VMTN Blog

Join the Conversation on Virtualization

Fri, 28 Jul 2006

There's been a lot of noise about the politics of the virtualization industry recently. (Ilya Baimetov of Virtuozzo had some of the more cogent comments on this.) Meanwhile, engineers and scientists behind the scenes continue to expand the frontiers of virtualization. Many of those people got together at the Ottawa Linux Symposium last week.

Fraser Campbell at linuxvirtualization.com covered VMware's presentation at the conference by Zach Amdsden:

One of the most interesting things I noted from the presentation were Zach's statements that paravirtualization is inevitable and "paravirtualization provides significant performance gains over traditional virtualization". ... Zach showed benchmarks of a VMI Linux machine running under a VMware product (I would guess a build of ESX 3) and performance was good (around 90% for most metrics).

The paper that was submitted alongside the presentation is VMI: An Interface for Paravirtualization, by Zach Amdsen, Daniel Arai, Daniel Hecht, Anne Holler, and Pratap Subrahmanyam of VMware, and is available on document page 363 (pdf page 371) of Volume 2 of the Proceedings. I'll see if I can get a separate copy to post here.

posted by jtroyer at: 15:04 | | | permanent link

VMware's own Richard Garsthagen gives us Part I of his new series on controlling VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 via the new SDK using PHP. Richard's SDK presentations were very highly rated at last year's VMworld -- be sure and check it out.

This simple example application uses the SDK to check all running virtual machines and query how much free disk space they have within the VM. An query that VirtualCenter today does not do but is possible using the SDK.

posted by jtroyer at: 14:21 | | | permanent link

"Operating systems statically configured on hardware are hard to manage and can be bug prone," commented Diane Greene at AlwaysOn 2006, the Innovation Summit at Stanford. "If you bring in a hypervisor and break the paths [operating systems glued to hardware] apart, the hypervisor manages the hardware and the operating system manages the applications. People will have operating systems tailored to the applications, such as if more security is required. We have ISVs building their own operating systems." Read more about her comments in ZDNet's Between the Lines blog.

(via the VMTN Front Page. There was a live webcast, but I don't see any archives to point to yet.)

posted by jtroyer at: 13:15 | | | permanent link

Wed, 26 Jul 2006

Time is running out! Vote for the best entry in the Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge. The deadline for votes is July 31. Each VMTN member can place one vote per appliance, and the winner will receive the $5,000 VMTN Community Choice Appliance award.

The judges are hard at work evaluating 300 GB of entries from across the globe. All the winning appliances, including the $100,000 first prize winner, will be announced on Monday, August 14, 2006 at Linuxworld, August 15-17, 2006.

posted by jtroyer at: 18:19 | | | permanent link

Fri, 21 Jul 2006

• On Linux Hypervisor Interoperability and Standards by VMware VP Brian Byun
• virtualization.info: Controlling the mobile sales force with VMware ACE

  Infection of these devices and consequent corporate network compromising is not the only problem: they usually store business, sensible data and have configuration sets able to easily reach inner part of company datacenter. As soon as a laptop is stolen an IT Manager has to handle something even more painful than a virus infection: an authorized remote access with partial or complete clearance to reserved informations. ... A real effective solution is provided by a virtualization product from VMware called Assured Computing Environment (ACE).

• Ron Oglesby at brianmadden.com: Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI): What's real today, what's not, and what's needed

  In this article, we.ll quickly go through an example use case that a VDI solution will fit almost perfectly and the types of use cases where it doesn.t fit. (When VDI doesn.t fit it.s generally for cost reasons. I mean it would be great to have multi-node clusters for every server on the network but we don.t do it because of cost.) Once we look at the history of SBC and when to use VDI, I.ll then draw a .pie in the sky. VDI solution from the bottom level (the VMs) all the way to the top level (the management tools). I.ll note the components of the solution that are already available and, more importantly, describe in detail the components do not exist yet that are being looked at by numerous vendors. (via Thincomputing.net)

