virtualization.info

The Hidden Challenges of Virtualization - Part 5

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Key) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:23:13 PDT

The Cultural Impacts

The last post covered cost models and changes needed to adopt virtualization, this post will cover the cultural change aspect of the technology within a company.

As typical with technology, change is constant but always a battle as many people do not embrace it. Virtualization has been one of the biggest changes in technology in several years. The reason is that virtualization touches so many different technology disciplines. This one technology causes change in server, storage, network, data centers, software management, etc. Therefore, virtualization is a very disruptive technology, but for good reason.

The challenge is managing this change across all these groups and keeping the technology and program moving forward. The first a request is made to a network team to have 5 to 8 physical network connections to a few x86 servers but over 100 IP addresses, or a few terabytes of storage at one time for an environment consisting of multiple physical servers that all need to see the same storage - these are request that will get similar responses to the Internet replacing newspapers - it will never happen! But, it will happen, although the change should be as non-disruptive as possible to keep program moving forward.

Communication is key in this space, this will be covered more in a later post. Education of the support teams across the different disciplines is also very important. The better they understand the technology and why they are being asked to make the changes the more receptive they will be. Another successful approach is to keep as many things the same as they are today, but tweak things to make them work in the virtual world. In other words, make baby steps, the less disruptive the change is at a given point in time the less those effected will even realize things are changing. The goal would be that they look back in a few months and say "Wow, did not even realize we had changed at this level".

In summary, do not build new policies and procedures from scratch were it can be avoided, try to retro fit the existing to get the virtualization program started and continue to review and tweak the processes and procedures as the program grows. This will make the level of change appear less disruptive and will not not cause a rebellion from support teams against virtualization due to the level of change.

The next post will cover operational readiness for virtualization and what items need to be addressed before getting too deep into the program.

The Hidden Challenges of Virtualization - Part 4

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Key) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 08:36:04 PDT

Cost Models and Chargeback's

Continuing from the last post covering data metrics, a solid cost model is needed to sell the program and saves from virtualization. The company needs to see a significant save to offset the investment and disruption from virtualization.

Most corporations have a cost model in place for technology, some purchase hardware and software centrally and charge the businesses via a rate card based model. Other models allow the businesses to purchase the hardware and software and charge centrally for shared services like network, email, etc.

Regardless of the model in place, virtualization cost for the company must show a save in order to sell the program. If the cost model in place does not show a signification save by moving from one physical server running one OS instance to one physical server running many OS instances, then there is an issue with the existing model that needs to be addressed. Fundamentally, virtualization should save money.

Almost every cost model will have pros and cons, a pure usage model can cause under recovery unless fully utilized while a dedicated model can cost more for the business in the initial ramp up period.

There are ways to incent virtualization through the cost model. Look at the long term advantages and saves of virtualization, not the short term cost. Concessions upfront can help open the door and not have initial cost be negative factor for moving to virtualization for the businesses.

As an example, a larger company that has multiple businesses and high volumes of virtual candidates may look at a model of building dedicated virtual farms or clusters by business sector. Using the existing cost model for physical environments, the business would pay the cost of all the infrastructure (servers, network, virtualization software, etc.) for a full environment. Actual charges can be applied at the Virtual instance level based on the total cost of the environment divided by the number of virtual instances (with some logical per instance calculations for the numbers of virtual CPU’s, RAM, storage, etc.). With a concession of no charges for the first 90 or 180 days of the life of the environment, the more the businesses virtualize in that time period, and beyond, the cheaper the per virtual instance cost.

Whichever cost model is used, it is imperative that the cost model incents the businesses and company to move to virtualization. If a virtual technology that has a perception of performance degradation, cost the same or more than physical servers it will be difficult to get buy in to move to the technology.

The next post will discuss Cultural Impacts, also known as “Change” that comes with implementing virtualization.

Meanwhile, please share your comments and feedback related to cost models for virtualization.

VMware customers outraged by the vSphere upgrade path - UPDATED

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:38:31 PDT

Update: The article below has been temporary removed after that some VMware distributors and the company itself have indicated how some statements are far from reality.
We removed the article to have time to further investigate and correct our mistakes, if any, without spreading false information.

