Virtualization.com

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

virtual machine

Virtual Machines in a Browser ?

by 3 Comments

Yes we can …

When us mere mortals want to learn about a new computer language, or a new platform, we start out with the “Hello World”-variant and then try to dig in deeper…

Some people however when they want to study Javascript, raise the bar by writing optimized code for different Javascript Engines. Sharpening their skill set further by developing a JavaScript PC Emulator… That’s right, Fabrice Bellard of FFMpeg, tinycc, and Qemu fame has recently published a link to his JavaScript PC Emulator written in pure JavaScript and working in recent Firefox 4 and Google Chrome 11 browsers on different platforms.

Fabrice got his inspiration from the x86 dynamic translator code that is present in Qemu and he emulates a 32bit x86 cpu which is pretty close to a 486 without FPU.

More details on the actual emulator can be found on his web page.

Watch that space. For all you know, we’re going to be hooked on old school PC games in our browsers in the very near future…

David Marshall’s Sneak Peek at Symantec VIBES

by Leave a Comment

Symantec‘s R&D engineers are working on a new virtual machine technology that is focused on protecting users from online attacks while surfing the Web.  It works under the concept of setting up multiple virtual machines on a user’s physical machine.  And then, it enables a user to perform operations of different security levels and different scenario based transactions in each of the different virtual machines.  The so-called VIBES prototype puts a new spin on things to significantly improve browser security.

David Marshall got a sneak peek of VIBES at Symantec’s R&D labs, and you can read the rest of his report here.

Parallels, HP, NVIDIA virtualize GPUs with Workstation Extreme

by Leave a Comment

Parallels is launching “Parallels Workstation Extreme”, a desktop workstation virtualization offering developed jointly with HP and NVIDIA.

Workstation Extreme is aimed at graphic workstations such as those used on stock trading floors (think: massive multimonitor support) and in 3D animation studios (where several power hungry applications usually don’t like to share resources).

Parallels Workstation Extreme offers desktop virtualization with near-native performance (backed by impressive SPECviewperf numbers) and support for very large VMs (Up to 12 virtual CPUs and 64 GB of RAM per VM). It is built around the latest technology from Intel and NVIDIA. It uses the Intel Xeon 5500 series of CPUs, better known as the “Nehalem” line, which increases the amount of physical RAM that’s supported per machine, and VT-d to allow direct I/O paths to be passed through a hypervisor.

This technology used by the NVIDIA SLI Multi-OS technology incorporated in the latest NVIDIA Quatro cards, also announced today. Using SLI Multi-OS the multiple GPUs available on the system can be virtualized just like traditional CPUs. This allows high-end graphics programs like CAD, CAE and 3D rendering applications to be virtualized and still use the raw geometric number crunching chips provided by the machine. (In traditional desktop virtualization products, the video adapter is emulated, dramatically reducing 3D graphics power.)

Parallels blends this all together with its FastLane architecture, and offers this as a bundled solution on HP Z800 workstations.

Target audiences for this product are digital content creators, design engineers, software developers and testers, sales and training professionals and those working with data modeling in a range of vertical sectors, including finance, government, science, engineering, manufacturing, and oil and gas.

Parallels Workstation Extreme runs on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3, Windows XP or Vista (all 64-bit). Supported Guest Operating Systems at the time of release are RHEL 4.7 & 5.3 64-bit, Fedora 10 64-bit and the same 64 bit Windows flavors.

More info can be found on the Parallels website.

VKernel Releases Another Free Tool, SnapshotMyVM

by Leave a Comment

VKernel has released another free tool, SnapshotMyVM, a utility that makes it extremely easy to quickly document and inventory all of your VMs.

SnapshotMyVM automates the time-consuming documentation process, collects dozens of important VM attributes, and creates detailed reports.  You can export your documentation to XML, so that you can save it, edit it, archive it, and share it with others.

Here’s a sampling of the information you can get with SnapshotMyVM:

  • VM name
  • Guest operating system
  • Host hardware type, manufacturer, and version
  • VM resource (CPU, memory, storage, network) configuration
  • VM resource utilization statistics (saves a week of historical data)
Video:

    Windows 7 Beta 1 Seems Virtualization-Ready

    by Leave a Comment

    From MaximumPC:

    Although the official release of Beta 1 of Windows 7 isn’t expected until early January, a leaked copy of what looks like Beta 1’s been making the rounds on the Internet for a few days. ZDNet’s Ed Bott has spent some “quality time” with the build, and reports some interesting tidbits from the EULA:

    • The revision ID at the end of the EULA is: Win7_B.1_PRO_NRL_en-US – so it sure sounds like Beta 1 is on the loose.
    • There’s no limit on the number of installs you can perform, but they stop working on August 1.
    • Redmond says you can’t use Beta 1 in a production environment.
    • You can install Beta 1 in a virtual machine instead of a normal installation, but only one VM per hardware device.
    • Potential privacy concerns (such as Customer Experience Improvement Program and automatic error reporting) are turned on by default, but you can turn them off if you prefer.
    • Beta 1 must be activated.
    • Releasing benchmark test results to third parties without Microsoft’s prior written agreement is not permitted.

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

    by 1 Comment

    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.