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News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

Remus and Kemari , still going strong

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Remus and Kemari, the 2 VM mirroring solutions for Xen both made some announcements recently.

Remus announced the availability of version 0.9 this release is build against the tip of the xen-unstable repository, and supports PV and HVM in 32-on-32, 64-on-64, 32-on-64, and 64-on-32 configurations. It has been tested using Linux (Ubuntu) PV guests, and both Linux and Windows XP under HVM.

According to the Remus website Last week Remus has been applied to the official Xen repository and is expected to be i
ncluded with the next major release.

In case you forgot Remus provides comprehensive fault tolerance for Xen virtual machines. If the physical machine hosting your VM fails, the backup can take over instantly, as if you had migrated it to the backup at the instant before the failure occured. There’s no need for recovery, because the backup is always completely up to date. Furthermore, Remus runs completely transparently, requiring no changes to your existing guests.

Kemari, the other fault tolerance solution for Xen however announced that the in
itial work for porting Kemari to KVM has started .

The basic design for Kemari for KVM is ready and they have send out a RFC to get early feedback , the full RFC announcement by Fernando Luis Vázquez Cao can be found on the Linux KVM mailing list
More info on Kemari is available on their website

CopyCats in Virtualization

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Step back in time with me a couple of years, Xen was starting it’s upmars and with Xen paravirtualization became popular , then came the other Virtualization vendors and the discussion about which technology was best discussed started.

Now we all know that VMWare and Xensource were discussing how to include hooks for Paravirtualization into the Linux kernel and eventually that also happened,however there wasn’t really any adoption , a couple of weeks ago VMWare announced it was going to drop support for paravirtualization. Aparrently VMWare’s Paravirtualization story wasn’t really a success.

The Xen folks pioneered with Paravirtualization and a dedicated hypervisor, yet somehow also got interrested in running the Xen engine within an already existing operating system by means of a kernel module. That way Xen can also be run on different existing platforms just as KVM and Virtualbox, one of the big reasons for KVM adoption exactly is the fact that one can turn an existing Linux machine into a virtual machine host by doing a simple modprobe

However the initial development focus for Hosted Xen was Windows and OS/X
not really a market wher Open Source Virtualization tools are going to make big
adoption steps fast

So you might wonder who is using this Hosted Xen anyhow , apparently not that many people. On the other side there’s VMWare’s ParaVirt similar story
And who’s using ParaVirt ? Aparently nobody …as there used to be a huge performance bug in it for over a year ..

So the lesson learned ? Stick with your own mainline technology .. no need to
copy the others ideas, seems like they won’t be a success anyhow ..

Project XVP

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On blog.xen.org we read about XVP , one of the most common questions for XenServer is a webinterface to manage the VM’s from a browser.  XVP , developed by Colin Dean at the Durham University in the UK has one based on 4 components.

  • xvpweb: A web front end for XenServer, running on Apache/PHP. It will provid
    e you with status views , facilities to shutdown, reboot and look at virtual mac
    hines and their consoles
  • xvpviewer: A Java applet for accessing XenServer consoles (used by xvpweb, of course). a custom Java based VNC client, based on TightVNC but with xvp specif
    ic additions.
  • xvp: A server-side proxy for XenServer consoles, so that you can use ordinary VNC clients xvp stands for Xen VNC Proxy it will be used as a VNC proxy to the
    consoles hosted on a Citrix XenServer platform
  • xvpdiscover: A tool that queries a XenServer pool, and writes the appropriate configuration files for xvp and xvpweb.

Screenshots and rpm’s for RHEL based distributions are available from their website

Enomaly ECP 3.0.3 Service Provider Edition Released

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Reuven Cohen, Founder and Chief Technologist for Toronto based Enomaly Inc posts on his blog Elastic Vapor that Enomaly is announcing the general availability of The Enomaly Elastic Computing Platform (ECP) Service Provider Edition 3.0.3.