We can confirm now that it’s not true that a VI 3 Standard license plus a-la-carte vMotion and Storage vMotion can’t be moved to a vSphere 4 Standard license while retaining those features.
VMware clarifies this with a footnote at this URL:

Customers with current Support & Subscription contracts who purchased VMware VMotion as an add-on to VMware Infrastructure 3 Foundation or VMware Infrastructure 3 Standard also received VMware Storage VMotion. These customers retain both VMware VMotion and VMware Storage VMotion when they receive VMware vSphere Standard.

But it’s also true that a number of customers were told by VMware sales representatives that their only upgrade choice was to move on the vSphere Enteprise Plus, as reported in the original article below.
We have full details about these customers, that asked to stay anonymous, and yes, they are outraged.

We sincerely apologize for not better checking with VMware before publishing this story.

Never like now VMware has hit a low level of popularity because of its pricing strategy.
The virtualization leader grew steadily in the enterprise market to the point that its products are now adopted in 100% of Fortune 100 and 95% of Fortune 500, but it has been considered out of range by most SMBs so far.
The new licensing upgrade scheme introduced with vSphere 4.0 is further compromising the already delicate relationship.

There are main two problems with that.

The first, pointed out in April, is that VMware has introduced a completely new top license called Enterprise Plus, which is not available as a free upgrade for the owners of the VI3 Enterprise license, and which is mandatory for those servers featuring more than 6 cores per socket.
This means that as soon as 8-cores CPUs become the standard, any enterprise buying new machines will be obliged to purchase an Enterprise Plus license and spend $600 more per socket.

The second problem is that VMware didn’t provide an upgrade paths for some key feature like vMotion and Storage vMotion when they are licensed a-la-carte.
Those customers that currently have a VI 3 Standard license and those additional capabilities, can’t keep them when migrating to the new vSphere 4 Standard license.
The “nearest” licensing level that includes vMotion and Storage vMotion is the new Enterprise, but VMware is not allowing its VI 3 Standard customers to move on that one.
The only allowed upgrade path in this scenario is from VI 3 Standard to vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus, which implies paying a huge, unplanned premium.

This last issue is critical because it touches those medium businesses that trust VMware and just want their vMotion.
It’s not that they don’t have alternatives now that Citrix and (very soon) Microsoft offer vMotion-like capabilities for free as part of their free hypervisors.
No matter how many features VMware is packing in vSphere or how mature is perceived its platform: the current company behavior is pushing the customers right in the arms of the competitors. And looking at some outraged feedbacks received by virtualization.info lately, those customers may be happy to go.

Is Microsoft silently building a better VDI?

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:01:22 PDT

In the last two years pretty much every major vendor in the IT industry rushed to develop a rich VDI portfolio and roadmap. Each of them did its best to acquire promising startups, to announce new and highly efficient remote desktop protocols, to sign partnerships with OEMs for the next generation thin client.

From VMware to Citrix, from Sun to Quest, from HP to Verizon.
Even TV vendors like LG want to be part of the VDI game.
Everyone but Microsoft.

So far Microsoft preferred to stay under the radar as much as possible, even when they acquired Calista Technologies in January 2008, a small startup able to offload the remote client from the task of rendering any sort of multimedia resource; even when they announced some basic desktop brokering capabilities in the imminent Windows Server 2008 R2.

Now some concrete details are finally emerging and the Microsoft VDI strategy seems more interesting than expected:

…In the RTM version of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, GDI applications, media with Windows Media Player, and Aero Glass will continue using the client-side rendering for remote scenarios as demonstrated in the pre-release version. For the RTM release, client-based rendering will no longer be available for DirectX 10.1 / DXGI 1.1 and Direct 2D applications, instead this type of content will be remoted using host-side resources leveraging the enhanced bitmap acceleration capabilities in R2. This decision was made based on the feedback we received during the engineering and validation process, where the number one requirement was quality and robustness. While this design change may impact the utilization of CPU and GPU resources on the host side for certain use cases, it provides a consistent approach to remoting multiple types of rich (2D and 3D) content across a broad range of rich and thin client devices.

…

As for running DirectX applications on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V virtual machines, there will be the GPU offload hardware assist Calista technologies at some point in the future…

So basically Microsoft doesn’t just plan to integrate Calista technologies in RDP as already announced, but it also plans to elaborate on the virtualization host those multimedia contents executed inside the VDI virtual desktops (Brian Madden has additional insights about this).

