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Red Hat Embraces AMD Virtualization Capabilities In HP Servers

April 22, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Red Hat today announced its support for virtualization capabilities offered by AMD processors in new HP servers.

Red Hat

The company’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 platform supports AMD’s Rapid Virtualization Indexing technology, for more efficient use of memory management on Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors. HP is now offering systems equipped with these processors in its HP ProLiant DL585 G5 servers, Red Hat said. Also, support for virtual guests configured with more than four CPUs has now been added.

“Red Hat and AMD have worked very closely with the open source community to ensure that full support for Rapid Virtualization Indexing is available with the first Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor-based systems to be offered by a leading hardware OEM,” said Earl Stahl, vice president, Software Development at AMD. “We’ve been able to ensure that customers can reap the benefits of this new virtualization technology right away. We have been delighted with the excellent performance that Red Hat Enterprise Linux has achieved. Red Hat, AMD and HP customers now have available one of the fastest and most scalable virtualization platforms on the market today.”

“Red Hat also is offering para-virtualized device drivers to make I/O workloads in virtual guests perform close to the bare-metal performance of the system”, said Doug Shakshober, senior consulting engineer at Red Hat.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 has been shipping since November 2007.

[Source: Test Center Daily]

Filed Under: Partnerships Tagged With: amd, AMD virtualization, AMD-V, HP, HP ProLiant DL585 G5, Quad-Core AMD for Opteron, Rapid Virtualization Indexing, red hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, RedHat, virtualisation, virtualization

Preinstalled Hypervisors And The Future of Operating Systems

March 5, 2008 by Kris Buytaert Leave a Comment

Jay Lyman from The 451 Group (also check out the interview we did with John Abbott, Chief Analyst & Research Director at The 451 Group) wonders about the future of Linux distributions in the virtualization arena.

Now that VMWare announced that it will embed its ESX 3i hypervisor in different server platforms from HP, Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens and IBM, the question pops up how Operating System Vendors will deal with this change of platform.

VMWare certainly isn’t the only one with those plans, since Ian Pratt from XenSource mentionned exactly the same during his Fosdem talk.

How do the OS vendors react to this new feature ? According to Lyman’s blog post, Red Hat claims

it is hardware vendors such as AMD and Intel that will create that standard virtualization layer and capability.

and

Novell indicates VMware may be taking somewhat of a risk, though, since OEMs like HP will look to upsell to their own software to create and manage VMs, which ESX 3i can’t do.

A hypervisor still needs management tools, so that the guest OS’s can be initiated, stopped and migrated. Applications aren’t running on hypervisors (yet); they need an operating system for IO, Memory Management and Network stacks at least for the foreseeable future.

On a longer term, we’ll have applications running natively on the hypervisor for sure. But today Operating System vendors are hoping for a uniform and better way to support different available and upcoming hypervisors and off course those lightweight systems will also benefit from these improvements.

If I were in the Operating System market I wouldn’t worry yet at this pointis , just as with all other features that hardware vendors are selling it is still ‘only’ a feature. When ordering a Dell you can choose between different CPU’s, different hard disks, different Operating Systems and most likely in the near future, different hypervisors as well.

Filed Under: Featured, Guest Posts, People Tagged With: 451 Group, amd, Dell, fosdem, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP, Hypervisor, Ian Pratt, IBM, jay lyman, John Abbott, Novell, operating systems, OS, red hat, The 451 Group, vmware, Xen, xensource

Is Virtualization the miracle cure for software set-up?

March 31, 2006 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Stephen Shankland at News.Com reports:

Most talk about virtualization these days centers on using server hardware more efficiently. But the technology also has the potential to ease another headache: software installation woes.

