History

? Support for additional host operating systems, including 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP
? Virtual Disk Precompactor
? Performance enhancements
? Built-in support for network installations
? Reserved disk space for saved state files
? Virtual floppy disk for pre-loading virtual SCSI drivers
? Support for hyperthreading

In addition to these features, Steve announced that support will be expanded for third-party operating systems such as Linux, Solaris, and other x86 operating systems to better meet the needs of customers with heterogeneous environments. Steve also announced that we are licensing royalty-free our VHD file format to promote a consistent and widely-adopted virtual machine file format for Windows to dramatically improve security, reliability and cost efficiency for customers.

To sign up for the Beta program

Go to http://beta.microsoft.com. Note: You need a Passport account to sign in. If you don?t have one, BetaPlace will help you create one.
Once logged into Beta Place with a Passport account, provide vssp1BetaTester as the guest account. This will take you to the nomination page for the SP1 beta. Note: The Guest ID is both case and space sensitive and must be entered exactly as shown. The most common reasons for a ?Guest ID is locked out? or ?invalid Guest ID? error message is because you either incorrectly entered the Guest ID or you entered a space before or after entering the Guest ID in the Guest ID field.
Follow the directions on this page to nominate yourself. In about 24 hours you’ll receive an e-mail notice that you’ve been accepted into the program. You can then log in to Beta Place and download the SP1 beta, read the documentation, etc.

What’s new in SP1

– Support for additional host operating systems
In addition to the host operating systems supported by Virtual Server 2005, SP1 adds support for the following host operating systems:

? Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition Service Pack 1
? Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition Service Pack 1
? Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard x64 Edition
? Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition
? Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2
? Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

– Support for additional guest operating systems
In addition to the guest operating systems supported by Virtual Server 2005, SP1 adds support for the following guest operating systems:

? Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition Service Pack 1
? Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2

– Virtual Disk Precompactor
SP1 includes Virtual Disk Precompactor, a utility designed to “zero out”?that is, overwrite with zeros?any available blank space on a virtual hard disk (VHD). We recommend that you use Virtual Disk Precompactor before you compact a dynamically expanding VHD in order to create a smaller compacted VHD.

– Performance enhancements
Changes have been made to the way that Virtual Server allocates physical memory to guest operating systems. In some scenarios, this could result in significant performance improvements.

– Built-in support for network installations
PXE boot support has been added to the virtual machine network adapter. This means that when the appropriate network infrastructure is in place, you can perform a network installation of a guest operating system without needing a PXE boot floppy disk.

– Reserved disk space for saved state files
With SP1, Virtual Server now reserves sufficient space on the physical disk to save the state of each running virtual machine. It does this when the virtual machine starts up by creating an empty saved state (.vsv) file equal to amount of memory allocated to the virtual machine plus a 20 MB buffer.

– Virtual floppy disk for pre-loading emulated SCSI drivers
SP1 includes a virtual floppy disk, SCSI Shunt Driver.vfd, that you can use to load the emulated SCSI drivers during installation of a Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2000, or Windows XP Professional guest operating system. This will speed the installation when the virtual hard disk is attached to a virtual SCSI adapter.

“We’ve heard from our enterprise IT customers loud and clear that they need their systems to be more automated and flexible,” Ballmer said. “That’s why we’re investing in the Dynamic Systems Initiative and areas like virtualization, more secure network access and interoperability — we’re committed to helping IT deliver greater efficiency and value.”

Virtualization for Improved Flexibility and Utilization of Hardware Environments

Virtualization allows customers to make more efficient use of hardware resources and reduce IT infrastructure costs. In his keynote speech, Ballmer announced Microsoft’s increased investment in both virtualization and virtualization management technology, demonstrating near-term product improvements and laying out a long-term strategy for both areas.

In the short term, Microsoft is responding to customers’ needs by improving the performance and interoperability of Virtual Server 2005 and improving manageability through integration with Microsoft® Operations Manager (MOM) 2005:

– The Virtual Server 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1) beta version is available today, delivering 64-bit compatibility and improved performance and availability. Virtual Server 2005 SP1 will enable support for Windows Server (TM) 2003 x64 editions as host operating systems and, along with performance improvements in the virtual machine software, will enable customers to further increase the efficiency of their hardware environments. Virtual Server 2005 SP1 beta is available at https://beta.microsoft.com. The final version is scheduled to be available by the end of the year.