The key point is that Microsoft knows a lot about the roadmap of the upcoming GPUs that many customers may be ignoring at the moment.
Those next generation display cards will be just another piece, along with a new remote desktop and a client hypervisor, of the very complex infrastructure that will have to build in the future to make VDI a really efficient solution.

Red Hat KVM-based virtualization offering expected for Sep 1

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:24:47 PDT

Ten days ago Red Hat announced that its new, much awaited, virtualization offering based on KVM was in beta and that the beta program was oversubscribed.

The reality is that, as far as we know, Red Hat never announced the beta program or the details of its implementation of the Qumranet technology (acquired in September 2008), and never gave the opportunity to sign for it to the general public.
Still today there not a single bit of information about what Red Hat did in one year and a half after dropping Xen in favor of KVM.

Red Hat will take another two months to finally tell the world as LeMagIT revealed earlier today: the general availability of the new virtualization platform is in fact planned for September 1, 2009, which means during the VMware VMworld 2009.
Too bad that this year VMware is not particularly happy to have competitors showing their solutions on the exhibit floor.

Release: PHD Virtual Patch Downloader 6.0

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:01:14 PDT

As part of its renovation plan, in October 2008 PHD Virtual (formerly PHD Technologies) acquired the software division of a popular UK consulting firm, Xtravirt.
The company rebranded the Xtravirt tools and offered part of them for free in March, hoping to attract a large number of prospects that could be also interested in its flagship backup product called esXpress.

After a break to release a long overdue new version of esXpress, PHD is back on its plan to distribute for free the Xtravirt tools and launches Patch Downloader 6.0, a product that automates the download of VMware ESX patches in a file repository of choice.

There’s a number of similar tools and scripts out there and, like Patch Downloader, all of them are free.
One, called VMTS Patch Manager, was released by Massimiliano Daneri, of VMBK.pl fame, before he joined VMware.
Another one, called esxPatcher, was released by the German consulting firm Mightycare.

And of course there’s the VMware Update Manager (VUM) which is part of VI3.x and vSphere 4.0.
PHD Virtual says that their new tool is an alternative to VUM when the VMware customer doesn’t have a license to use it or can’t access the Internet from vCenter or the ESX hosts.

VMware to release Studio 2.0 next week

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:59:27 PDT

Yesterday in a public webinar VMware announced the upcoming release of Studio 2.0, the environment to author OVF packages that the company launched in September 2008.

The new VMware Studio 2.0 is remarkable in terms of new features.

The first most important is that it will support the new generation of virtual appliances (VAs) that VMware calls vApps.
The vApp is a concept that VMware introduced for the first time at VMworld 2008, and it implies a new metadata layer wrapping the virtual appliance what describes the virtual hardware, performance and security requirements to run the virtual machine.

Once created the virtual appliance or the vApp, Studio 2.0 will be able to deliver it on VMware Workstation, Server (both 1.x and 2.x) and of course VI/vSphere.
The most interesting thing about this last interaction is that Studio can push (and update at a later time) the new VA/vApp through VMware Update Manager (VUM).

Another two key features are the capability to author/build Windows virtual machines and the capability to use an existing virtual machine as input.

Studio 2.0 itself will be delivered as a virtual appliance, featuring Ubuntu Linux as the OS of choice.
Developers will be able to interact with it through a web browser, CLI or a plug-in for Eclipse.

Thanks to vinternals for the news.

VMware announces Code Central

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:17:20 PDT

With the first post in a new corporate blog, VMware unveiled the existence of Code Central, an online facility where its community can upload and exchange scripts for the various VMware SDKs.

VMware has a special interest in seeing what kind of automation the virtualization professionals want to have now that its vCenter Orchestrator has been released as a free module of vSphere 4.0.

Orchestrator is powered by the technology that VMware acquired by Dunes Technologies in September 2007.
The Dunes framework is powerful and flexible enough to become the foundation for new products, from a VDI connection broker to a virtual lab automation manager.
In most cases the customers will use it to automate specific aspects of their environments, but once in a while a Code Central public script become popular enough to give the input to VMware for a new, non-free product.