• RTFM Education: ESX 3.x Service Console Guide
• VMguru: Offloading your ESX 2.5 backups with vmxnet_console
• ozvms.com:
  • ESX 2.x Host not responding to VirtualCenter?
  • Shrinking a Virtual Machines disk in ESX
  • Two new problems...
  • Which Storage to buy for VI3?
  • Upgrade VMFS2 to VMFS3 Manually
  • Ports Configuration for ESX3 and VC2 communication
  • Virtual Infrastructure 3 Licensing
  • ESX 3.0 Service Console Commands
  • ESX 3.0 Host not responding?
  • Cannot log into ESX 3.0 host via putty, winscp, the mui or ssh as root?
  • Batch Upgrade of VMWare tools
  • VMware Certified Professional ESX 2.x - VCP
  • P2V Windows XP Bluescreen stop 0x0000007b
• RACing ahead with Oracle on VMware:
  • Part 13: Installing 10gR2 Clusterware on Redhat 4.2 Advanced Server
  • Part 14: Installing 10gR2 Database Software
• Dave Marshall:
  • VMBlog RANT - How can someone compare these two products?
  • podcast with Dr Dobbs Journal
  • podcast at InfoWorld
• VM Fast Food

  Deploying virtual machines one by one can be a bit of a timley process, especially with the number I will be using for my latest endeavour, without having access to virtual center you are somewhat limited to the methods of deployment, however I will briefly describe one way I have found pretty quick and easy

• Or try this: Windows Network Admin Appliance
• Running VMWare on a Physical Partition
• Slashdot: An Overview of Virtualization Technologies (July 7) and Virtualization Goes Mainstream (July 16)
• Creating Smaller Virtual Machines

  My best result so far, however, is a 641 megabyte virtual machine image of a clean, fully patched Windows XP install. Not bad. And here's how I did it.

• Going Back to VMware For Now

  And, although it's definitely getting there, one week with wireless on Linux has convinced me to switch back to VMware for now. Forgetting driver issues (everyone knows about those, and why card manufacturers are reluctant to release open-source drivers), there are three issues that have convinced me to switch back:

  • Unreliable connection
  • Trouble with hotspots
  • Gentoo baselayout and daemon support

• Using virtual containers in for flexibility, security, and fun

  We tend to talk a lot about the cost benefits of consolidating workloads to virtual images . and those benefits are significant. Another significant benefit, albeit not as hyped, is the concept of the application being .contained. in the virtual image.

• Virtual Lab with VMware

  Some of you reading this may be studying for Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) or perhaps some other certification at the moment. While reading the study material and installing some of the tools on a box may suffice for some, others would prefer to have an actual lab to do their penetration testing. Buying separate boxes for all your Operating Systems (OSs) can be quite expensive, and may deter some people from wanting to do certs in the first place (unless someone else is paying for it). Thankfully there is a cheap solution to all this and you can get to learn some new things on the way.

posted by jtroyer at: 20:38 | | | permanent link

• Munckfish is installing Ubuntu on VMware Server
• howto from the Ubuntu Forums
• articles from the Ubuntu Wiki
• howto from howtoforge
• PDF howto from TuDra.net
• Ubuntu Virtual Appliances at the VMTN Virtual Appliance Directory
• search for Ubuntu on the VMTN Forums.

posted by jtroyer at: 19:28 | | | permanent link

• Migrating Physical to Virtual Machines - Then and Now

  Back in the stone ages of server virtualization (circa 2001), one of the pain points that I started to deal with was trying to figure out how to migrate one of my physical servers over to a virtual machine.

• P2V for VMware: six ways to convert physical to virtual
• Migrating from physical to virtual's getting easier: P2V for free is the latest trend
• PlateSpin, Leostream ease the move to virtual datacenters
• Ultimate-P2V
• EZP2V

posted by jtroyer at: 18:34 | | | permanent link

Mon, 17 Jul 2006

We released VMware Server for general availability last week. What is the blogosphere saying about VMware Server?

Agileview

Simply amazing software. I cannot recommend this software enough. Virtualise your server management, run multiple operating systems on the same server, simultaneously. Brilliant software and perhaps the most innovative software this decade?

DeadBeefCafe

There are some tools that are just cool, I've tried to put links to some of them in our information pages. There are other tools that are pretty sucky, we try to bash into them for security problems. Then there's tools that make all the other tools more useful. One of these is VMWare.

KF4PTH

VMware server is such a pleasure to use!

Jonathan Summers

I've been using a Bugzilla appliance and a DB2 Viper appliance for a while now, and the fact that they just work is quite nice.

Bill Huber

I have become a fan of VMware. I have used VirtualPC in the past but became interested in their products when they offered VMPlayer for free. When they offered free usage of the server product and encouraged the VMTN appliance community, I switched.