– Microsoft is working with industry partners to expand the support of third-party guest operating systems running on Virtual Server 2005 SP1. This expanded support is designed to make Windows Server 2003 and Virtual Server 2005 a powerful platform for heterogeneous server consolidation.

– A new MOM 2005 management pack for Virtual Server 2005 provides administrators with a central console for managing the health and performance of both physical and virtual machines seamlessly, allowing customers to leverage their existing server management tools to manage their virtual environments.

– Microsoft will license royalty-free the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) to make it easier for partners to develop VHD-based solutions and continue to enhance the capabilities and extensibility of the VHD file format. A common file format helps improve security, reliability and cost-efficiency for customers. Microsoft is committed to enhancing and extending the capabilities of this format over time.

In addition to these near-term product deliverables, Microsoft is working with the industry and increasing its investments to provide customers with more robust virtualization and virtualization management solutions for the Windows® platform:

– Microsoft will build virtualization capabilities into the Windows platform based on Windows hypervisor technology, planned for availability in the next product wave of the Windows operating system, code-named Windows “Longhorn.” This integrated hypervisor technology in the Windows operating system will be designed to provide customers with a high-performance virtualization solution for Windows and heterogeneous environments.

– Microsoft Windows hypervisor technology will support enhanced hardware technologies, such as Intel Virtualization Technology and AMD’s Pacifica specification. The combination of these software and hardware technologies will open the door to widespread use of computer virtualization in the future.

– Increased investments in Microsoft’s System Center family of products will result in management products that are optimized to take advantage of the unique capabilities that virtualization brings to the Windows platform.

“Gartner sees the integration of virtualization technology with the operating system as a natural evolutionary step for the x86 platform,” said Thomas Bittman, research vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner Inc. “The broader adoption of virtualization that is spurred by this integration will make management even more important as customers strive to exploit this technology and further improve the utilization and flexibility of their hardware environments.”

?Customers investing in 64-bit technology will be pleased with SWsoft?s commitment to computing and performance advances,? said Serguei Beloussov, CEO, SWsoft. ?Virtuozzo is the first server virtualization solution to use the maximum computing power of Intel and AMD. Virtuozzo?s architecture is better able to take advantage of underlying hardware and software and doesn?t have to recreate technology to recognize full potential.?

“Worldwide revenues for virtual environment software, the aggregate market containing virtual machine software, grew nearly 25% between 2003 and 2004,” said Dan Kusnetzky, IDC’s VP of system software research. “Virtualized environments supported on high-volume, powerful, and yet, relatively low cost 32- and 64-bit hardware can help organizations reduce costs in some important areas while still allowing them to implement IT-based solutions offering real business value.”

Unmatched Server Virtualization Extended
Virtuozzo server virtualization for Linux and Windows creates multiple isolated Virtual Private Servers (VPSs) on a single physical server enabling each VPS to perform and execute exactly like a stand-alone server. Unlike other hardware emulation approaches to virtualization, Virtuozzo provides Operating System (OS) level virtualization.

The core benefits of Virtuozzo include:

– High Performance
?Thin? technology that adds no system calls or overhead

– Expansive Hardware and Software Support
Interacts with existing OS and hardware; fully supports native 32 and 64-bit, SMP, 16-CPU and 64 GB RAM

– High Scalability
Interacts A single physical server can house tens or hundreds of VPSs

– Complete Isolation
Each VPS is completely isolated using a Kernel Abstraction Layer and Virtuozzo File System

– Robust Resource Management
Complete control over CPU, memory, disk and network I/O

– Powerful Management Tools
Easily manage large and potentially remote groups of servers and VPSs with a full set of administrative and VPS owner tools

Sam Greenblatt, a senior vice president at Computer Associates International Inc., in Islandia, N.Y., said that while the kernel is evolving for the desktop, server and embedded markets, more and more technology is being included, and the kernel is “getting fatter. We are not interested in the game drivers and music drivers that are being added to the kernel. We are interested in a more stable kernel.”

Andrew Morton, the current maintainer of the Linux 2.6 kernel, who works for Open Source Development Labs Inc., in Beaverton, Ore., said there is no formal road map for an enterprise Linux feature set since the development of those technologies rests largely with vendors such as Red Hat Inc., IBM, Novell Inc. and CA.