This is the same strategy that is being pursued by Vizioncore, which recently launched a free scripting IDE for PowerShell called Virtualization EcoShell, an extension of the PowerGUI console that its parent company Quest releases for free a long time ago.
Also in this case, Quest/Vizioncore is giving away the tools for free to grow a loyal developers community and see if any member can produce something amazing to extend their new automation product called vControl.

Release: VMware Fusion 2.0.5

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:11:48 PDT

While opening the beta program of the next Fusion major release, VMware also keeps updating the current product which now reaches version 2.0.5 (build 173382).

Fusion 2.0.5 is mainly for bug fixes but it also extends the support to the following host and guest operating systems:

Host OSes
Mac OS X 10.6 codename Snow Leopard (32bit only, experimental)
Guest OSes
Mac OS X 10.5 (on new Intel Xeon 5500 and 3500 Series)
Ubuntu 9.04
Mac OS X 10.6 Server codename Snow Leopard (32bit only experimental)

Release: Citrix XenConvert 2.0.1

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:03:22 PDT

Citrix just release the first minor update for its P2V/V2V migration tool XenConvert 2.0.

This version introduces the support for OVF contents created with VMware vSphere 4, plus it enhances support for OVF and VMDK files created with other VMware products, including VI 3.x, Workstation 6.5.2, Studio 1.0, OVF Tool 0.9, Converter 3.0.3 and 4.0.

The product is free and available here.

Training: Introducing Citrix Essentials for XenServer 5.5

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:21:16 PDT

Citrix is working to raise the interest around its commercial offer called Essentials now that XenServer is free of charge.

As part of the effort the company is releasing a free 6-hours training online course (CEX-100-1W).

The course includes the following topics:

Introduction to Citrix Essentials for XenServer 5.5
XenServer and Essentials overview
XenServer and Essentials benefits
Citrix XenServer 5.5 Features
Active Directory Integration
Enhanced Backup Enablement
Fast Cloning
XenCenter Search
Historical Performance Monitoring
StorageLink
Overview
Installing StorageLink
Configuring StorageLink
Workload Balancing
Overview
Deploying Workload Balancing
Installing Workload Balancing
Configuring Workload Balancing
Workload Balancing Administration
Lifecycle Management
Lab Manager Overview
Installing Lab Manager
Configuring Lab Manager
Maintaining Lab Manager
Assessment

Citrix informs that this course will stay free only for a limited amount of time, but they should seriously consider to keep it free forever, as this seems the best way for a customer to truly understand what he’s missing not adoption Essentials.

Event: Xen Directions Europe 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:47:01 PDT

The Xen.org community and Citrix are arranging an interesting event for late June in Berlin called Xen Direction Europe 2009.

Compared to the well-known Xen Summits, this seems easier to understand for somebody that is not a Xen hacker (read: it contains more marketing material) but no less interesting as the agenda includes some presentations that are probably worth the visit like:

Virtualization - it's not just for servers anymore Intel
Highly available virtual infrastructures based on Xen Lufthansa Systems
HXEN: Hosted Xen Hypervisor Project Citrix

Of course the last one is especially interesting as it will cover the progress of the new hosted VMM architecture that will power a Citrix product called XenWorkstation, at least accordingly to the virtualization.info sources.

One session promises to be very funny (underline is ours):
Virtualization of mission-critical deployments Oracle with Xen: Oracle users choose Oracle VM
Like the Oracle users have a real chance.

VMLogix to extend LabManager support to Amazon EC2

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:22:14 PDT

The new relationship between VMLogix and Citrix (which is OEM’in LabManager in its Citrix Essentials for XenServer) is generating some interesting developments.

VMLogix announced yesterday the upcoming support for Amazon EC2, the on-demand virtual infrastructure powered by Xen that makes Citrix so proud.

The idea that a virtual lab automation product can create testing and QA virtual machines inside the cloud without wasting money and resources on the on-premises virtual infrastructure is fascinating but not new: Skytap, a younger competitor of VMLogix, is focused on this since day one.

The difference between Skytap and VMLogix anyway is that the former is currently hosting the customers virtual machines on their own virtual data center while the latter is the first virtual lab automation company that hosts them on the most popular (and probably most reliable) 3rd party virtual data center on the market today.

