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The End of Paravirtualization?

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Alok Kataria , a Systems Programmer & Linux Kernel hacker at VMWare posted to the Linux Kernel Mailing List last month about his experiences benchmarking VMware’s paravirtualization technique (VMI) and hardware MMU technologies (HWMMU) on VMware’s hypervisor.

Their test platform was a Dual Quad Core AMD Opteron 2384 2.7GHz (Shanghai C2), RVI capable running a development build of ESX.

They ran different real world test on a SLES 10 SP2 with a 2.6.16.60-0.37_f594963d-vmipae Kernel and they concluded that in most of their benchmarks the EPT/NPT (hwmmu) setup provides equal or provide better performance compared to VMI.

Below is a short summary of performance results between HWMMU and VMI.
These results are averaged over 9 runs. The memory was sized at 512MB
per VCPU in all experiments.
For the ratio results comparing hwmmu technologies to vmi, higher than 1
means hwmmu is better than vmi.

compile workloads – 4-way : 1.02, i.e. about 2% better.
compile workloads – 8-way : 1.14, i,e. 14% better.
oracle swingbench – 4-way (small pages) : 1.34, i.e. 34% better.
oracle swingbench – 4-way (large pages) : 1.03, i.e. 3% better.
specjbb (large pages) : 0.99, i.e. 1% degradation.

In his post Alok tells us that VMware expects that these hardware virtualization features will be generally available in all hardware by 2011. Other reasons for VMWare Paravirtualization’s VMI , such as timekeeping have also left the building therefore VMWare decided that they plan to stop supporting VMI

In short … VMWare has prepared a patch to remove all VMI related code from the Linux Kernel.

The thread on LKML went on noting that current users still might want to have the patches present so immediate removal of the feature wasn’t really the best way to proceed. But some day soon the code will be removed from the standard Linux kernel.

So what does this say about the future of Paravirtualization ?

Larry Ellison Rants On “Cloud Computing Nonsense” – (Two Videos)

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Oracle co-founder and CEO Larry Ellison pretty much hates cloud computing, as everyone knows by now. The man’s resent of the tech world’s buzzword du jour – one of them at least – is well documented, but it’s always amusing to see the man’s refreshing take as captured on video and audio.

Here are two recent videos of Ellison laying the smack down on cloud computing, the first one from TechPulse360 via Dvorak Uncensored and the second one a soundbite from last year’s talk at Oracle’s OpenWorld Conference:

What is your take?

VMware: Our SMB Strategy Works!

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VMware has announced that its efforts to deliver increased value to small and medium businesses (SMB) have resulted in thousands of customers worldwide using VMware vSphere solutions, including significant deployments in key SMB markets, such as education, financial services, healthcare, IT consulting and manufacturing.

VMware solutions enable SMBs to save valuable time among their over-burdened IT staff by automating routine tasks, boosting productivity and responding faster to changes in real-world business conditions.  VMware’s solutions also offer SMBs built-in security and data protection to help ensure ‘Always On’ IT and continuous uptime for their applications.  Specific features in the VMware vSphere platform, such as VMware Fault Tolerance, VMware Data Recovery, VMotion and VMware vShield Zones, offer SMBs a level of resiliency for their businesses that had been reserved for only the largest enterprises in the past. VMware has also lowered the bar for SMBs to buy and use these capabilities with specific packages targeting this market segment and the lowest cost per application, the true way to measure cost for virtualization solutions.

The VMware vSphere Essentials Plus Edition is ideal for businesses starting with 20 physical servers or less and offers a complete integrated package that includes High Availability, Data Recovery and central management. VMware vSphere Advanced Edition offers a robust business continuity solution ideal for companies with between 20 and 50 servers, and includes Fault Tolerance, VMware vShield Zones, VMware VMotion in addition to High Availability and Data Recovery.

Brand preference for VMware among SMB customers has grown significantly over the past year as more companies come to understand the unique value of the VMware platform.  VMware is the proven virtualization leader for the SMB market with its 4th generation product. The scalability and efficiency of VMware’s virtualization architecture set it apart from competitors and allow customers to do more while spending up to 50 percent less on computing hardware.  Customers also realize dramatic savings in power consumption, network cabling, datacenter space, cooling requirements, and storage systems.  And VMware’s management and automation tools lead the industry, helping SMBs leverage the IT resources they already have in place for maximum strategic advantage.

Lanamark Teams Up With Avnet Technology Solutions

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Lanamark today announced a partnership with Avnet Technology Solutions, a leading distributor of enterprise computing products, software and services with locations in more than 30 countries.

The partnership will enable value-added resellers, system integrators and system builders working with Avnet Technology Solutions to use Lanamark Suite to accelerate design and delivery of desktop virtualisation, server virtualisation and storage solutions to enterprises in EMEA.

Lanamark Suite enables value-added resellers, system integrators and consultants to accelerate design and delivery of supplier-neutral virtualisation solutions to enterprises looking to virtualise applications, desktops and servers. Solution providers can gather vital information about enterprise environments, analyse desktops, servers and storage to identify most suitable candidates for virtualisation, and then design optimal end-to-end virtualisation solutions with hardware, software and service components. Lanamark Suite supports servers, blade enclosures, storage arrays, SAN switches, HBAs and thin clients from Brocade, Cisco Systems, EMC, Emulex, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, IBM, NetApp, QLogic, Sun Microsystems, Wyse and other supplier partners working with Avnet.

mindSHIFT Launches NextDesktop, A Windows Desktop Solution for SMBs

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mindSHIFT Technologies, an industry leader in delivering managed IT services to businesses, today launched NextDesktop, an online service that provides small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) with the first affordable hosted Windows desktop solution.

