Virtualization.com

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

Apologies For The Radio Silence

by 1 Comment

We would like to apologize to our readers, and particularly those who subscribe to our RSS feed and/or e-mail newsletter, for not posting any news for the past couple of days. We moved offices and it took us a while to get our internet access back. But we’re back now, and here’s an overview of what happened while we were sitting on a tropical island in no-internet-hell.

Veeam has a new CFO (William H. Largent)

BlueStripe Software raised Series B funding to the tune of $8 million from Valhalla Partners and Trinity Ventures.

CohesiveFT added both Fedora Core 10 and Internal Eucalyptus Cloud Deployment Option to its Elastic Server platform

Tranxition has announced general availability of LiveManage for Virtual Migrations 7.0

VMware has announced vSphere, its infamous cloud operating system (and then some)

rPath has announced rBuilder 5

Pano Logic has appointed Parmeet S. Chaddha as executive vice president of engineering

VMware put out their financial numbers for the first quarter of 2009

Leostream released Connection Broker 6.0

Citrix today announced that the beta release of XenServer 5.5 (code-named “Project George”) is available

On the dangers of OVF

by 7 Comments

Usually I`m all in favour of Open Standards that are supported by different parties, and the Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) pretty much matches these requirements.
The last Virtualbox has support for it, Simon is telling about it being part of the new XenConvert v2 Tech Preview .
However, Reuven wonders why it hasn’t gained widespread adoption yet.

Here’s my take, .. I`m not in favour of a standard as OVF that provides an easy way to transfer packaged virtual machine instance between different platforms.

Why ? Because I don’t think transferring full images of Virtual machines around is a good idea, not on 1 platform, not on different platforms.
And I`m not the only one with that opinion.

A Virtual Machine image is the perfect vehicle for malware in your network … some prepares an image for you , you run it on your network, and you set loose the devil, who knows it does a networkscan in the background and sends the info

OVF is a good breeding area for VM Image Sprawl,the effect you get when the number of images you have grows beyond what you can easily maintain, and this time it can grow beyond the people only using proprietary software , where as Image Sprawl used to be a disease mostly diagnosed within the VMWare usergroups and sysdamins with no clue on large scale deployments OVF

Sure OVF will assist smooth migration between different platforms so vendors want to keep it as far away from their users as possible, but people that already have a platform agnostic deployment framework in place don’t really need to worry about deploying on different platforms.

Updates on Xen

by Leave a Comment

When you have been in this industry for a couple of years, you might think that the Virtualization industry has stopped innovating, that there are no new awesome features coming out anymore.

Obviously they aren’t coming at the same pace as 5-10 years ago anymore, we aren’t surprised anymore when people add Virtualization support for yet another CPU or publish yet another new and fresh management framework, with a cloud sauce .. But hidden far in the back corner innovation still happens, be it with much smaller and less intrusive steps than before.

So lets have a look at these small changes

First of all a project I’ve been following for a while now .. XenFS , XenFS builds on the idea that you often want to share filesystems between virtual machines on the same physical machine and that you don’t want to use NFS, Cifs or even the regular network stack to achieve this goal.

According to Mark Williamson who’s working on the project :

The major differences from a traditional network filesystem are in the implementation. XenFS is implemented as a XenLinux “split driver”, with kernel modules implementing the client and server portions. Instead of exchanging protocol messages over a network socket, XenFS exchanges requests and responses using shared memory, similar to the “device channels” used by the block and network split drivers. Beyond that, instead of copying data from the server to the client (and back) XenFS also shares the memory containing the actual file data.

XenFS has been around for a while, but KXen is actually brand new. Argumenting over the advantages and disadvantages of a TypeI vs TypeII hypervisor is now over as Xen “supports” both.

Stephen Spector announced the availability of the first public release of Hosted Xen (KXen)

According to Stephen

Xen is the leading open source Type-1 VMM, providing a fast, robust and secure virtualization platform. KXen leverages the Xen technology, extending the range of environments in which the same core engine can be used to existing desktops, laptops and allowing scenarios like run from usb stick.
Work is underway to support MacOSX as the host, as well as 64-bit versions of Windows. The windows 32-bit host code is designed such that it is easy to port to other host operating systems.

The Remus project which we covered earlier , has also released it’s initial Request for Comment code. Remus allows systems to transparently move to another physical machine in the event of a failure on the primary machine , with only seconds of downtime, while preserving the original host state such as active network connections , memory and disk state.
Being an RFC release means that it is meant to start a discussion on how it might be merged with Xen and Kemari. According to the announcement it is not by any means in shape for application to the Xen tree
But it is a giant step forward towards a better high availability solution using Virtualization.

Hitachi Data Systems Introduces New Replication Support for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

by Leave a Comment

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, today announced the immediate availability of the second generation of Hitachi Storage Replication Adapter for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager. Today’s announcement adds support for the midrange Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage family, providing customers continuous, real time local and remote replication and automatic failover capabilities to ensure resilient data protection, high availability and disaster recovery for VMware environments.