No matter what is the infrastructure backend anyway: like Skytap, VMLogix has to address security concerns and chargeback issues.
Most enterprise customers may be unhappy to manipulate their sensitive data and custom products inside VMs that are somewhere outside the corporate buildings.
On top of that chargeback becomes a must-have feature when you are charged with a pay-per-use pricing model by cloud providers like Amazon.

At the moment LabManager Cloud Edition is available in beta. You can enroll for the program here.

While waiting for the general availability you may want to check this demo or even a whiteboard presentation from the VMLogix CEO that we are featuring on virtualization.tv, the (early beta) virtualization.info TV channel.

VMware opens new Fusion private beta program

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:46:47 PDT

Last week virtualization.info wrote about the private beta program of VMware Workstation 7.0.
It seems that the company is also working on the next version of Fusion (2.5? 3.0?) as MacNN reports:

…The private beta, released to a select group of beta testers, offers simpler access to common tasks in the Virtual Machine Library, added support for DirectX 9.0c with Shader Model 3 functions, experimental OpenGL 2.1 support, and a new “migration assistant” for moving from Windows XP or Vista to the Mac.

Other modifications in the preview provide an "always-on" application menu where users can start Windows applications directly, and changes to the automatic updates to help with checking, downloading and installing updates. Additional support is also included for the Mac OS X 10.6 (32-bit only), along with experimental guest support for Windows 7…

Release: DynamicOps Virtual Resource Manager 3.2

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:31:54 PDT

In May 2008 Credit Suisse launched a very interesting spinoff company called DynamicOps, which is competing in the VM lifecycle management space with Embotics, Fortisphere, ManageIQ and very soon with VMware too.

The first release of their product, Virtual Resource Manager (VRM), was available in July but this didn’t stop the marketing department from numbering the version as 3.0.

Almost one year later VRM 3.2 hits the market and the company announces that it can go beyond tracking the physical resources wasted by the so called VM sprawl phenomenon. It can now automate the reclaim and recycle process of the abandoned virtual machines.
The company forgot to update the website in time for the press announcement release so there’s no way to see some documentation about how this works exactly.

Another new feature that can’t be investigated at the moment is the Software Developer’s Toolkit that can be used to integrate with 3rd party management solutions.

At today the company counts 25 employees according to the Company Profile that DynamicOps manages on LinkedIn. Some of them may want to focus on producing technical and marketing literature to support the announcements.

Release: MokaFive Suite 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:47:45 PDT

A little more than three years ago a new US startup called Moka5 joined the virtualization industry with a simple plan: to change the market by streaming secure virtual machines in every possible consumer device.

The plan didn’t work well so far.
After a little more than one year the company decided to replace its CEO, its Vice President of Engineering and its Vice President of Marketing.
After two years the company also decided to change the brand and the business model, focusing on the enterprises.
After two years and a half the company, now called MokaFive, decided to replace its CEO again.

At the end of all of this, the startup is now in the middle of a risky competition with VMware ACE, Sentillion vThere and most of all Microsoft, which acquired Kidaro in March 2008, rebranded its Workspace product as MED-V and distributed it as part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP).

Now MokaFive is back with version 2.0 of its corporate product but, being afraid of not confusing enough its potential customers, it changed its name again: from Virtual Desktop Solution to Suite.

MokaFive Suite 2.0 extends the centralized management capabilities of the previous version with the support for Active Directory and software distribution solutions, and with the support for two-fact authentication systems.
On top of that the new release is able to keep user data persistent.

The press release also mentions as a new feature the capability to offer the virtual machines as Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) because of course this is exactly what Moka5 planned to do three years ago. But the term is new today so the feature must be market as new as well.

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

Release: VMware ThinApp 4.0.3

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:13:40 PDT

At the end of the last week VMware published a new minor update for its application virtualization technology ThinApp, acquired from Thinstall at the beginning of 2008.

The new build (3313 if you follow the Thinstall numbering, 169725 if you follow the VMware one) is introducing a very minor change in a configuration file and a number of bug fixes.
Most of all it seems that this version was released to grant compatibility with the VMware vSphere 4.0 client.

As virtualization.info highlighted in March for the ThinApp 4.0.2 release, VMware didn’t deliver a major upgrade for this product for over a year now, and it doesn’t seem ready to clarify the strategy behind the acquisition as also others have recognized.

