History

Steven Bink reports: Microsoft announced a new Virtual PC Express edition that will be included in the upcoming Windows Vista Enterprise edition.
This Windows edition will be available for Microsoft Software Assurance customers. Others should wait early 2006 when Virtual PC Express will be released as a stand alone product.

The announcement was made during this webcast.

Ben Armstrong from Virtual PC Guy blog adviced that Virtual Server 2005 Standard is now available for MSDN Standard and Universal subscribers.

Is this the Microsoft move to counteract the upcoming VMware Workstation 5.5?

Hi everybody.
The virtualization market is really growing huge and also books about virtualization technology and products are poppin’around as mushrooms. Soon it could become complex tracing every book about the argument so a new section is now added on top of my blog sidebar: the Virtualization Bookshelf.

It will list books about virtualization released on the market, ordered by blog post date (so it will probably be a release date order too).
Every link will point to my blog post about the book and inside the post you’ll find a shortcut to the Amazon page of the book. Everytime a published book will be republished I’ll update the bookshelf order.

I hope you’ll find this new section useful.

Quoting from VNUnet:

Altiris has launched version 6.5 of its Deployment Solution, a tool for deploying operating systems and software across the network.

Deployment Solution, which is available separately or as a component of Altiris’ Client and Server management suites, now offers role- and scope-based security rights through Active Directory groups and key-based client/server authentication.

On the server side, Deployment Solution supports scripted guest operating system installs for VMware ESX; while Deployment Solution for Clients now supports Wise Package Studio technologies for custom installation of applications.

Support has been enhanced for HP thin clients, and there is new support for Neoware’s XP Embedded, Windows CE and Linux thin client terminals.

Quoting from Internet News:

HP is enhancing the value of its Itanium-based Integrity servers and HP 9000 series based on PA-RISC with several new virtualization features.

The new releases are designed to simplify the management of virtual servers and speed implementation of virtualized environments which give IT managers the ability to consolidate servers. HP had planned to roll out a number of announcements at its HP Technology Forum user conference in New Orleans this week, but Hurricane Katrina scuttled those plans.

Moving forward without the conference, HP announced it plans to expand the virtual machines capability in its Integrity servers, which allow multiple operating system instances to share a single CPU as well as I/O resources, to HP-UX 11i later this year. Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Linux is planned for next year.

The new HP Integrity Essentials software plugs into HP Systems Insight Manager 5.0 for a unified infrastructure management of both virtual and physical systems for HP Integrity and Proliant servers.

David Grant, data center manager at Mitel would have preferred to buy Integrity servers in 2003 when his company needed to upgrade its servers, but the virtualization features he wanted weren’t available so the company went with HP 9000 servers running SAP among other applications. As part of its purchase deal at the time, he said HP is upgrading some of the systems to Integrity which Grant is looking forward too.

“There was an immediate benefit to virtualization,” Grant told . “We went from 12 servers in two data centers to two servers in one data center and no performance hit.”

Customers like Grant can look forward to the newly enhanced Workload Manager software that offers “unparalleled” integration, according to Nick van der Zweep, director of virtualization and utility Computing at HP. “You can pull the plug on one node, and the production system keeps on running, drawing from another system automatically because the workload manager knows how to move resources around.”

While HP pushes the features and cost benefits of virtualization to entice new customers, van der Zweep said there are cultural and political issues that can hinder adoption despite the promise of “phenomenal savings.” Even a technology leader like HP had trouble getting buy in from its own IT management.

HP has hundreds of instances of BEA Weblogic software it could consolidate on fewer servers with virtualization. “We were looking at saving a lot of money,” said van der Zweep. “And when we need to expand, we would be able to add Weblogic to a virtual server in 24 hours or less and not have to wait for a new [physical] server to be installed.

“To install BEA on a virtual server was $7,000 versus $10,000 to put it on a new server, but the [IT managers] wanted to stick with the proven $10,000 solution. Then we dropped the price to zero, and they still wanted to pay $10,000 for a new server.”

Finally, HP’s controller insisted the department adopt virtualization. After six months of proven benefit, the price was reset to $7,000 and, according to van der Zweep, is now in high demand. “No one wants to be the guinea pig, but once we proved the value, everyone wanted it.”
…

Read the whole article here: http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3548036

Anandtech reported a detailed Intel roadmap at this address: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2528

You’ll find large VT implementation for Xeon 50xx (Dempsey) series CPUs while it’s uncertain for Xeon MP 70xx (Paxville) series. Upcoming Itanium 2 series 90xx (Montecito) CPUs will feature VT too.

More than one year ago VMware had a successful bunch of newsgroups where users can exchange ideas and hope to find vuluntary help from who was more experienced.
Two problems there: no official answers from VMware staff, technical difficulties for users with NNTP port blocked by corporate firewalls.

So VMware started a second, parallel, spontaneous support tool called Web Community, now revamped as VMware Technology Network (VMTN).
For a small period of time the large part of virtualization experts remained on newsgroups, avoiding web community for slowness of browsing each forum. But a huge difference moved all of them away from NGs: on web forums VMware staff actively answer, and many of them do so.

After more than one year I still subscribe 13 VMware newsgroups but posts are reduced to 1-2 per month. The only one still working at a decent post rate is the one about ESX Server (you know: the hardest product to manage, the hardest expert to find for help).
But who post on newsgroup always double post on web forums, also cause it’s a known fact that great and historic supporters like Petr Vandrovec, Massimo Re Ferre’, Kenji Kato, Bjørn Anders Jørgensen (to name a few) answer there now.

