Virtualization.com

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

VMware pushing its standard virtualization interface in Linux kernel

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Fraser Campbell tracked VMware effort to introduce several patches in Linux kernel to make it compliant to what it’s called Virtual Machine Interface (VMI), or Paravirtualization API 2.0

The Fraser article features an interesting comment from Zachary Amsden:

Zach was asked “Why can’t vmware use the Xen interface instead?” and he responded: “We could. But it is our opinion that the Xen interface is unnecessarily complicated, without a clean separation between the layer of interaction with the hypervisor and the kernel proper. The interface we propose we believe is more powerful, and more conducive to performance optimizations while providing significant advantages – most specifically, a single binary image that is properly virtualizable on multiple hypervisors and capable of running on native hardware.”

Read the full article at source.

Red Hat announces Integrated Virtualization

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Quoting from the Red Hat official announcement:

Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, today formally announced its ‘Integrated Virtualization’ strategy. During a launch today in San Francisco, company executives detailed plans for creating a Red Hat virtualization environment and working with partners such as AMD, Intel, Network Appliance and XenSource to simplify virtualization deployment for customers.
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Red Hat will tightly integrate virtualization capabilities with its operating system and ensure all aspects of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform, from management tools and installation to software management, will enable customers to deploy virtualized environments easily and effectively.
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This month Red Hat will make Fedora Core 5 available, which will contain a preview of Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualization technology. In the summer of 2006, Red Hat will make Virtualization Migration and Assessment Services available along with an Enterprise Virtualization beta. Red Hat Enterprise Linux v. 5, scheduled for general availability by the end of 2006, will feature fully integrated virtualization…

There also is a 1-hour-long recorded webcast of this press event available here.

Significant improvements forecasted for virtualization

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iReach Research published a report, Virtualization as an Enabler of Knowledge Management, claiming a quarter of European firms are currently using server virtualization and 67% of them plan to increase their usage over the next year.

This report seems to totally disagree with the 1 week ago news Techworld reported: Users fail to grasp virtualization benefits.

Based on my personal experience and after collecting several feedbacks from virtualization professionals around Europe, I find rather difficult to believe iReach report.
I would believe a whole quarter of them is evaluating virtualization technologies and testing them in limited environments. I absolutely don’t believe they are using virtualization in production.

Since the report doesn’t explain how firms are working with virtualization, and which kind of industries are involved (it would be easier to believe a quarter of all european IT companies statement) I don’t find it very useful.

Thanks to VMblog for the news.

Impacts of Application Virtualization and Streaming

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Softricity hosted an interesting webcast with Brian Gammage, Gartner Research Vice President, about desktop virtualization:

Virtualization is widely regarded as the most important technology to hit the enterprise in decades. The potential benefits for the desktop are tremendous, with improvements in the manageability, security and flexibility of personal computing. By reducing complexity, virtualization promises to streamline support, accelerate deployments and reduce the cost of personal computing. But virtualization is occurring at more than one level; decoupling hardware, operating systems and applications. So, what are these different levels of virtualization technology and how are they being used by companies today? How mature is the technology? How does application virtualization differ from machine virtualization and what role does streaming technology play?

Join featured Gartner Research Vice President, Brian Gammage, a recognized expert in desktop virtualization, to learn what application virtualization and streaming really are, and how they can impact your approach to managing user access to enterprise applications.

See it here.

Thanks to Thincomputing.net for the news.

Free VMware Server

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VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems, today introduced VMware Server, a free new entry-level hosted virtualization product for Linux and Windows servers. The product is available as a beta download at www.vmware.com/products/server/.

“Virtualization and VMware have become mainstream in the past year, and many customers have deployed thousands of VMware server environments across their enterprises. With VMware Server, we are ensuring that every company interested in, considering or evaluating server virtualization for the first time has access to the industry-leading virtualization technology,” said Diane Greene, VMware President. “VMware Server makes it easy and compelling for companies new to virtualization to take the first step toward enterprise-wide virtual infrastructure.”

VMware Server, the successor to VMware GSX Server, enables users to quickly provision new server capacity by partitioning a physical server into multiple virtual machines, bringing the powerful benefits of virtualization to every server.

VMware Server is feature-packed with the following market-leading capabilities:

  • Support for any standard x86 hardware

  • Support for a wide variety of Linux and Windows host operating systems, including 64-bit operating systems

  • Support for a wide variety of Linux, NetWare, Solaris x86 and Windows guest operating systems, including 64-bit operating systems

  • Support for Virtual SMP, enabling a single virtual machine to span multiple physical processors

  • Quick and easy, wizard-driven installation similar to any desktop software

  • Quick and easy virtual machine creation with a virtual machine wizard

  • Virtual machine monitoring and management with an intuitive, user friendly remote console

Availability

VMware Server beta is available for immediate download at www.vmware.com/products/server/. The product is expected to be generally available later in the first half of 2006. Support and subscription services for VMware Server will be available for purchase upon general availability.

Source at VMware website

Sun SPARC hardware to get virtualization for multiboot while looking at Xen

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Sun Microsystems later this year will introduce virtualization technology to let its newest Sparc-based servers run multiple operating systems simultaneously, thus catching up to a feature already built into Unix machines from rivals IBM and Hewlett-Packard.
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This calendar year, on the T2000 and T1000, we will introduce our first generation of virtualization to bring people beyond the container technology Solaris 10 already offers,”
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Xen is the future, Yen said. Although the company developed its own logical domain software, Sun eventually expects it will become one with Xen.
“Eventually we expect Xen will get industrywide acceptance, and we’d like to be part of it. Some time, probably in the second half of 2007, we will merge,” Yen said…

Read the whole article at News.com.