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amd

AMD demonstrates live migration across three generations of CPUs

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AMD today released video and images of Live Migration (VMotion) across three generations of processors. Thanks to AMD-V Extended Migration instructions in the latest generations of CPUs, combined with VMware’s Enhanced VMotion Compatibility feature (released with ESX 3.5 Update 2 last summer) AMD is able to migrate machines running on 65-nm hardware from yesteryear to the latest six-core Opteron “Istanbul” line of processors, yet to be released. VMotion/live migration compatibility is a key in creating future-proof computing clusters running VMware or other virtualization software.

Check out the YouTube video:

AMD Istanbul live migration demo

Intel provides the same functionality under the moniker “FlexMigration”, that allows VMotion to the latest Nehalem CPUs from Xeon 5200 (“Wolfdale/Penryn”) and newer.

The End of Neverland, What Neverland ?

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Stop the presses, RedHat and AMD just announced the end of Neverland.

The big News seems to be that RedHat and AMD managed to do Live migration of a virtual machine between 2 different CPU Vendors.

Now given my age and my starting alzheimer, LinuxKongress 2005 in Hamburg seems like ages ago,
As a speaker giving my Automating Xen Deployments talk early on the first conference day , I flew in the day before the conference and I needed some network connectivity so I sneeked into Ian Pratt’s tutorial about Xen. I remember sitting between Heinz Mauelshagen and my colegue Peter Leemans, Heinz was playing with SMP guests on a non SMP host and tried to figure out the limits.

If I recall correctly at the end of his session Ian was explaining Live Migration and demoing it by migrating a small virtual machine around between laptops of people in the front rows of the audience , Laptops from different architectures and from there started a discussion about CPU feature checking.

I asked around and some people actually remember parts of the discussion and the demo.

So for me , when RedHat and AMD claim today they have achieved in something new that was Never going to be implement they are either focusing on nitty details, like migrating from 2 brand new CPU’s to each other and forgetting the fundaments already existed for ages or just trying to get some positive news out of the door. In which they succeeded.

But I`m looking out for the next step in virtualization , not just mashups of things we’ve all been doing before, or things that are really similar to existing things.

AMD / Red Hat Pull Off A Live Migration of VMs Across Vendor Platforms

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AMD, in collaboration with Red Hat, today demonstrated for the first time “live migration” of a virtual machine across vendor platforms. Live migration enables the movement of running virtual machines (VMs) from one physical server to another without disrupting service to the end user, something that, till now, has only been demonstrated across systems based on one vendor’s platforms. Today’s live migration demonstration moves a live VM from an dual socket Intel Xeon DP Quad Core E5420-based system to a system based on the forthcoming 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, utilizing Red Hat’s high-performance open source virtualization software. See the demonstration on the AMD Unprocessed YouTube Channel or here.

Update: also, read the blog post from Margaret Lewis (Product Marketing Director at AMD) on the announcement.

Industry interest in live migration has grown as virtualization technology has become more widely adopted. Live Migration of VMs across physical servers is a vital component of data center management that enables IT managers to move VMs as necessary in order to perform tasks such as upgrading or conducting maintenance of a server, balancing the server load and proactively managing the server availability to avoid downtime or lost data. The demonstration illustrates AMD’s approach to an open and collaborative relationship with its partners to meet customer demands.

AMD and Microsoft Team Up On Virtualization

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AMD today announced the availability of robust new virtualization solutions powered by a combination of technologies from AMD and Microsoft. This new deployment model uses AMD Opteron processors with AMD Virtualization technology together with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Mid-market companies in particular, which have traditionally been slower to implement virtualization, can take advantage of the combined AMD and Microsoft product offering to help reduce cost, complexity and energy consumption.

Resource consolidation achieved through virtualization can deliver the low energy consumption, and superior utilization and manageability demanded by today’s businesses. AMD Opteron processors and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, a hypervisor-based virtualization feature of Microsoft Windows Server 2008, allow OEMs, VARs and Solution Providers to offer a valuable server virtualization combination to help increase their competitive edge and market opportunity. AMD-V technology and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V also help enable businesses to scale according to demands, boosting the efficiency of workloads.

Advanced Micro Devices

Quad-Core AMD Opteron Processor Sets New Benchmark for Virtualization Performance on the VMware Platform

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AMD today announced it has achieved the top spot on the VMware VMmark virtualization benchmark for x86 servers with the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor-based HP ProLiant DL585 G5. AMD now holds the top three spots on the 16-core VMmark benchmark.

Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI) technology is designed to offer near-native performance of virtualized applications while enabling fast switching between virtual machines (VMs.) The VMmark 1.1 consolidation benchmark, released by VMware in May 2008, includes several workloads that take advantage of the benefits of RVI.

VMware VMmark 1.1 benchmark measures application performance in virtualized environments on a wide variety of enterprise workloads running simultaneously in separate virtual machines. Complete results for AMD’s latest VMmark score can be found here (PDF).

Bonus link: Forbes interviews Margaret Lewis, director of commercial solutions and software strategy at AMD.

Advanced Micro Devices

Unisys Introduces New Quad-Core AMD Server, Integrates Virtualization Services

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Unisys is releasing a number of virtualization services and its first server based on AMD quad-core processors, the company announced Wednesday according to Network World.

Unisys

Unisys, historically an Intel-only shop, decided the time was right for an AMD-based server after getting wind of the Rapid Virtualization Indexing technology in quad-core Opteron processors. These chip enhancements allow virtual machines to more directly manage memory, thus improving performance of virtualized applications. The result for Unisys is the new ES7000 Model 7405R, an eight-socket, quad-core server that can support up to 128 virtual machines.

Pricing for the AMD-based server starts at $21,000 and can go up to $50,000 or so depending on the configuration.

Unisys coupled its AMD-based server announcement with new professional services for virtualized servers, storage and Windows desktops. Here’s a quick look at each service:

  • 3D Blueprinting for Virtualization. Utilizing business and systems modeling software, Unisys says this service defines objectives for virtualization, maps business goals to IT objectives and establishes an implementation strategy.
  • Virtualization Operational Readiness Assessment. This is designed to give customers a full understanding of virtualization’s impact on the data center before deployment. “Using a workshop approach, clients can determine how they must change business and IT processes for virtualization, identify gaps, prioritize areas for change and assess technology and people and process issues that can impact implementation,” Unisys states in a press release.
  • Consolidated Desktop Solution. Using Microsoft technologies and a Unisys session broker, this service helps Windows shops host desktops on centralized servers and storage systems and give users access with thin clients.
  • Consolidated Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. With this service, Unisys makes it easier to consolidate hardware devoted to Exchange. Customers often have hundreds of servers for the various Exchange applications, and need a system that can save energy and make sure all servers receive the right patches, says Mark Feverston, general manager of Microsoft solutions for Unisys.
  • Unisys Storage Virtualization. This service helps customers integrate storage into one virtualized pool that can be managed with a single interface.

Read the rest of the article here.