With prices starting at $39.99 per user per month — vs. more than $100 per user per month for competing hosted desktop solutions — NextDesktop extends mindSHIFT’s managed desktop line to provide a basic Windows desktop to budget-conscious organizations that don’t require the comprehensive 24-hour hardware, server, network, Help Desk and file restoration support of mindSHIFT’s fully-managed desktop solutions.

The NextDesktop hosted service provides an affordable option for budget-conscious organizations, especially:

  • Start-ups
  • SMBs needing to replace out-of-warranty PCs and laptops
  • SMBs adding new employees or new offices
  • SMBs with employees who do not use graphics or multimedia-intensive applications

Compared to traditional PCs and other hosted desktops, NextDesktop offers a more cost-effective and worry-free alternative to effectively address SMB IT needs:

  1. Lower operational and capital expenditure costs, with the lowest price in the market and the ability to either utilize existing hardware or purchase less expensive thin client devices.
  2. Reduced IT burden, eliminating the need to upgrade PCs and offloading administrative IT tasks, such as security, data backup, anti-virus and other patches, Help Desk services and software upgrades.
  3. Better security, with real-time anti-virus and anti-spyware updates, ongoing Microsoft patches, and storage and backup of all of a business’s Windows desktop data, documents and applications inNextDesktop’s secure data center.

Because the data and applications are stored, or “hosted” in the secure data center, employees can access their desktop data and applications from any location using any PC, laptop, thin client or smartphone – as long as they have an Internet connection on their device.

In addition, NextDesktop offers online provisioning, based on mindSHIFT’s proprietary technology, allowing businesses to add and remove users within seconds, compared with hours or days required with other approaches. Furthermore, mindSHIFT uses Internap’s® Performance IP™ technology to provide stable, predictable Internet performance, which enhances employee productivity by preventing the lag time, or latency, which is typical of other hosted solutions. With this technology, emails and other data are routed via the fastest network based on a proactive, real-time analysis of Internet traffic and bottlenecks.

mindSHIFT manages nearly 80,000 mailboxes and 20,000 desktops for professional workers in small and mid-sized organizations. A team of 385 employees provides IT support and IT services to more than 10,000 organizations in more than 100 countries.

For $39.99 per user per month, NextDesktop includes the following features:

  • Access to office desktop from everywhere, all the time
  • Choice of Office applications for productivity options:
    • OpenOffice: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, and Base
    • Microsoft Office 2007: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook (an additional $9.99/seat/month)
  • Data and applications, including Windows, running in mindSHIFT’s 24x7x365 Tier 4 data center
  • Effective management of lag time with Internap Performance IP to decrease latency
  • Instant Office feature – Web-based control panel for immediate setup of new users and services by authorized administrative user
  • PDF creator and Adobe Reader
  • 1 GB of disk space for each user to store documents
  • Daily backup of all data
  • Real-time anti-virus and anti-spyware updates from Trend Micro
  • Live U.S.-based Help Desk via telephone and email
  • Timely, transparent software patches and updates
  • Month-to-month contract

Available upgrades include Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 email; BlackBerry, iPhone and other smartphone synchronization to Outlook email, calendar and tasks; email archiving; SharePoint; and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Sun Microsystems Releases Ops Center 2.5

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Sun Microsystems today announced a new release of Sun Ops Center, its comprehensive and highly scalable management solution for both physical and virtual systems. In addition to managing Sun’s x86 and SPARC servers, Ops Center 2.5 now extends lifecycle management capabilities to Sun’s built-in virtualization technologies, including Solaris Containers and Sun Logical Domains (LDoms). Ops Center 2.5 is designed to help customers regain control over system sprawl, reduce IT costs and make datacenters more flexible, laying the foundation for managing private cloud environments.

By using advanced technologies and built-in automated workflows, Ops Center 2.5 allows users to maintain consistent deployment of firmware, OS, and applications across physical and virtual resources, speed deployment time, as well as improve business continuity by quickly provisioning new systems and dynamically allocating resources. From a single and intuitive browser-based console, Ops Center 2.5 automates and controls Sun infrastructure as well as heterogeneous environments running the Solaris(TM) Operating System (OS), Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), and Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL).

New features in Ops Center 2.5 include:

— Ability to create, delete, configure, monitor, and migrate Solaris Containers and LDoms from a single console.

— Ability to patch the Solaris OS using Solaris(TM) Live Upgrade software with minimal downtime.

— Cutting-edge virtual storage library management using Fiber Channel, NFS or ZFS(TM) software.

— Advanced patching for Microsoft Windows via integration with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, giving customers a single pane to patch Solaris, Linux and Windows OSes.

— Full support for discovery, monitoring, provisioning and patching of servers running Oracle Enterprise Linux.

— Advanced, automatic datacenter asset grouping to accelerate initiation of repetitive tasks.

Sun offers subscriptions and perpetual licenses for Ops Center. Commercial subscriptions are priced annually per system starting at $500 for the Premium Management Pack, which includes patching and provisioning, and $1000 for the Enterprise Management Pack, which includes full virtualization management. Enterprise Management Pack subscriptions are only sold with Premium Management Pack subscriptions.