Virtualization.com

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

vmware

VMware Releases Infrastructure 3.5 Update 2, ESX and VirtualCenter Get Upgrades, ESXi Now 100% Free

by 1 Comment

VMware has released Update 2 for Infrastructure 3.5, listing a whole set of updates and features. At the same time, the company has made the license for ESXi completely free, as announced last week during the earnings call.

These are the highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware Infrastructure 3 (free evaluation here):

  • Windows Server 2008 support – Windows Server 2008 (Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter editions) is supported as a guest operating system. With VMware’s memory overcommit technology and the reliability of ESX, virtual machine density can be maximized with this new guest operating system to achieve the highest degree of ROI. Guest operating system customizations and Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) are not supported with Windows Server 2008.
  • Enhanced VMotion Compatibility – Enhanced VMotion compatibility (EVC) simplifies VMotion compatibility issues across CPU generations by automatically configuring server CPUs with Intel FlexMigration or AMD-V Extended Migration technologies to be compatible with older servers. Once EVC is enabled for a cluster in the VirtualCenter inventory, all hosts in that cluster are configured to ensure CPU compatibility for VMotion. VirtualCenter will not permit the addition of hosts which cannot be automatically configured to be compatible with those already in the EVC cluster.
  • Storage VMotion – Storage VMotion from a FC/iSCSI datastore to another FC/iSCSI datastore is supported. This support is extended on ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 1 as well.
  • VSS quiescing support – When creating quiesced snapshot of Windows Server 2003 guests, both filesystem and application quiescing are supported. With Windows Server 2008 guests, only filesystem quiescing is supported. For more information, see the Virtual Machine Backup Guide and the VMware Consolidated Backup 1.5 Release Notes.
  • Hot Virtual Extend Support – The ability to extend a virtual disk while virtual machines are running is provided. Hot extend is supported for vmfs flat virtual disks without snapshots opened in persistent mode.
  • 192 vCPUs per host – VMware now supports increasing the maximum number of vCPUs per host 192 given that the maximum number of Virtual Machines per host is 170 and that no more than 3 virtual floppy devices or virtual CDROM devices are configured on the host at any given time. This support is extended on ESX 3.5 Update 1 as well.

As for the hardware enablement and management:

  • 8Gb Fiber Channel HBAs – Support is available for 8Gb fiber channel HBAs. See the I/O Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i for details.
  • SAS arrays – more configurations are supported. See the Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i for details.
  • 10 GbE iSCSI initiator – iSCSI over a 10GbE interface is supported. This support is extended on ESX Server 3.5 Update 1, ESX Server version 3.5 Update 1 Embedded and ESX Server version 3.5 Update 1 Installable as well.
  • 10 GbE NFS support – NFS over a 10GbE interface is supported.
  • IBM System x3950 M2 – x3950 M2 in a 4-chassis configuration is supported, complete with hardware management capabilities through multi-node Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) driver and provider. Systems with up to 32 cores are fully supported. Systems with more than 32 cores are supported experimentally.
  • PMI OEM extension support – Execution of IPMI OEM extension commands is supported.
  • System health monitoring through CIM providers – More Common Information Model (CIM) providers are added for enhanced hardware monitoring, including storage management providers provided by QLogic and Emulex. LSI MegaRAID providers are also included and are supported experimentally.
  • CIM SMASH/Server Management API – The VMware CIM SMASH/Server Management API provides an interface for developers building CIM-compliant applications to monitor and manage the health of systems. CIM SMASH is now a fully supported interface on ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3i.
  • Display of system health information – More system health information is displayed in VI Client for both ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3i.
  • Remote CLI – Remote Command Line Interface (CLI) is now supported on ESX Server 3.5 as well as ESX Server 3i. See the Remote Command-Line Interface Installation and Reference Guide for more information.

VirtualCenter 2.5 update 2 adds full support for monitoring individual virtual machine failures based on VMware tools heartbeats. This release also extends support for clusters containing mixed combinations of ESX and ESXi hosts, and minimizes previous configuration dependencies on DNS. It also extends support for alarms on the overall health of the server by considering the health of each of the individual system components such as memory and power supplies. Alarms can now be configured to trigger when host health degrades.

VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 2 provides the ability of creating a clone of a powered-on virtual machine without any downtime to the running virtual machine. Therefore, administrators are no longer required to power off a virtual machine in order to create a clone of it. Also, you can now automatically authenticate to VirtualCenter using your current Windows domain login credentials on the local workstation, as long as the credentials are valid on the VirtualCenter server.

This capability also supports logging in to Windows using Certificates and Smartcards. It can be used with the VI Client or the VI Remote CLI to ensure that scripts written using the VI Toolkits can take advantage of the Windows credentials of your current session to automatically connect to VirtualCenter.