“We are pumping feature changes into the kernel at an enormous rate,” said Morton.

Still, Morton took issue with Greenblatt’s contention, saying that most new features are optional and that their use is at the discretion of organizations compiling their builds of the kernel.

Morton said new features should continue to be added to the stable 2.6 tree rather than forming a new 2.7 development tree.

Critics of the development process point to growing competition among vendors to get code for new features accepted. But Morton maintains that the competition is healthy because it helps top-level kernel developers understand what subfeatures are required and what other users need.

On the enterprise front, Morton said he expects to merge code from Cambridge University’s Computer Laboratories’ Xen virtualization technology into the Linux kernel within the next few months. Xen “does the right thing technically,” unlike other technologies, which are mainly workarounds for the fact that the operating system is not appropriately licensed, Morton said.

But CA’s Greenblatt disagreed, saying that other virtualization technologies, such as one from VMware Inc., in Palo Alto, Calif., currently fill the virtualization role.

“We would be happy to see a true hypervisor [an application that allows multiple operating systems to run concurrently on the same physical server]. We think [Xen] is great innovation, but its concept of virtualization is still not to the point that we want to see in there,” Greenblatt said.

Ian Pratt, a Xen project leader at Cambridge University, in England, said that Xen is indeed a true hypervisor.

“It runs on the bare metal and provides protected virtual environments for guest operating systems running on top of it,” Pratt said. “Because of the paravirtualized approach, where we make some modifications to the guest operating systems, we’ve been able to allow the hypervisor and Linux to work in a more cooperative fashion.”

On the issue of adding more clustering technology to the kernel, Morton said he hopes that clustering teams are working on factoring out common components for a merge into the mainline kernel.

InfiniBand, a channel-based, switch-fabric architecture from Topspin Communications Inc., in Mountain View, Calif., which was acquired last week by Cisco Systems Inc. , has already been moved into the kernel, Morton said, adding that the other InfiniBand stakeholders “seemed fine” with that decision.

This acquisition strengthens Cisco’s ability to provide customers with specialized networking technology and services to allow them to build their data centers in a flexible, grid-like fashion. The Topspin product line will extend Cisco’s data center switching solutions to include InfiniBand-based server switching and will complement Cisco’s existing network switching and storage switching solutions including its Ethernet-based Catalyst switching platform for internet/intranet infrastructure and its multiprotocol (Fibre Channel, FCIP, iSCSI and FICON) MDS switches for storage area networks.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately $250 million in cash and options for Topspin. The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions, including applicable regulatory approvals, and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2005 ending July 30, 2005.

“The widespread adoption of server architectures such as blades, grid computing, and clustered applications is driving an emerging market opportunity within the data center. As our customers build out these new computing environments, it is important that we deliver server networking technologies to fit their needs. By adding Topspin’s server fabric switches and virtualization software, alongside our industry leading portfolio of Ethernet and SAN switches we are able to offer our customers compelling end-to-end data center switching capabilities,” said Luca Cafiero, Senior Vice President, Data Center, Switching and Wireless Technology Group, Cisco Systems.

Topspin products are targeted at data centers where customers are deploying high performance grid and utility computing, clustered enterprise applications, and/or server virtualization. These customers include enterprises, service providers, research institutions, and universities, with mission critical applications that are computational and data intensive and require high availability and manageability from the underlying infrastructure. Topspin’s technology delivers a compelling return to its customers on their IT investment dollars by improving price/performance, promoting resource flexibility, and dramatically reducing equipment and management costs.

This acquisition and the introduction of InfiniBand technology into Cisco’s portfolio offers customers another way to meet their application networking needs. Several major server vendors have announced support for InfiniBand technology as part of their clustering and/or grid solutions for both their standard and blade server solutions. Specifically, Dell, HP, IBM, NEC and Sun have all announced relationships with Topspin to provide InfiniBand-based server fabric switching as part of their portfolios.

To perform this study, AMD supplied VeriTest with one HP ProLiant DL585 AMD Opteron processor-based server and one IBM xSeries 445 Intel Xeon processor-based server. These servers were chosen because they were considered to be near-equivalent platforms from a configuration perspective. Both servers had quad-processor configurations, 16 GB of RAM, and four Intel 82543 Gigabit Ethernet Adapters. See Appendix A for additional server specifications details.