As more businesses implement VMware virtualization, they need to ensure that the data generated in this virtual environment is properly protected. At the same time, businesses are discovering that traditional approaches to disaster recovery and business continuity are not as cost-effective in virtual environments. To address these pressing customer challenges to ensure greater uptime at lower operational costs, the Hitachi Storage Replication Adapter facilitates the linkage between Hitachi market leading system-based replication technologies, including Hitachi Universal Replicator, Hitachi TrueCopy Synchronous, Hitachi TrueCopy Extended Distance and Hitachi ShadowImage in-system replication software, and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager. Coupled together, these software solutions provide operational resilience, robust data protection, recovery management and replication capabilities optimized for VMware Infrastructure.

The Hitachi Storage Replication Adapter links Hitachi replication software and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager to provide tremendous operational resilience, robust data protection, and recovery management and replication capabilities that complement VMware Infrastructure.

Beta Release: Vizioncore Virtualization EcoShell

by Leave a Comment

Vizioncore today announced the beta release of the Virtualization EcoShell, a freeware graphical toolkit for IT administrators to streamline the management of multi-platform virtual environments. The Virtualization EcoShell, specifically tailored to virtualization experts and channel partners, leverages Windows PowerShell to deliver daily cost-savings opportunities for administrators of virtualized infrastructures.Having made an exciting and acclaimed debut at VMworld Europe in February, participants remarked that the IT-tailored interface of the Virtualization EcoShell was an easy and powerful way to maintain multi-platform virtual environments, as well as create, customize, and dramatically automate repetitive and complex tasks. Similar to the Microsoft Management Console, but focused on virtualization, partners saw the opportunity to provide custom admin interfaces and add significant value around their service offerings with the Virtualization EcoShell.

Paul Casey, Datacenter & Storage, Virtualization Technology Leader, at Computacenter, Europe’s leading independent provider of IT infrastructure services commented:

“The Virtualization EcoShell is innovative in its ability to provide a simple solution for customers to quickly capture any virtual infrastructure management tasks. This enables customers to automate multi-step tasks and simplify the delivery of otherwise complex procedures via PowerShell scripts. It also provides channel organizations, such as Computacenter, the opportunity to develop significant services around assessments for customers wishing to introduce process automation and thus reap benefits more quickly and in a cost effective manner.”

The Virtualization EcoShell provides several key features and out-of-the-box use cases for administrators. These capabilities will allow them to get a strong sense of how to optimize, streamline, manage and automate their multi-platform virtual environments.

Features include:

  • Flexible and Robust User Interface – Simultaneously manage multi-platform virtual environments, Microsoft applications and other Windows PowerShell supported technologies with a highly flexible, robust virtualization-tailored graphical interface
  • Task Automation – Reduce errors from manual processes across multiple areas of responsibility through the automation of repetitive and complex tasks inherent in virtualization infrastructures
  • Administrative Reports and Maps – Provide pre-defined and customizable reports as well as automated maps without hassle in HTML, XML and CSV formats, including support for Microsoft Visio
  • Powerful Script Assistance – Cushion and ramp up script creation with a powerful Integrated Development Environment by exposing, analyzing and troubleshooting script output for common Windows PowerShell commands
  • VESI – Inspire administrators who manage multi-platform virtual environments to share and enhance the capabilities of the Virtualization EcoShell through the online community-drive initiative and forum
  • The Virtualization EcoShell and VESI are provided completely 100% free of charge.

As more organizations adopt Windows PowerShell scripts across platforms, administrators can share and enhance the capabilities of the Virtualization EcoShell through VESI, sponsored by Vizioncore. Providing personal and company-wide productivity, the Virtualization EcoShell delivers daily cost-savings opportunities and reduces the learning curve for administrators and the channel to manage virtual infrastructures.

New EMC Virtual Matrix Architecture Good News for Virtual Data Center Storage Scalability

by Leave a Comment

EMC today unveiled a new approach to high-end data storage with an innovative new architecture purpose-built to support virtual data centers. EMC also announced the first storage system based on this architecture, which will serve as a cornerstone of virtual computing infrastructures that are transforming the technology landscape.

The new EMC Virtual Matrix Architecture integrates industry-standard components with EMC Symmetrix capabilities to deliver massive scalability – enabling systems that scale to hundreds of thousands of terabytes of storage and tens of millions of IOPS (input/output per second) supporting hundreds of thousands of VMware and other virtual machines in a single federated storage infrastructure. It is the first storage architecture that combines the performance and efficiency of a scale-up architecture and the cost-effective flexibility of a scale-out architecture. It was designed and built from the ground up to break the physical boundaries of data center storage, incorporates automation to simplify storage management, enables resources to be scaled on demand and uses less energy per terabyte of data stored than traditional high-end storage systems.