 

Today, administrators installing software typically must ensure beforehand that it’s certified to run with their particular hardware and operating systems, then configure and optimize it afterward. The hidden benefit from virtualization is that users can unpack a ready-to-run collection of software components–operating system and all–and drop it onto a fresh, empty partition of the computer called a virtual machine. No muss, no fuss, no driver updates, no configuration file tweaking, no conflicts with other software.Virtualization essentially lets the companies selling the software handle the tricky part also provides a clean slate for installation.There’s one problem, however: Some software licensing plans aren’t designed to accommodate such schemes, though that could eventually change.One convert to the approach is Open Xchange, a server software company that lets customers download its software packaged into a virtual machine so they can quickly get to the evaluation stage. Within the next six months, the company plans to release software for production use, not just testing, said Dan Kusnetzky, executive vice president of marketing strategy. “We send an image that (has) a complete stack of software preinstalled, set up and ready to go,” Kusnetzky said. “We felt it would be an advantage in the competitive marketplace,” he said, because without the virtual machine approach, “it took a level of expertise to install it.” Representatives from three powers in the virtualization realm–EMC subsidiary VMware, its XenSource with the open-source Xen software and Microsoft with the proprietary Virtual Server software–all believe at a minimum that the idea has potential. But it’s VMware, which leads the virtualization market, that’s working hardest to make virtual machine-based installation a reality–and to make its underlying virtual machine technology the foundation of choice. It has a Web site where people can download sample virtual-machine-based packages from Oracle, IBM and others. “The reasons it’s going to become mainstream is you can now package your application with the operating system it really wants. You get the exact patch level and everything in the OS that you want,” said VMware President Diane Greene. And it’s particularly useful for small software companies that don’t have engineers to support a wide variety of systems. “They don’t have to necessarily port their software to every possible operating system and every possible version of the operating system.” In recent months, VMware started offering two free ways that customers can try out virtual-machine-based software packages, which it calls virtual appliances. First came VMware Player in 2005, good for desktop applications, such as an isolated partition for safely surfing the Internet. In February came part two: VMware Server for server tasks. Xen programmers are currently stabilizing their core virtual machine software, but virtual-machine-based installation will happen with Xen, too, predicted Simon Crosby, XenSource co-founder and chief technology officer. “That’s equally possible in Xen…I definitely think it’s going to happen,” Crosby said, though he acknowledged Xen doesn’t yet have VMware’s mature virtual machine management software or established presence at many customer sites.

Licensing lumps

 

Not so fast, cautions Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff. “This is a direction, but not a near-term mainstream change in the way that everyone installs their applications,” Haff said. “There are too many details to work through. Licensing is one issue.” The licensing hurdle stems chiefly from the fact that the installation method requires the inclusion of an operating system, and although software companies might delight in distributing them willy-nilly, operating system companies are more finicky. Microsoft, for example, permits only evaluation copies of Windows to be distributed, and then only within a company and only to test and evaluate software, said James Ni, group product manager for server virtualization at Microsoft. “Currently there is no redistribution of the Windows Server operating system,” Ni said. Right now, the virtual installation idea is about testing software rather than full-on production use, so the evaluation software approach is appropriate, Ni argued. He’s not alone in his assessment. “I would expect this to be primarily about experimentation,” said Forrester analyst Frank Gillett. Ni didn’t close the door to virtual-machine-based software sales. Market forces dictated major changes to Microsoft licensing policies before. For example, Microsoft in 2004 began charging the same price for a dual-core processor as for a single-core processor, and in 2005 started permitting customers with one license for Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition to run as many as four copies on a single server partitioned with virtual machine software. But Microsoft’s policy is an impediment to VMware’s aspiration. Greene sees companies distributing virtual-machine-based software internally today and expects customers will eventually buy it that way, Greene said. “Microsoft is not letting their operating system be used in this model,” Greene said. And though it’s had a more permissive position in the past, it has backed off that stance: “Microsoft did not renew our license to (redistribute) Windows.” Open-source software, of course, has fewer restrictions. “Linux makes it easy,” Gillett said. …

