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Fri, 15 Sep 2006

If you're into kernel hacking, check out our new technology preview of transparent virtualization. From the announcement email:

With this Technology Preview, you can download a fully functional virtual machine monitor that supports the paravirtualization interface and your choice of a paravirtualization-enabled Linux kernel from popular Linux distributions.

This release is based on an implementation of the VMI specification proposed by VMware to the Linux community in 2005. VMware continues its collaboration with the Linux community to develop a paravirtualization interface that supports hypervisors from multiple vendors. A proposal, referred to as paravirt-ops, is being adapted by developers from IBM, VMware, RedHat, and XenSource. This proposed interface incorporates many VMI concepts including the support of transparent paravirtualization. Using this interface, a paravirtualized Linux operating system will be able to run on any hypervisor that supports it or on native hardware.

A few things to note: this preview is based on our hosted platform (e.g., Workstation, Player), and not our bare-metal hypervisor (i.e., ESX Server). This brings with it certain caveats if you are doing performance evaluations. You will certainly see a speed-up for CPU-intensive workloads.

Also note we've included and open-sourced the VMI code that makes it happen. I can only hope this well help the community at large get to a single, open, transparent virtualization interface.

Finally, note that this is an example of a transparent virtualization interface. Any hypervisor implementing this VMI code can run the VMI-paravirtualized Linux distributions. The final interface that the Linux kernel folks come up with won't be exactly this particular interface, but the point remains: when we do get to a single standard, then paravirtualized OSes -- which have to be modified from vanilla OSes -- will be able to run on any standards-supporting hypervisor. And as Martha says, that's a good thing.

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

Creating useful benchmarks in a virtual environment is harder than with a physical machine. There's a lot of screwing it up or getting meaningless numbers. That's the real reason we ask folks to email benchmark@vmware.com before publishing performance tests using our software. (And if you do, you will get a response -- my understanding is that there are a few dozen ongoing projects we're helping with at the moment.) Some of the published benchmarks include:

• Scheduler Improvements in VMware ESX Server 2.5.3 and ESX Server 3.0 from IBM
• Advanced Micro Devices Competitive Performance Analysis of VMware ESX 3.0 on AMD and Intel Processors from VeriTest and AMD
• SysBench performance on Intel- and AMD- processor-based servers in a virtualized environment from Principled Technologies and Intel
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Virtualization in the Dell Scalable Enterprise from Dell

We've been working behind the scenes to develop a standard, useful benchmark. We'll be talking more about it at VMworld this year, but for now take a look at On Benchmarking Virtual Infrastructure from our Engineering Performance Group. We plan to be handing this over to the industry as a whole, and so eventually it will have a different name, but for now we're giving it the nickname "VMmark".

Any approach to creating a benchmark for virtualization must address all these challenges. Creating a benchmark is easy, but creating a credible benchmark that provides a meaningful metric, that measures both workload overhead and scalability, that is representative of end user environments, that cannot be easily defeated, and that is broadly applicable -- is a hard problem!

The benefits of solving this hard problem are great. Having an industry standard way of comparing virtualized solutions will allow users to make more informed decisions regarding the entire stack of virtualization technology. Such a standard can also drive improvements in future hardware and software, again benefiting the industry.

posted by jtroyer at: 18:09 | | | permanent link

Wed, 13 Sep 2006

Software licensing is always a complicated subject, and virtualization has just made the whole issue even more headache inducing. The nice thing is that most of the time a virtualized server can be treated just like a physical server. The complicated part comes about because once a machine is virtual, you can start to use it in different ways. So not only are you running multiple virtual machines on single server that can have multiple processors, each with multiple cores, but you also have to consider quiescent virtual machines as templates; snapshots, clones, and linked clones; live or quiescent recovery sites; and other virtualized scenarios. People also start provisioning many more virtual machines, often very specialized, than they would if each machine lived in its own physical box.

SWsoft's Ilya Baimetov has a rather nice take on some of the difficulties and links to SWsoft CEO Serguei Beloussov's News.com article on rethinking software licensing.

It's complicated enough virtualizing at the hardware level. What about partitioning at the OS level, like BSD jails, Solaris containers, UML, or SWsoft's Virtuozzo? Alessandro Perilli recently asked Microsoft's Mike Neil if each virtual partition required a separate Windows license. His answer:

A virtual operating system environment that enables a separate machine identity or separate administrative rights requires an operating system license. In this case, each Virtuozzo virtual environment requires an operating system license.

Each instance of the OS can deliver value by providing additional flexibility for customers to deploy their business workloads.

Ilya Baimetov strongly dissented in the comments that a separate license is not needed because when you create a new partition you don't do an OS install or run a setup program, nor do you duplicate any existing OS instance.

This may not be a meeting of the minds with Redmond, to say the least.

posted by jtroyer at: 16:57 | | | permanent link

Thomas Kyte says now travels with a sense of security:

I've always been worried about my laptop getting stolen, stomped on, dropped or just failing. If I'm setting out on a two week trip - that would be fatal - I wouldn't be able to complete the trip at all. The laptop represented a complete "single point of failure" with no backup.