VMware

Symantec Sets Up Virtualization Lab in Japan

by Leave a Comment

Symantec today announced that Symantec Japan has opened its new “Virtualisation Solutions Lab” for customers and partners, as the company continues to deliver on its virtualization strategy.

The Virtualisation Solutions Lab will enable Symantec Japan to test and optimize Symantec’s products for specific virtual environments quickly, and provide customers and partners with the opportunity to gain hands-on experience and see demonstrations of solution deployments for their environments. With this new facility, Symantec Japan claims it can better support its customers and partners who decide to implement virtualization solutions, as market needs for virtualization continue to grow rapidly.

The Virtualisation Solutions Lab is located within the Japan Engineering Center at Symantec Japan’s headquarters (Minato-ku, Tokyo), which is responsible for all technological verification required for Symantec’s products before their release into the Japanese market. With the launch of this new facility, the Virtualisation Solutions Lab will introduce comprehensive virtualisation solutions for data centres in VMware environments.

The line-up of solutions to be provided by the Virtualisation Solutions Lab is as follows:

  • Comprehensive backup solutions using Veritas NetBackup for VMware environments
  • Failover solutions with high availability of guest OS and VMware applications using Veritas Cluster Server
  • Backup and restore solutions for P2V (physical to virtual) system images using Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery
  • Deployment solutions for virtual servers using the Symantec Altiris platform

Symantec Japan plans to work closely with Citrix Systems and Microsoft to test virtualization solutions for Citrix XenServer and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V environments at the Virtualisation Solutions Lab in addition to VMware Infrastructure 3. In addition, Symantec Japan plans to organize regular product familiarization seminars as it continues to expand its range of solutions for its customers and partners.

[Source: ITWeb]

Symantec

OLS Virtualization Minisummit Report

by 2 Comments

Virtualization.com was present at this week’s Virtualization Minisummit in Ottawa.

The OLS Virtualization Minisummit took place last Tuesday in Les Suites, Ottawa. Aland Adams had created an interesting lineup with a mixture of Kernel level talks and Management framework talks. First up was Andrey Mirkin from OpenVZ. He first gave a general overview of different virtualization techniques.
While comparing them, he claimed that Xen has a higher virtualization overhead because the hypervisor needs to manage a lot of stuff where as “container-based” approaches that use the Linux kernel for this have less overhead.

We discussed OpenVZ earlier, which uses 1 kernel for both the host OS and all the guest OS’s. Each container has it’s own files, process tree, network (virtual network device), devices (which can be shared or not), IPC objects, etc. Often that’s an advantage, sometimes it isn’t.

When Andrey talks about containers, he means OpenVZ containers, which often confused the audience as at the same time the Linux Containers minisummit was gong on in a different suite. He went on to discuss the different features of OpenVZ. Currently it includes checkpointing; they have templates from which they can quickly build new instances.
OpenVZ also supports Live Migration , basically taking a snapshot and transporting (rsync based) it to another node. So not the Xen way .. there is some downtime for the server .. although a minor one.
Interesting to know is that OpenVZ is also working on including OpenVZ into the mainstream Linux Kernel. The OpenVZ team has been contributing a lot of patches and changes to the Linux kernel in order to get their features in. Andrey also showed us a nice demo of the PacMan Xscreensaver being live migrated back and forth.

Still, containers are “chroots on steroids” (dixit Ian Pratt).
Given the recent security fuzz I wondered about the impact of containers. Container-based means you can see the processes in the guest from the host OS, which is a enormous security problem. Imagine a Virtual Host provider using this kind of technique, including having full access to your virtualized platform, whereas in other approaches he’ll actually need to have your passwords etc. to access certain parts of the guest.

The next talk was about Virtual TPM on Xen/KVM for Trusted Computing, by Kuniyasu Suzaki. He kicked offs with explaining the basics of the Trusted Platform Module. The whole problem is to create a full chain of trust from booting till full operation. So you need a boot loader that supports TPM (grub IMA), you need a patched Kernel (IMA) , from where you can have a binary that is trusted. (Ima : Integrity Measurement Architecture).

There are 2 ways to pass TPM to a virtual machine. First, there is a proprietary module by IBM as presented on the 2006 Usenix symposium where they transfer the physical TPM to a VM. Secondly, there is emulating TPM by software, there is an emulator developed by eth on tpm-emulator.berlios.de. KVM and Xen support emulated TPM. Off course this doesn’t keep the hardware trust.

As Qemu is needed to emulate bios-related things you can’t do vTPM on a paravirtualized domain, you need an HVM-based one. A customized KVM by Nguygen Anh Quynh will be released shortly; the patch will be applied to Qemu.

Still, these cases are using the TPM emulator and not the real hardware. An additional problem with virtualization and TPM arises when you start thinking about Migrating machines around … and losing access to the actual TPM module. Kuniyasu then showed a demo shown using VMKnoppix.

Dan Magenheimer is doing a rerun of his Xen Summit 2008 talk titled “Memory Overcommit without the Commitment”.

