Robin Wauters

VMware has launched a Lab site where VMware Engineers can share new tools that they are developing.

They are offering a wide range of tools here, each of which are being offered under a Technical Preview or relevant Open Source License.

Give them a try and provide your feedback to the developers.

These tools are being called “flings”:

A fling is a short-term thing, not a serious relationship but a fun one. Likewise, the applications offered here are intended to be played with and explored.  They are not yet part of any product offering and there is no support for them.  They are, however, totally free. And you don’t even have to fill out a form before downloading them!

These flings include:

Apache Pivot – Apache Pivot is a platform for building rich internet applications in Java. It combines the enhanced productivity and usability features of a modern RIA toolkit with the robustness of the industry-standard Java platform.

Dynamo RIO – DynamoRIO is a runtime code manipulation system that supports code transformations on any part of a program, while it executes. DynamoRIO gives complete control over the runtime code stream and does not limit transformations to trampoline insertion.

esxplot – The software runs on Linux systems, and generates timeseries graphs for selected esxtop fields (as png graphs). The software will also generate simple statistical measures including mean and standard variation for selected esxtop fields.

Onyx – Onyx is a standalone application that serves as a proxy between the vSphere Client and the vCenter Server. It monitors the network communication between them and translates it into an executable PowerShell code. Later this code could be modified and saved into a reusable function or script.

SVGA Sonar – SVGA Sonar is a demo application for SVGADevTap. SVGADevTap is a user-level library that communicates with the VMware SVGA guest driver to provide low-latency notifications of changes to the screen.

vApprun – The vapprun command-line tool brings the full vApp model to Workstation and Fusion. It builds vApps that contain multiple VMs or nested vApps. Configure start/stop ordering of child elements of a vApp. Power-on/power-off/shutdown of vApps.Supports OVF Properties and the OVF Environment.

vCMA – Ever wish you could restart a virtual machine or migrate it to another host from the convenience of your mobile phone? With VMware vCenter Mobile Access, you can monitor and manage VMware Infrastructure from your mobile phone with an interface that is optimized for such devices.

VGC – VMware Guest Console (VGC) is an application to manage the Guest Operating Systems installed on a VM. VGC includes a Unified Task Manager, Guest file system explorer, Snapshot Manager and a VM Manager. VGC is supported with vmware server and desktop products like vSphere, Server 2.0 and Workstation and can connect to multiple hosts simultaneously.

VI Java – The VMware vSphere Java API provides a full set of libraries to manage and control VMware virtual machines and servers. Ver 2.0 includes a high performance Web Service engine much faster/smaller than Apach AXIS.

Virtual USB Analyzer – We developed vusb-analyzer at VMware as an efficient way to debug our own USB virtualization stack. We wanted a tool that made it easy to see problems at a glance, and we wanted a way to solve both correctness and performance bugs. As a result, we ended up with what we think is a fairly unique tool. We’re excited to have the opportunity now to release this tool as open source software, under the MIT license.

Xsigo Systems today announced that its Xsigo I/O Director, an award-winning virtual I/O technology, has been verified as Citrix Ready.

The Citrix Ready program helps customers identify third-party solutions that are recommended to enhance virtualization, networking and cloud computing solutions from Citrix. The Xsigo I/O Director completed a rigorous verification process to ensure compatibility with Citrix XenServer, providing confidence in joint solution compatibility.

The Citrix Ready program makes it easy for customers to identify complementary products and solutions that can enhance Citrix environments. Customers can be confident that the Xsigo I/O Director has successfully passed a series of tests established by Citrix, and can be trusted to work effectively with Citrix XenServer, an enterprise-class, cloud-proven server virtualization platform that delivers the critical features of live migration and centralized multi-server management.

Virtualization projects that use Citrix XenServer products coupled with virtual I/O technologies, like the Xsigo I/O Director, further optimize efficiencies and realize additional cost-savings benefits. The Xsigo I/O Director is an enterprise-class solution that provides LAN and SAN connectivity for up to hundreds of Citrix XenServer hosts. Under software control, any XenServer host may be configured with access to any LAN or SAN — “virtually”. Because vNICs and vHBAs can be configured on-the-fly without a server reboot, the server’s network connectivity is highly flexible and reconfigurable.

As a result, Citrix XenServer combined with Xsigo virtual I/O allow customers to receive predictable application performance by: dynamically allocating server bandwidth; isolating resources by assigning connectivity to a specific server; and achieving QoS by controlling both network and storage bandwidth to specific virtual NICs and HBAs.

VMware today announced that VMware Express will hit the road this week.

VMware Express is a state-of-the-art mobile datacenter, demo lab and briefing center designed to bring desktop virtualization and cloud computing solutions from VMware directly to customers and partners across the United States and Canada. VMware Express Virtualization Tour 2010 will stop in 150 cities and is sponsored by AMD, Cisco, Dell, EMC, MDS Micro, NetApp and Xsigo.

Unveiled at VMware Partner Exchange Feb. 8 in Las Vegas, Nev., VMware Express contains five demo stations showcasing VMware desktop and server virtualization solutions, highlighting VMware View, VMware vSphereand the VMware vCenter family of products. VMware Express also contains a fully equipped conference room for customers to discuss VMware solutions with technical experts, and it can enable lab environments on the fly both inside and outside the vehicle.

Zenoss, corporate sponsor of open source IT monitoring and management solution Zenoss Core, today announced the general availability of Zenoss Core version 2.5.2 under the GNU General Public License (V2).

As part of this release, Zenoss Core now offers new monitoring capabilities for the Xen Hypervisor via the Zenoss Xen monitoring plug-in, or Xen Virtual Hosts ZenPack.

The Xen Virtual Hosts ZenPack discovers guests on Xen para-virtualized hosts and provides monitoring of performance and availability via SSH. While the Xen hosts run on physical servers, the virtual guests are listed per host and linked back to any discovered instances on the network. With this ZenPack, administrators can quickly find the associated hosts and guests and monitor their Xen virtual infrastructure along side their entire physical, virtual, and cloud-based IT environment through a single interface.

Version 2.5.2 of Zenoss Core and the Xen Virtual Hosts ZenPack are available for download from the Zenoss Open Source Community website:

• Zenoss Core 2.5.2: http://community.zenoss.org/community/download
• Xen Virtual Hosts ZenPack: http://bit.ly/9f374I