider in Europe. The company initially used an open source virtualization solution, but outgrew it as the number of servers increased and management became cumbersome. To fix the issue, arvato mobile chose an OS-level virtualization approach offering higher performance, near-zero overhead, and the comprehensive management toolset the company needed.

• The Coming I/O Crisis – Why Virtualization Technology Needs to Move Beyond Processors and Memor
  Current industry efforts rightly focus on both hardware and software based technologies that virtualize processors and memory for the purpose of increasing the utilization of servers, generally deployed in grids or clusters in the Web-tier of the datacenter. The benefits of consolidating servers and simplifying the management of these resources in the near term are obvious, considering the proliferation of low end hardware in the marketplace. However, there is a coming crisis that the industry should be laying the groundwork to address, and that is the often overlooked I/O capacity of datacenter servers.

  Just as in chip design, the bottleneck to performance is more often the gateway to the processor than it is the processing capability itself. If data cannot efficiently flow into the server, grid or cluster, the benefits of virtualizing processors and memory will be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data trying to flow through I/O systems.

• Virtual Infrastructure Deployment Best Practices
  The presentation discusses practices around deploying a Virtual Infrastructure. This will include some key items from the VMware Virtual Infrastructure Methodology (VIM) that include a ‘best of’ from doing virtualization assessments, to architectural design, to deployment and ongoing management. This will include a high level strategy with technical points for each area as well as examples of both success and failure in deployment from real life customers. Managing and scaling the Virtual Infrastructure for successful integration within the enterprise through the development of a VIM Center of Excellence.
• Xen Technical Insight – SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10
  This session will preview the Xen virtualization technology. Topics covered will include: (a) Xen 3.0 architecture, (b) Xen technical roadmap and (c) Integration of Xen technology in Novell products.
• How Emerging Data Center Architectures are making Virtualization a Reality

Register for it here.

On the VMware homepage a new banner appeared right today, before Apple WWDC conference starts.

It’s linked to a sign up page to stay informed about availability of a new virtualization product for Mac OS later this year.

From description it’s possible to understand it’s Workstation and not just Player (like someone supposed), since VMware advertises the possibility to create new virtual machines.

Some features are notable:

• platform interoperability (create a new VM on Mac OS and use it on Windows or Linux, and vice versa)
• product interoperability (create a new VM on Workstation for Mac OS and run it on Player for Windows or ESX Server on bare metal)
• host-guest OSes drag and drop (move or copu a file from Mac OS inside the virtual machine simply dragging it, and vice versa)

Update: The VMware official announcement doesn’t provide a name for the new product:

VMware, Inc., the global leader in software for industry-standard virtualized desktops and servers, today announced a new product that will enable Intel-based Macs to run x86 operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, NetWare and Solaris, in virtual machines at the same time as Mac OS X…

but a new post on the corporate blog, The Console, from Srinivas Krishnamurti, Director of Developer Products and Market Development, provides details about other features:

Since most Macs now have Intel’s Duo with two cores, we added Virtual SMP capabilities so that you can assign more than a single CPU to any virtual machine to gain additional performance.

One of the cool things that I like about my Apple (albeit an older one with PowerPC chip) is the simplicity of doing any multi-media work. I can record movies or use iChat quite easily without the need to buy additional software. We wanted to make sure you have access to all those devices from your virtual machine as well so we spent a lot of time on making sure devices work well. You can use USB 2 devices like video cameras, etc…

This article was moved to the new section virtualization.info TechTalk.

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In a review of Parallels Desktop, InfoWorld Test Center Chief Technologist, Tom Yager, affirmed:

…But it is accepted that client software virtualization is too slow and resource-hungry to be of practical use to professionals. As a result, client virtualization has gone virtually nowhere.

The sentence is there to back the idea performances can go back to normal with paravirtualization.

This couldn’t be more far from truth.

Performances on desktop machines strictly depends on available resources. In the same way it happens on server machines.
VMware Workstation and Server (formerly GSX Server) share same engine and virtualization performances are equal given same available resources and same operating system situation (amount of started services, memory manager settings, swap file, etc.).

