History

Whitepaper: Data Center Best Practices: Optimizing Server infrastructure with OS Portability

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PlateSpin released an interesting paper about its OS Portability technology:

OS Portability is a technology that decouples the software stack from any physical or virtual machine and allows it to be streamed over the network to any other physical or virtual machine.

This freedom of movement enables users in the data center to move the operating systems and applications to where they can run most effectively, and in a fully automated manner. Matching resource supply with workload demand allows for flexibility and the opportunity to continually optimize the use of existing resources.

This white paper provides best practices for optimizing the use of server resources, and how to get the most of out existing server hardware in the data center using OS Portability technology.

Read it here.

Is Microsoft also approaching operating system partitioning?

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It’s wide known now that Microsoft is preparing to heavily entering the virtualization market with its upcoming Windows Hypervisor (codename Viridian), expected somewhere between 2008 and 2009 (see the Virtualization Industry Roadmap for a complete picture).

Anyway the already debatable Microsoft strategy about virtualization (see my insight Microsoft, the big absentee of virtualization) could change once again: in a CNET News article Stephen Shankland quoted Mike Neil, Product Unit Manager for Windows Virtualization, saying that his company is working on the lightweight virtualization approach variously known as containers, virtual private servers or virtual environments.

The 3 terms are used in OS partitioning technologies like SWsoft Virtuozzo (read my review of Virtuozzo for Windows 3.5.1 to better understand how the technology works) and Sun Solaris Containers, which share the same operating system base and create multiple, isolated forks of subsequent software installed on top (watch my introductory webcast What is Virtualization? to better understand how OS partitioning is related to virtualization).

This move could provide Microsoft a chance to fill the 2-years gap before shipping the Windows Hypervisor with a new technology surely much more effordable than re-engineering the Windows kernel to accomodate an hypervisor.
It still has to be proven that such a solution would have advantages over traditional virtualization now provided by Virtual Server 2005 R2.

Stay tuned for more details on this topic.

Whitepaper: Storage Subsystem Performance in VMware ESX Server: BusLogic versus LSI Logic

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VMware released a great whitepaper about virtual I/O architectures and performance impacts:

The storage subsystem is a critical determinant of system performance. The key to good storage performance is to identify factors and system configuration settings that affect performance and understand how to set these in order to achieve the best results.

The basic determinants of performance are the operating system, the data transfer size, and the access pattern. In the virtual machine environment, the drivers for the available virtual adapters are also a factor. VMware ESX Server virtual machines can use virtual BusLogic and virtual LSI Logic SCSI adapters. The default driver for a virtual machine depends on the guest operationg system. for example, Windows 2000 guests use the Microsoft-supplied BusLogic adapter by default, while Windows Server 2003 guests use the LSI Logic adapter by default.

This document provides a characterization of storage performance for a VMware ESX Server system with an EMC CX500 SAN as the storage back end. The goal is to provide performance data and system resource utilization at various load levels. Throughtput, I/O rate, and response time for various data sizes and access patterns provide sizing guidelines. This baseline data is expected to help debug performance problems and facilitate server consolidation for I/O intensive workloads.

Download it here.

OT: Look at details to trust an author

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I personally have a problem: I’m not able to trust anyone writing an online article about virtualization, even for highly respected portals, when, inevitably mentioning VMware, he’s writing the company name in a bad way: VMWare, VmWare, VMWAre, VM-Ware, etc.

It’s stronger than me: someone pretending to be expert enough to write about a topic should be skilled enough to know how to write the exact name of the main market player related to that topic.

And if the misprinting is not depending on the writer, he should immediately inform the editor for correction.
If this doesn’t happen I simply refuse to give credibility to the author.

Intel says no faster virtualization with actual VT

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Quoting from BCM TechPlanet:

Everytime I meet VMware and other virtualization vendors who proudly tout their partnership with Intel and show off their support of VT, I ask them, “so how much of an improvement does VT give?”

The answer: Ask Intel.

So I did exactly that. Speaking with Diane M. Bryant, Vice President, Digital Enterprise Group & General Manager, Server Platforms Group at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Taiwan, she said: “VMware fully embraces VT so that’s a good indicator, but performance is something that will evolve over time.”…

Read the whole article at source.

Minix ported to Xen

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The Minix 3.1.1 operating system, a minimal Unix clone, has been re-engineered to work in a Xen 2.0.7 domain.

It’s still a work in progress since there is no support for virtual block devices or virtual network devices yet (expected to work after the summer).

In this small presentation there is a map of modifications.

Download it here.