Summary
Virtual Machine technology applies the concept of virtualization to an entire machine, circumventing real machine compatibility constraints and hardware resource constraints to enable a higher degree of software portability and flexibility. Virtual machines are rapidly becoming an essential element in computer system design. They provide system security, flexibility, cross-platform compatibility, reliability, and resource efficiency. Designed to solve problems in combining and using major computer system components, virtual machine technologies play a key role in many disciplines, including operating systems, programming languages, and computer architecture. For example, at the process level, virtualizing technologies support dynamic program translation and platform-independent network computing. At the system level, they support multiple operating system environments on the same hardware platform and in servers.

Historically, individual virtual machine techniques have been developed within the specific disciplines that employ them (in some cases they arent even referred to as virtual machines), making it difficult to see their common underlying relationships in a cohesive way. In this text, Smith and Nair take a new approach by examining virtual machines as a unified discipline. Pulling together cross-cutting technologies allows virtual machine implementations to be studied and engineered in a well-structured manner. Topics include instruction set emulation, dynamic program translation and optimization, high level virtual machines (including Java and CLI), and system virtual machines for both single-user systems and servers.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1 – Introduction to Virtual Machines
• Chapter 2 – Emulation: Interpretation and Binary Translation
• Chapter 3 – Process Virtual Machines
• Chapter 4 – Dynamic Binary Optimization
• Chapter 5 – High-Level Language Virtual Machine Architecture
• Chapter 6 – High-Level virtual Machine Implementation
• Chapter 7 – Codesigned Virtual Machines
• Chapter 8 – System Virtual Machines
• Chapter 9 – Multiprocessor Virtualization
• Chapter 10 – Emerging Applications

Virtual Strategy Magazine posted a review of this book here.

Summary
Creating a virtual network allows you to maximize the use of your servers. Virtualization: From the Desktop to the Enterprise is the first book of its kind to demonstrate how to manage all aspects of virtualization across an enterprise. (Other books focus only on singular aspects of virtualization, without delving into the interrelationships of the technologies.)

This book promises to cover all aspects of virtualization, including virtual machines, virtual file systems, virtual storage solutions, and clustering, enabling you to understand which technologies are right for your particular environment. Furthermore, the book covers both Microsoft and Linux environments.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1 – Examining the Anatomy of a Virtual Machine
• Chapter 2 – Preparing a Virtual Machine Host
• Chapter 3 – Installing VM Applications on Desktops
• Chapter 4 – Deploying and Managing VMs on the Desktop
• Chapter 5 – Installing and Deploying VMs on Enterprise Servers
• Chapter 6 – Deploying and Managing Production VMs on Enterprise Servers
• Chapter 7 – Backing Up and Recovering Virtual Machines
• Chapter 8 – Using Virtual File Systems
• Chapter 9 – Implementing Failover Clusters
• Chapter 10 – Creating Load-Balanced Clusters
• Chapter 11 – Building Virtual Machine Clusters
• Chapter 12 – Introducing Storage Networking
• Chapter 13 – Virtualizing Storage
• Chapter 14 – Putting It All Together: The Virtualized Information System

About the Authors
Erick M. Halter was an educator for 3 years, winning multiple student retention and professional development awards. He currently works as a network engineer for a technology-based law firm where he is virtualizing the current network and optimizing system processes for the Web. Halter also configures and maintains infrastructure equipment for heightened security and performance. Halter has several industry certifications, a degree in English, and 10 years of network experience. He resides in Richmond, Virginia, with his wife and three dogs.

Chris Wolf is an instructor at ECPI Technical College, as well as a leading industry consultant in enterprise storage, virtualization solutions, and network infrastructure management. He has a master’s degree in information technology from Rochester Institute of Technology, and his IT certification list includes MCSE, MCT, and CCNA.
Wolf authored MCSE Supporting and Maintaining NT Server 4.0 Exam Cram, Windows 2000 Enterprise Storage Solutions, and Troubleshooting Microsoft Technologies, and he contributes frequently to Redmond Magazine and Windows IT Pro Magazine. Wolf also speaks at computer conferences across the nation.

Virtual Strategy Magazine posted a review of this book here: http://www.virtual-strategy.com/article/view/1020/

Two years passed since the first time I wrote on this blog and many things changed: I passed from 15 visits to near 1000 visits per day, with 80.000 visits collected till now.
Great to hear you appreciated my work covering and promoting this new, revolutionary technology today we call virtualization.

The virtualization market changed too, simplyifing more and more the way we work and bringing exciting enhancements every day.
I still feel myself astonished thinking what cannot be done five years ago without this technology. So I started wondering where we were two years ago, and one year ago.
I consider virtualization.info the historical memory of virtualization and I know it can provide good answers:

September 2003

• VMware and Microsoft start working on the phisical to virtual migration concept

September 2004

• Microsoft launches Virtual Server 2005 and Virtual PC 7.0 for Mac. It’s also lasting Virtual Server Migration Toolkit.
• VMware launches ACE 1.0 and expands in Singapore and Italy. Also rumors about Workstation 5.0 start to spread.
• Intel announces Vanderpool and AMD announces Pacifica.

Thank you for reading and once again, enjoy your stay.