According to him this new release brings the following new features :

– KVM is now directly supported as a hypervisor at install time.
– Sample data is installed during initial installation, so there is no need to create a customer/group/permissions before testing the system. See INSTALL for default user/pass.
– VNC window in customer UI is now identical to the Admin UI. Passwords for the VNC console are now found under Info button at VM level.
– Info window now shows how to connect with an external VNC client as well as the existing Java applet.
– VNC window can be disabled entirely on a per VM basis.
– App Center can now be searched/filtered. This is useful if you offer a large number of appliances.
– Admin Dashboard now shows graphical whole cluster resource usage.
– Network Manager has been removed. All deployments are recommended to use DHCP for IP assignment going forward.
– Various performance improvements have been added at customer UI level.
– Various performance improvements have been added to infrastructure code.

Pano Logic Hires Former VMware Exec Chris Hammans for European Expansion

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Pano Logic today announced its European expansion and the appointment of former VMware executive Chris Hammans as Managing Director to lead the efforts from the UK.

Hammans will apply his more than 10 years experience in the virtualization industry from both VMware and Citrix to build a world-class organization for Pano Logic to meet the needs of European organizations. In expanding throughout Europe, Pano Logic is responding to rising market demand for its zero client desktop virtualization solution, which has achieved significant traction in education, health, government, manufacturing and service sectors.

A veteran high-tech exec, Hammans was instrumental in developing new markets throughout Europe for two leading virtualization companies, VMware and Citrix Systems. Most recently, Hammans was regional director at VMware, achieving unprecedented growth in both sales and market recognition during his six-year tenure. Prior to joining VMware, Hammans was enterprise director at Citrix Systems.

The Pano System is an all-in-one hardware and software desktop virtualization solution that radically redefines computing and enables users to simplify deployment and management of end user computing while slashing equipment, maintenance and support costs. Unlike any other VDI vendor, Pano Logic centralizes 100% of end user computing power onto the virtualized server.  There is no processor, no operating system, no memory, no drivers, no software and no moving parts in the zero client Pano Device – resulting in absolutely zero endpoint management.  The lifespan of a Pano Device is over three times that of a thin client or PC and it uses less than 3 percent of a PC’s energy.

Sun Microsystems Introduces New Desktop Virtualization Capabilities in Sun Ray Software 5

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Sun Microsystems today announced the availability of Sun Ray Software 5, which brings remarkable enhancements to the virtual desktop experience and helps to increase data center efficiency.

Sun Ray Software 5 is a secure, cost effective solution that delivers a rich, virtual Windows, Linux or Solaris(TM) Operating System desktop to nearly any client device including Windows PCs and Sun Ray thin clients. As part of the Sun desktop virtualization portfolio, many of the features of Sun Ray Software 5 will also appear in the upcoming release of Sun VDI Software 3.1.

A major benefit for new and existing customers of Sun Ray Software is the new Sun(TM) Desktop Access Client. This new software client provides end-users the flexibility to utilize their existing Windows laptops or desktop PCs, as an alternative to Sun Ray thin clients, to easily access data and applications in a centralized virtual desktop environment. With the Sun Desktop Access Client customers now have a simplified, user-friendly means of accessing the Sun Ray infrastructure, which can help to extend the life of current PC assets and reduce the environmental impact of frequent desktop refreshes.

An additional enhancement in Sun Ray Software 5 is improved Adobe Flash performance, which enables customers to experience accelerated Adobe Flash content with synchronized audio and video on Sun Ray thin clients and Sun Desktop Access Client enabled PCs. The new release also includes greater peripheral device support to virtual desktops through USB redirection to Windows, allowing users to deploy a significantly expanded set of USB peripheral devices with Sun Ray technology, including scanners, printers, and more. In addition, Sun Ray Software 5 allows customers to display Windows Server 2008 applications in 32 bit color and includes support for Windows Server 2008 TS Session Broker.

Sun Ray Software 5 is available now for $100 per concurrent user for the perpetual license.