It’s not a secret if you try to run a virtual machine on a typical laptop with 256 Mb RAM and an old Centrino processor your system will hang, inable to provide enough memory and processor power for all requests.
It’s not a secret if you try to run a virtual machine on a typical laptop with a default installation of Microsoft Windows XP SP2 you’ll have worst performances of a Windows Server 2003 SP1 with hardening and memory optimization for background services.

Virtual machines requires, in physical desktops, laptops or servers, enough resources. Not having them will translate in slow performances, in all scenarios.
In no cases this depends on virtualization.

It’s true paravirtualization significantly increase performances over traditional virtualization (sometimes called hardware virtualization, others called server virtualization), but it still needs enough resources.

Another 2 important points:

• a professional in need of virtualization doesn’t run a typical laptop with 256 Mb RAM and an old Centrino processor. If he does, he didn’t understand how virtualization works.
• client virtualization has gone everywhere.
  In my experience, at today, there is no high level professional, in every field except graphic (due to actual technology limitations), which has not adopted virtualization on his desktop.
  Software developerd, system or network engineers, security professionals, sales agents, marketing manager, accounting staff, conference speaker, classroom teachers. Everybody. Literally.

Let’s Talk Computers published an interview with Acronis Marketing Director, Stephen Lawton, about backup and recovery strategies in virtual infrastructures.

Read the complete transcript here. Listen to the interview in RealAudio or Windows Media format.

Ben Armstrong published a nice script to verify at host level how large Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 virtual disks are and how much space they already took:

‘Connect to Virtual Server
Set virtualServer = CreateObject(“VirtualServer.Application”)

‘Create a VHD object with the .VHD file specified on the command line
Set aVirtualHardDisk = virtualServer.GetHardDisk(WScript.Arguments(0))

GuestSize = clng(cdbl(aVirtualHardDisk.SizeInGuest) / 1048576)
HostSize = clng(cdbl(aVirtualHardDisk.SizeOnHost) / 1048576)

‘Display information about the disk size
wscript.echo “The virtual hard disk, ” & WScript.Arguments(0) & ” is “&_
GuestSize & ” MB to the virtual machine. It is using ” & _
HostSize & ” MB space on the host operating system”

Be sure to check the original post for updates and comments.

In an interview with VMBlog Benjamin Rudolph, Marketing Manager at Parallels, redefined dates for availability of company’s enteprise products:

…
We’re going to be releasing our Parallels Server and Parallels Enterprise Server products in beta later this year, with an intended GA launch in early 2007.

Parallels Server is going to be a powerful, out of the box server virtualization product that is designed to give growing companies access to the same virtualization technologies that the “big boys” are using, at a price that won’t cripple their budget.

Parallels Enterprise Server is a high-end server virtualization product that is designed for larger companies with significant server resources. This product will include a number of our productivity enhancing management tools and offer several high-end features like dynamic load balancing and automatic fail-over protection. They’re going to be a great compliment to the client-side virtualization solutions that we have now.

Read the whole interview at source.

In an older interview with virtualization.info, Rudolph announced Server to available for mid year and Enterprise Server for late 2006.

I have some difficulties understanding which product will compete with Parallels Server, since both VMware and Microsoft offers Server 1.0 and Virtual Server 2005 R2 for free.
It cannot be VMware ESX Server, the only virtualization server solution with a retail price, since it’s expected to be addressed by Parallels Enterprise Server.

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

SearchServerVirtualization wrote an interesting article about thin computing, now more interesting with VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) initiative and its partners, and application virtualization approaches.

The most interesting part pushes the idea application virtualization solutions could be more appreciated than thin clients and could grab existing market quotes:

…
In the long run, application virtualization may make a much deeper impression on the desktop than thin clients because it doesn’t require the use of proprietary hardware.
Like application virtualization today, thin computing of yore had as a mantra to “make the client system more flexible and secure,” said Michael Dortch, principal business analyst and IT infrastructure management practice leader at the Robert Frances Group Inc. in Westport, Conn. “But the way to do it was never to take away existing hardware and replace it with something far less functional – that was never going to fly.”

By using on the same desktop PC hardware that users have come to know and love – or at least tolerate, said Dortch, “[app virtualization] takes today’s thick client and instead of trying to make it thin, makes it more fit and agile.”

Read the whole article at source.