Avery J. Parker

From my brief experience with the VMWare server, I.m really impressed. I.ve used a number of open-source virtualizers and can see VMWare server with an advantage over them in many categories.

lifehack.org

Uses for Virtual Machines * Try new operating systems * Test your software * Set up an office quickly * Small Biz disaster recovery * Build kid boxes * Backup your system * Save Legacy Systems

Bob Walsh

VMware is out to change a few things in this world, one being how servers serve and the other how developers develop. ... The emerging reality I see is between developing software and consuming betas, between the WinXP and Vista eras, between all the wonderful tools and apps out there all trying to overpopulate startup apps, the system tray and the registry in general, going VM looks seriously good for developers and non-developers alike.

Richard Callaby

What does this mean to you and me? A whole lot as the cost of hardware is relatively cheap and now you can fully use all your resources of each server. I know of several very large companies that run their production web servers on VMWare servers, I am not going to tell you who as that could be a potential security breach for them. However though this does tell you the robustness of these products.

Andrew GJ Fung

I eventually settled on VMWare Server. While VMWare Workstation has more advanced features, VMWare Server has many of the key characteristics I was looking for: ability to run headless VMs, snapshots, a good user interface to the VM desktops. I only noticed Workstation's Shared Folders and Team VMs (i.e. groups of VMs) missing.

Chris Kirby

So, with ALL of that said. I will most likely phase out the rest of my VS 2005 vm's and import them into VMware format in the near future. Though both servers are very close in comparison, VMware still came out on top, showing that their still the best at what they do...and now that there stuff is (mostly) free, there's really no reason to for me use any other tech.

errno @ SIGCONT

I was actually surprised with the performance of Ubuntu as a guest OS. I didn't expect it to run so smoothly without any noticeable slowdowns. It was my belief that virualisation was hella slow on "normal" computers and I needed at least a 3.0Ghz machine to get some decent speeds with it.

posted by jtroyer at: 18:08 | | | permanent link

Thu, 06 Jul 2006

VMware is holding an event for current and potential partners in our Community Source program. If your company makes hardware, software, storage, or networking products that work with VMware or in a virtual environment, this event is for you.

Attend and learn how you can:

• Develop products that run more efficiently in a virtualized environment
• Gain a better understanding of the VMware products and solutions
• Influence features that may be implemented in future VMware products
• Differentiate yourself from the competition while protecting your intellectual property

Register now for the VMware Community Source Partner Event July 27th, 2006.

posted by jtroyer at: 18:34 | | | permanent link

InfoWorld has pulled together a Special Report on Virtualization. It's a light overview if you're starting from scratch. This intro article has a table comparing two broad approaches to virtualization. I disagree, however, with describing both VMware ESX Server -- a bare metal hypervisor -- and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 -- which runs on top of an operating system -- both as "hardware emulation." VMware Server would be a better comparison. And emulation is a different beast than virtualization, but for this kind of primer, I might be splitting hairs. Articles include:

• Virtualization gaining momentum in the enterprise.
• VMware maintains lead with Virtual Infrastructure 3
• Microsoft looks to Longhorn for virtualization speed-up
• Solaris Containers fill servers to the limit
• Virtuozzo caters to high-volume server environments
• Xen 3.0 makes paravirtualization mainstream
• AMD and Intel bake virtualization into chips

It's also available as a handy dandy 11-page pdf for your offline enjoyment.

While you are at InfoWorld, don't forget to check out Dave Marshall's Virtualization Report blog, a very good way to keep up on this broad and fast-moving industry after you've finished InfoWorld's special report.

posted by jtroyer at: 18:22 | | | permanent link

I was reading this review of VMware Player and Fedora Core, I realized I hadn't blogged that VMware Player is now available in Ubuntu Dapper repositories. Reading the comments, it looks like your mileage may vary, but for most, a sudo apt-get install vmware-player will do the trick. "No tarballs, no compiling kernel modules, no banging rocks together."

posted by jtroyer at: 18:03 | | | permanent link

virtualization.info has a good overview of the uses of virtualization for security, originally published SearchServerVirtualization and linked on the VMTN Blog last week. He covers sandboxing (application isolation), disaster recovery & high availability, forensic analysis, honeypotting, and "a more blended future."

The futures sections in particular are quite prescient. Alessandro has a CISSP certification and is a Microsoft Security MVP -- he's got a good perspective on how security blends with virtualization.

posted by jtroyer at: 17:45 | | | permanent link