Not just the operating system

Microsoft, Xen and VMware virtualize a computer’s hardware. But some companies tackling the problem at a higher level are offering a different revamp of software installation. SWsoft sells a product called Virtuozzo that essentially virtualizes the operating system rather than the underlying hardware. That lets several programs run at once in separate zones on one instance Linux or Windows. Sun Microsystems has taken the same approach with its “containers” technology in Solaris 10. “We have templates for close to 100 different solutions and applications for various configurations,” said SWsoft Chief Executive Serguei Beloussov. “When you apply a template to a certain virtual private server (a partition), this solution will immediately become available.” …Softricity is another company that tries to break the hard link between operating system and applications. Its software first captures all the modifications a software package makes to Windows, letting companies store employees’ configurations on a central server rather than directly modifying a PC and potentially causing conflicts among different programs. “The applications are no longer bound to the operating system,” said David Greschler, co-founder and vice president of corporate marketing. That lets administrators quickly set up new PCs or update existing ones, he said. It also means employees can move from one PC to another without disruption, because their software is automatically enabled when they log on to a new PC.

Different standards

Yet another complication comes from the fact that VMware, Xen and Microsoft use a different file format for their virtual machines. In August, VMware began trying to standardize its format. That was shortly after Microsoft began offering royalty-free licenses to use its format, called Virtual Hard Disk. And Xen uses a third format, XVM. Barriers between these formats are not insurmountable. For example, XenSource licensed Microsoft’s VHD and will offer the ability to import virtual machines created with Microsoft Virtual Server, Crosby said, and VMware shared its format as well. At the same time, VMware offers support for that feature with its Virtual Machine Importer software. Insurmountable, yes, but barriers nonetheless. “It will tend to retard the movement toward a standard hypervisor level that just sits on top of x86 hardware,” Haff said, adding that low barriers would mean customers could more easily substitute one virtualization company’s product for another. “It is not in VMware’s (or Microsoft’s) business interest to be able to have someone’s free, native hypervisor just slip in to replace ESX Server.” Another hitch stems from cultural obstacles to virtualization in general, Red Hat Chief Executive Matthew Szulik said. “The customers I’ve talked to over the last six months are challenged by the human issues: How will they deal with the sharing of physical resources across the enterprise? We’ve all gotten conditioned to having our own server environments,” he said. Virtual installation will happen, but XenSource’s Crosby understands the change won’t happen overnight, “I think it’s going to be a fairly profound change for the industry to get there.”

 

Read this full article at source

Filed Under: News, Partnerships, People Tagged With: dan kusnetzky, Forrester, illuminata, microsoft, open xchange, red hat, swsoft, virtual server, virtualisation, virtualization, Virtuozzo, vmware, xensource

Red Hat Isn’t Exhibiting ‘Xen’-Ophobia

March 20, 2006 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Quoting Jason Brooks from eWeek:

Red Hat’s announcement March 14 of its integrated virtualization push, starring Xen, didn’t take anyone by surprise: Red Hat, along with just about everybody else, has been tooting the Xen horn ever since the fledgling open-source virtualization technology began grabbing headlines almost a year ago.
…
The trouble is that Xen is somewhat early on in its development, and the high rate of change in Xen’s code base will keep the technology out of the mainstream Linux kernel for some time.

Red Hat has and will continue to chart its own course with respect to the kernel, diverging from the mainstream where and when appropriate, but Xen’s potential will remain somewhat stunted for as long as it remains in heavy flux…

I’d like to see Red Hat add to its virtualization agenda the OpenVZ project—a GPL’d code base born of SWsoft’s 5-year-old commercial Virtuozzo product, which itself is roughly comparable to the containers in Sun Microsystems’ Solaris 10…

 OpenVZ, which also is vying for inclusion in the mainstream Linux kernel, would complement Xen well and has impressed me in the initial testing I’ve conducted.

Ultimately, it might make the most sense for Red Hat to deploy both Xen and OpenVZ. The complementary technologies would be a good counterbalance to the Xen/container combo I expect to see eventually in Solaris…

Read the whole article at eWeek.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: amd, fedora core 5, integrated virtualization, intel, linux kernel, network appliance, open source, openvz, red hat, swsoft, virtualisation, virtualization, Xen, xensource

Red Hat announces Integrated Virtualization

March 15, 2006 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

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.
…
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.
…
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.

Filed Under: News, Videos Tagged With: amd, fedora core 5, integrated virtualization, intel, network appliance, open source, red hat, virtualisation, virtualization, xensource

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