Release: Oracle VM 2.1.5

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:55:37 PDT

Oracle doesn’t seem interested in clarifying what will happen to its hypervisor in the near future, or how it will integrate with the virtualization technologies acquired by Sun and Virtual Iron.
The only thing we know for sure is that the merge is going to be painful for somebody.

In a way or another Oracle believes that its current customers will continue to upgrade their existing Oracle VM implementation instead of freezing any activity before the strategy is clear, and so it releases a minor update.

Oracle VM 2.1.5 is mainly for bugfixes but it also introduces a brand new Command Line Interface (CLI) (soon to be released through the Unbreakable Linux Network update site) and a Web Services API, both for Oracle VM Manager.

Oracle kills Virtual Iron brand, fires all employees but 10

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:07:14 PDT

Five weeks ago Oracle announced the acquisition of Virtual Iron for an undisclosed sum. So far the company didn’t reveal if and how it plans to to merge the Virtual Iron hypervisor with the Sun xVM hypervisor and with its own Oracle VM Server.
Now finally the database giant starts to unveil its strategy.

The Register has just broken the news about an official communication released by Oracle to the Virtual Iron partners:

…In a letter to Virtual Iron's sales partners, Oracle says it "will suspend development of existing Virtual Iron products and will suspend delivery of orders to new customers." And in a second letter to a partner speaking with The Reg, the company says it will not allow partners to sell new licenses to anyone - including existing customers - after the end of this month (i.e. in 11 days). Before then, partners can only sell licenses to existing customers under certain conditions.

…

When the integrated product becomes generally available, Virtual Iron customers will be able to move to the new, integrated product and benefit from a more feature rich-solution than is available today…

The Register also unveils that the Virtual Iron company has been almost completely fired:

…In its letter, the company says "Oracle has retained Virtual Iron support personnel, so the same people who provided support prior to the acquisition will continue to do so going forward." But our source says the company has let go all but about ten people from VI's staff, and that two are on temporary contracts…

Now we have to wait and see if Sun xVM business unit will suffer the same destiny.

VMware Workstation 7 enters in private beta

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:32:13 PDT

Last week the Russian website OpenNET leaked the news about the existence of VMware Workstation 7 and revealed all the new features of this first private beta build (translated with Google):

Improvements in the support of 3D
OpenGL 2.1 and Shader Model 3.0 are supported in virtual machines, Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.
Support for new model drivers Windows Display Driver Model for Windows 7
is still only 2D acceleration and support only one monitor, the driver is using 32MB RAM. If you want to run a 3d application in Windows 7, you must configure it to use the old SVGAII driver from VMware.
Support vSphere 4.0 and ESX support
Professionals can now run these technologies as a guest system to verify the manner in which they are suited to your organization. ESX at this point is supported only on processors that support hardware-accelerated virtualization (all Intel Core 2 and above, AMD Athlon 64 X2 AM2/Phenom and above).

Support for Multiple expanded to a four-SMP systems
VMware allows you to allocate to the guest system with four virtual single processor with two dual-and single-Quad.
Virtual allows you to print without a printer to print on all printers host OS
Printers are added to the guest operating systems automatically and not require a network.
Download VMware tools on the Internet on demand.
VMware added ability to upload via the internet the latest versions of VMware Tools including for the new OS, which will improve support for new systems of having to wait out a new version of VMware WorkStation.
AutoProtect
Snapshot'ov possibility of creating a new virtual machine on a schedule for the rapid restoration of the guest OS.
Encrypting the virtual machine
VMware now supports encryption (AES 128-bit) and password protection of virtual machines. Running such machines working in the VMware Player.
Support for IPv6 was added to connect the type of bridge (direct connection of virtual machines to the physical network).
Support for ALSA
Finally we became VMware support audio output to ALSA, which will simultaneously output sound from the host and guest OS without locking the sound device.
Put on a break
Now you can temporarily stop the implementation of a guest operating system and free up resources for the system.
Improvements in technology Drag and Drop.
Support drag and drop images, formatted e-mail attachments and zip folders is now supported in Windows, and Linux.
Improved support for debugging of guest OSes in a replay ( "Play")
Expanding virtual disks.
It is now possible to expand virtual disks and operating system Windows Vista and Windows 7 can take advantage of this opportunity without running additional software
Fuse
Linux operating systems can now mount the virtual disk images via Fuse.
…

VMware may be working on a Converter web interface

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:42:53 PDT

A security researcher near virtualization.info, Claudio Criscione, informs us that VMware Converter 4.0.1 Stand Alone includes a web interface that is currently hidden or unfinished.

