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Call for Papers on Virtualization in High-Performance Cluster

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The 3rd Workshop on Virtualization in High-Performance Cluster and Grid Computing (VHPC’08) is calling for papers. This prestigious workshop will be held as part of Euro-Par 2008, at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on the Canary Island in Spain from August 26 to 29, 2008

Focus on Virtual machine monitors (VMMs)

VMMs are reaching wide-spread adoption in a variety of operating systems as well as scientific educational and operational usage areas. With their low overhead, hypervisors allow for concurrently running large numbers of virtual machines, providing each encapsulation, isolation and in the case of Xen, network-wide CPU migratability. VMMs offer a network-wide abstraction layer of individual machine resources to OS environments, thereby opening whole new cluster-and grid high-performance computing (HPC) architectures and HPC services options. With VMMs finding applications in HPC environments, these workshops aim to bring together researchers and practitioners active on virtualization in distributed and high-performance cluster and grid computing environments. The workshops will be one day in length, composed of 20 min paper presentations, each followed by 10 min discussion sections. Presentations may be accompanied with interactive demonstrations and the accepted papers will be published in the Springer LNCS series. The workshop will be chaired by Michael Alexander (WU in Vienna) and Stephen Childs (co-chair), Trinity College in Dublin and will end with a 30 minute panel discussion by the presenters.

Topics include the following subject matters:

Virtualization in cluster and grid environments

Workload characterizations for VM-based clusters

  • Virtualization in cluster and grid environments
    Workload characterizations for VM-based clusters
    VM cluster and grid architectures
    Cluster reliability, fault-tolerance, and security
    Compute job entry and scheduling
    Compute workload load leveling
    Cluster and grid filesystems for VMs
    VMMs, VMs and QoS guarantees
    Research and education use cases
    VM cluster distribution algorithms
    MPI, PVM on virtual machines
    System sizing
    Hardware support for virtualization
    High-speed interconnects in hypervisors
    Hypervisor extensions and utilities for cluster and grid computing
    Network architectures for VM-based clusters
    VMMs/Hypervisors on large SMP machines
    Performance models
    Performance management and tuning hosts and guest VMs
    Power considerations
    VMM performance tuning on various load types
    Xen/other VMM cluster/grid tools
    High-speed Device access from VMs
    Management, deployment of clusters and grid environments with VMs
    Information systems for virtualized clusters
    Management of system images for virtual machines
    Integration with relevant standards e.g. CIM, GLUE, OGF, etc.

Saugatuck Technologies on ‘The Many Faces of Virtualization’

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Consulting and research firm Saugatuck Technologies published a report last December dubbed ‘The Many Faces of Virtualization – Understanding a New IT Reality ‘, proclaiming that virtualization will have the single largest effect on IT budgets for hardware and support over the next three years and that by 2010, the 3 main vendors (VMWare, Cisco & Citrix / XenSource) will dominate the IT virtualization industry.

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Another important finding of the study is that all facets of IT virtualization will see substantial enhancements in functionality and performance, with the most significant enhancements being in microprocessors, hypervisors and operating systems.

The report notes that the general concept of virtualization is usually equated with the specifics of server virtualization, since server and mainframe virtualization have been used in the IT world for decades. But it’s important to note that virtualization can be applied to all IT resources, including servers, storage, networks, and desktops.

 “This study is the first attempt that we’ve seen to use real-world expertise and practicality to classify and explain the types and effects of IT virtualisation, in terms that both user and vendor executives can understand, and can profit from,” said Saugatuck founder and CEO Bill McNee. “This is a solid foundation from which executives can educate themselves, and begin planning more effective management of virtualisation.”

To Be Followed: ivi, A Java Virtual Interface

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From the lostcreations team comes:

ivi, which stands for Java Virtual Interface. ivi is currently the beginnings of a single GUI application that allows an IT administrator to manage a VMware virtual infrastructure, Xen servers, KVM boxes, and even OpenVZ systems all from one interface. ivi is currently very alpha and can only connect to VMware VI3 and Xen systems. The l o s t c r e a t i o n s blog will chart the progress of ivi.

[Source: Server Virtualization Blog ]

Rackspace Adding Virtualized Service Offering

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As of yesterday, San Antonio-based hosting provider Rackspace is adding a virtualized service offering. Citing increased flexibility, market demand, and a desire to better address customer needs, Rackspace will be offering customers their own, non-shared ESX environments to complement traditional 1×1 server platforms.

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Rackspace’s virtualization platform was built on VMware ’s third-generation virtualization software suite, and according to the company “pushes virtualization to the next level in order to support mission-critical, production systems.” The fast-growing hosting provider employs five VMWare Certified Engineers with ten more in training for certification.

“Our product development approach focuses first and foremost on Fanatical Support® readiness,” said John Engates, chief technology officer, Rackspace. “We also ask ‘Is the technology ready to use in a production environment?’ We believe that our new virtualization offering now meets these requirements and pushes the envelope, giving customers a virtualized environment ready for mission-critical applications, supported by our wealth of experience, expertise and Fanatical Support.”

Rackspace’s new virtualization platform will be based on dedicated physical hardware for each customer and will include the option of hybrid virtual and physical hosted environments.

[Source: press release ]

To Virtualize or not to Virtualize (Windows Vista),That’s The Question

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Just in case you haven’t heard, Microsoft flip-flopped its earlier decision not to allow users to run Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium as guest operating systems on a virtual machine. Mac users, and virtualization software vendors such as Parallels can rejoice over the news, which has been extensively covered all over the web , with the best commentary coming from:

 CNET News ,  ZDNet blogs, Ars Technica and The Register .

Acquisition Mania: Quest Software Snaps Up Vizioncore

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Ain’t no stopping the flurry of acquisition spree we’re witnessing lately in the virtualization space. As reported by many media already, Quest Software Inc . has completed its acquisition of Vizioncore Inc. , a provider of disaster recovery and other products for virtual infrastructure management.

Quest already took a controlling stake in the company in 2005, but now moved to snap up the remaining interests. In 2007, Quest had already broadened its virtualization product portfolio by buying Invirtus , a provider of virtual machine optimization, conversion and automation products, and Provision Networks , a provider of virtual client and desktop management solutions.

Vinny Smith, CEO of Quest, said: “We see virtualization as the next great frontier within IT. The completion of the Vizioncore acquisition along with the recent additions of Provision Networks and Invirtus to the Quest family combine to position us as one of the leading pioneers in this emerging market space.”

[Source: press release at TradingMarkets.com ]