Full details about the new architecture and new systems are available here.

The first storage system based on this innovative new architecture is the EMC Symmetrix V-Max system, which is available immediately. It is the world’s largest high-end storage array and uses multi-core processors to lower power costs and improve IOPS per dollar. Combined with the latest generation Enterprise Flash, Fibre Channel and SATA drives, the Symmetrix V-Max system allows users to cost effectively meet the widest range of storage requirements for high performance and high capacity in a single system. It joins the market-leading EMC Symmetrix DMX-4 system and expands EMC’s high-end portfolio. Together they represent the two newest high-end storage architectures on the market today.

The high-availability Symmetrix V-Max Engine at the center of the new system is a flexible building block that features multiple redundant Quad-core Intel(R) Xeon(R) processors with up to 128 GB (gigabytes) of memory and up to 16 host and 16 drive channel connections. The Virtual Matrix Architecture allows Symmetrix V-Max Engines to interconnect and share resources. This enables a Symmetrix V-Max system to scale to 1024 GB (gigabytes) of global memory, with twice as many front-end and back-end connections compared to the industry-leading Symmetrix DMX-4 systems. The ability to interconnect and share resources to easily and linearly scale out is a key customer requirement as virtual machines and applications are dynamically added and shifted.

The Symmetrix V-Max system provides more than three times the performance, twice the connectivity and three times more usable capacity than Symmetrix DMX-4 systems and uses significantly less power per terabyte and per IOP. As part of EMC’s Early Adopter Program, more than 30 of the new systems have already been shipped to customers with some of the world’s largest data centers, including EMC’s own state-of-the-art production data center.

New Automated Management Tools

In virtualized environments, there are significant benefits to consistent and rapid provisioning of storage to multiple physical servers and server clusters. The Symmetrix V-Max system automates storage provisioning, reducing the time and complexity of provisioning by 95 percent. Integration with numerous VMware features enables both server and storage resources to be provisioned on demand, with centralized management, reporting and control. In addition, EMC ControlCenter(R) support for both the Symmetrix V-Max storage system and VMware will increase visibility and automate reporting across the virtual server and storage environments.

In tiered storage environments, Symmetrix V-Max systems enable data to be non-disruptively relocated to different storage tiers and RAID protections, including ultra- high performing Enterprise Flash Drives, traditional Fibre Channel disk drives and high-capacity SATA disk drives based on business requirements. The Virtual Matrix Architecture allows customers to relocate more data in less time and with less impact to overall performance than any competitor, while also maintaining local and remote replication activities to ensure continuous protection for today’s “24 by forever” data centers.

EMC also announced Fully Automated Storage Tiering (“FAST”), its innovative automation technology. Leveraging the Virtual Matrix Architecture’s unprecedented data relocation capabilities, FAST will automate the movement of data across multiple storage tiers based upon business policies, predictive models and real-time access patterns. This will further accelerate the adoption of Enterprise Flash Drives by enabling customers to more effectively leverage Flash performance together with the cost-effective capacities of SATA hard drives for improved return on investment and lower total cost of ownership. This new technology will be available on Symmetrix V-Max systems later this year.

The New Symmetrix V-Max Tiered Storage System

The first new Symmetrix model based on the Virtual Matrix Architecture is the Symmetrix V-Max storage system, the world’s largest high-end storage array, featuring:

  • Up to 128 Intel Xeon processor cores
  • Up to 1 TB (terabyte) of global memory
  • Fibre Channel/FICON/Gigabit Ethernet/iSCSI connectivity
  • Latest generation Flash/Fibre Channel/SATA drive support
  • Scale to 2,400 drives
  • Maximum usable, protected capacity of 2 PBs (petabytes)

Accelerated Data Migrations For Improved Efficiency and Agility

To help customers take advantage of the full capabilities of the new Virtual Matrix Architecture, EMC Global Services introduced a new EMC Migration Suite of tools and services to accelerate migration processes and execute migrations to the new architecture up to 50 percent faster and more efficiently. The EMC Migration Suite leverages comprehensive and unique best practices and EMC E-Lab(TM) interoperability testing to minimize risk, time and complexity.

EMC Proven Solutions for Major Data Center Applications

The unique features of the Symmetrix V-Max systems provide customers with new efficient ways to address the needs of their most critical data center applications, including those from Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. EMC has an initial set of EMC Proven Solutions that help accelerate implementation of VMware, Microsoft, and Oracle applications with Symmetrix V-Max systems, with additional solutions under development. These documented best practices and services from industry experts take advantage of the full capabilities of the new Virtual Matrix Architecture to maximize resources at the lowest possible cost.

Innovative Financing Options

EMC Global Financial Services offers innovative financing options for Symmetrix V-Max systems that can help customers further lower their total cost of ownership.

The Symmetrix V-Max system is generally available today.