It’s a well-known thing that the product uses a web service to interact with the ESX hosts, but it seems that VMware is developing a complete web user interface around it.

At the moment the product only exposes a login form if you connect to the address: https://ipaddress/converter/
but several other functions are partially implemented, like for example the file upload facility that is handled by the FileInput.js component.

It’s unclear way VMware is shipping this partially finished interface inside the product or if there’s a concrete plan to finish it.

Oracle/Sun opens VirtualBox 3.0 beta program

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:44:29 PDT

Nor Oracle neither Sun announced yet what will happen to the xVM virtualization offering after the acquisition completes.

While waiting for the big news, Sun gives us the first beta of VirtualBox 3.0 which includes major improvements in the graphic area and the support for an insane number of vCPUs:

Guest SMP with up to 32 virtual CPUs (Intel VT-x and AMD-V only)
Support for OpenGL 2.0 in Windows, Linux and Solaris guest OSes
Ability to use Direct3D 8/9 applications and games in Windows guest OSes (experimental)

The beta program can be enrolled here.

Demo: Cisco Nexus 1000V in depth overview

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:37:23 PDT

Now that Nexus 1000V, the first virtual switch for VMware vSphere is out for sale (and we know everything about it), Cisco is free to publish detailed demos of the product in action.

The company just uploaded two new HD videos on Facebook that cover how vEthernet interfaces relate to VMware vNICs, what are port-profiles, how to create them with a SSH console and how to apply them with the vSphere client, how to monitor the network statistics of a virtual machine despite its migration from a host to another with vMotion.

Both are worth a check:

Microsoft publishes the first Hyper-V Resource Kit

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:09:50 PDT

With much irony, now that Microsoft is about to release Hyper-V R2, its Press department finally releases the Resource Kit for Hyper-V 1.0 (or better Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V).

The 750-pages book was written by Robert Larson and Janique Carbone, who already authored the Virtual Server 2005 R2 Resource Kit.
The former comes from Microsoft Consulting Services, the latter is a former Microsoft Premier Support Engineer.

The book has been included in the virtualization.info Bookstore (which is powered by Amazon).

virtualization.info OneHourOn: VMware SRM 1.0 with EMC Celerra NS20

noreply@blogger.com (Alessandro Perilli) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:41:34 PDT

Today virtualization.info is happy to announce the launch of a new initiative called OneHourOn.

OneHourOn is a live webcast that virtualization.info will host from its cutting-edge Rent-A-Lab facility in Zurich.
We’ll use our on-demand datacenter to show the configuration and management of products provided by the many virtualization vendors that we daily track in the news.

So no slides at all.

This is a great opportunity to see in action a product that you may be interested in purchasing and by the way this also is a great opportunity to see how powerful, flexible and fast Rent-A-Lab can be.

Of course we’ll take full advantage of the enterprise equipment we have (currently 28 servers, each with 2 x Quad Core Intel E5420 2.5GHz, plus 35TB of storage served by SANs from several vendors).
This is why the first OneHourOn webcast will show a fairly complex installation to reproduce in a lab without expensive test equipment: the installation and configuration of VMware Site Recovery Manager 1.0 with EMC Celerra NS20 storage arrays.

The first virtualization.info OneHourOn is scheduled for June 25 @ 6pm CET.
Our presenter will be Marcel Brunner, VMware Specialist at EMC Switzerland.
The webcast will be delivered in English language.

Attending the event is free.
Because this is the first attempt to run such virtual event we decided to limit the number of seats to 15.
You are welcome to register at this address: http://onehouron.eventbrite.com

Attention: The attendees will receive the coordinates to join the meeting by email, so be sure to register using a real email address and be sure to check the SPAM folder if you didn’t receive the meeting coordinates by June 24.

If you want to send suggestions about what product should appear in the next OneHourOn show, or if you are a vendor and are interested in demoing your product during the next OneHourOn show, please send an email to onehouron@virtualization.info