There is a lot of discussion on why you should or should not support overcommit memory. Some claim you should just buy enough memory (after all, memory is cheap) but it isn’t always: as soon as you go for the bigger memory lats you’ll still be paying a lot of money.
Overcommitment cost performance, you’ll end up swapping which is painful, however people claim that with CPU and IO it also costs performance so sometimes you need to compromise between functionality, cost and performance. Imho, a machine that is low on memory and starts swapping or even OOM’ing processes is much more painful then a machine that slows down because it is reaching its CPU or IO limits.

So one of the main arguments in favor of wanting to support overcommit on Xen was
because VMWare does it …

Dan outlined the different proposed solutions, such as Ballooning, Content-based page sharing , VMM-driven paging demand, , Hotplug memory add/delete, ticketed ballooning or even swap entire guests. in order to come up with his own proposition which he titled Feedback-directed ballooning.

The idea is that you have a lot of information of the memory-status of your guest, that Xen ballooning works like a charm, that Linux actually does perform OK when put under memory stress (provided you have configured swap). And that you can use xenstore tools for two-way communication. So he wrote a set of userland bash scripts that implemented ballooning based on local or directed feedback.

Conclusion: Xen does do memory overcommit today, so Dan replaced a “critical” VMWare feature with a small shell script 🙂

EMC Reports Strong Q2 Results, Might Spin Off VMware Anyway

by 1 Comment

So VMware performed below expectations, but how did parent company EMC do the past quarter? Not too shabby, actually. In its Q2 Earnings conference call (see transcript here), the company outlined that it had performed well against the backdrop of a challenging economic environment, although its outlook for the future was less rosy.

In the second quarter, EMC had revenue growth of 18% (to $3.67 billion), a non-GAAP EPS growth of 20%. EMC’s second-quarter net income rose 13% to $377.5 million, or 18 cents per share, from $334.4 million, or 16 cents a share, a year earlier. EMC backed its January forecast of full-year profit of 78 cents per share, excluding items. It said 2008 revenue would exceed $15 billion, up from its previous outlook of $15 billion.

The results sent EMC shares up a few points, and they got a further boost when EMC opened the door to a VMware spinoff, per report by Reuters. EMC CEO Joe Tucci apparently stated in an interview with Reuters that a VMware spinoff is definitely possible, although it likely wouldn’t happen in 2008.

EMC Corporation

VMware

Forbes Interviews Paul Maritz

by Leave a Comment

Forbes interviewed newly appointed VMware CEO and Microsoft vet Paul Maritz after last night’s earnings call. To read the full interview, click here. This is the most interesting excerpt as far as we’re concerned:

Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor, software that separates hardware from operating systems and applications inside computer servers, is virtually free. How do you plan to compete with that?

We don’t see the need to lower our price points. But that said, we created lower price SKUs for our customers.

Hyper V is really just one layer and it corresponds to our ESXi. Our customers no longer pay for that. What they pay us for is the software that sits on top of that. Microsoft is not there yet. They don’t have the virtual infrastructure suite that we have.

What strategies from Microsoft will you use at VMware?

When you reach the size that VMware’s reached, in order to capitalize on opportunities, you have to be able to operate on multiple fronts. Find elements [that have made VMware successful], reinforce them and fill in with other tactics and tools. Create the ability to have empowered teams that can execute on multiple fronts. They just need to take their game up to the next level. I spent five years at Intel before Microsoft. I’m well schooled in Andy Grove’s doctrine that only the paranoid survive.

Verari Systems Claims Blade-Based Solution Doubles VMware Efficiency

by Leave a Comment

Verari Systems, developer of data center consolidation platforms utilizing blade-based computing and storage solutions, today announced that the Verari Systems’ VB1257 VMware ESX 3.5 certified blade – gasp -delivers twice the number of VMware virtual machines per blade than similar competitive blade offerings while consuming 50% less power.

On a per VMware image basis, the company claims the VB1257 for the BladeRack 2 XL (BR2-XL) platform provides better total cost of ownership than any competing blade server products. VMware provides TAP program members with tools to develop products that are complementary to VMware virtualization software and help deliver high-value solutions to our joint customers.

Verari Systems’ capability to run twice the number of virtual machines per blade provides organizations with compelling benefits including less capital expense through the reduction in the number of servers and the associated ongoing operational and environmental costs such as power, cooling, floor space utilization and management.

The VMware virtualization power of the VB1257 for the BR2-XL means users can combine up to 16 physical machines on to just one blade server, twice as many as competitive blade offerings while requiring only half the power of their offerings – reducing capital expenditure and operational costs by more than 50%. By doubling the number of VMware virtual machines to 16 VMs per blade, the VB1257 solution results in a cost savings of over $40,000 per year in power operational expense and equates to cutting 56,000 kilowatt hours, or approximately 32 tons of CO2 emissions, every year.