What I've done (and tested of course) is to stage on a 60gb external USB disk (tiny disk, takes no room really)

• a copy of all of my presentation material
• VM's (virtual machines) capable of running the demonstrations I have
• an installable copy of power point (just need the viewer really)
• an installable copy of the free VMWare player

Thomas mentions the Browser Appliance, which VMware created last year with Ubuntu and Firefox. You may also want to check out the Web Browser Appliance and Virus Safe Email, Browsing, and Instant Messenger appliance.

posted by jtroyer at: 15:54 | | | permanent link

From rbocchinfuso at Got IT Solutions, a wise observation on looking at a problem from a single point of view:

I was recently forwarded an article by a co-worker entitled “Virtualization doesn’t solve any problems”. First let me say that I think the title should maybe be revised to “Virtualization doesn’t solve all problems”, but did anyone ever claim that it did? To say virtualization doesn’t solve any problems is a bit arrogant and I think uninformed. The intelligent virtualization user / implementor is aware of the current limitations such as I/O bandwidth constraints. Virtualization is not a one size fits all but it is a size today that fits a much larger market segment than SMP cluster ting. While there is a segment of the market such as life sciences that is dealing with the need for massive parallel processing and incredible I/O requirements a much larger market segment is struggling with aging infrastructure, massive under utilization, server sprawl, growing environmental costs (hvac, energy, floor space, etch..), and the need to simplify recovery.

posted by jtroyer at: 15:39 | | | permanent link

How to...

• make a Load Balanced Server with VMWare and Hercules
• install VMware tools for Ubuntu Linux
• install OpenBSD on VMware Server
• boot a virtual machine from CD in ESX Server 3.0.
• resize a virtual machine's disk, the easy way
• speed up console connections for VMware Server
• file a useful bug report by doing some detective work
• add host files to your ESX Server
• upgrade VMware Tools for ESX Server 3.0

posted by jtroyer at: 15:33 | | | permanent link

Fri, 08 Sep 2006

With the Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge behind us, we're now pleased to announce: The Virtual Vanguard Awards.

We know that you've been making the most of virtualization to create innovative environments and applications for improving IT performance, minimizing system downtime, and reducing the cost and complexity of delivering enterprise services. Now it's our turn to celebrate your creative and innovative efforts.

To honor customers who are taking full advantage of virtualization technology, VMware is proud to announce the Virtual Vanguard Awards Program. This annual awards program will highlight customers who are using VMware software to solve mission-critical enterprise issues and build leading-edge IT infrastructure.

Get the recognition you and your team deserve for solving your company's business-critical needs with virtualization: send us your story today!

We're looking for nominations in the following four categories:

• Best Overall Return on Investment (ROI) and Operational Benefits
• Most Comprehensive VMware Infrastructure
• Most Mission-Critical Application in Production
• The Vanguard Award for Innovation

All entries for the Program need to be submitted by a VMware customer. The Virtual Vanguard Awards Program is open to all organizations that purchase VMware virtualization products for use in their own environment.

Nominations must be received by 12:00 p.m. PST on Friday, October 6, 2006. Please note that participants are limited to one entry per category, and a maximum of two entries for the program.

The official awards ceremony will be held on November 7, 2006 at VMworld 2006 in Los Angeles, California. Submit your nomination today: win fame, glory and a free pass to VMworld!

posted by jtroyer at: 16:36 | | | permanent link

Matt Topper is starting a new project: creating prebuilt Oracle Virtual Machines, I assume just of Oracle software that is freely redistributable.

The side project I've been mentioning for a while now is a new site that delivers Oracle software through prebuilt VMWare virtual machines. Many people say the hardest part of using Oracle software is getting the installation down and functioning properly. I know many people who have been turned off of some wonderful software because its just a pain to configure. My goal with this new site it to remove that pain, allow people to download the prebuilt virtual machines and just start playing with the tools and walking through the demos instead of worrying with how to get everything setup correctly.

He's looking for feedback and testers. Drop him a line if you're interested.

posted by jtroyer at: 16:21 | | | permanent link

Vista pre-RC1 (Build 5536) and RC1 (5600) have a bug that interacts poorly with Workstation 5.5.2 -- you can install the OS, but you just can't see anything! There are three known workarounds:

• blindly follow a keystroke step-by-step recipe (not recommended)
• install on the free VMware Server on a different machine, install the VMware Tools which gets you the right driver, and then move the virtual machine to Workstation.
• add the following lines to your .vmx file before installing:

  svga.maxWidth = "640"
  svga.maxHeight = "480" 
  

  After installing the OS and the VMware Tools, shut down, remove those lines, and reboot. (via VMware Forums one and two, and via Joel on Software.)

This will likely be resolved in the next build of Vista (and of Workstation). Vista runs fine in a virtual machine -- or as fine as it does outside a virtual machine -- although I'm not sure if all the Aero Glass UI effects are available.

posted by jtroyer at: 16:17 | | | permanent link