Xen in the Windows kernal or Hyper-V?
Every now and again we'll use this blog to correct errors in the public domain, mainly by journalists or analyst trying to do a good job but who come up short on fact checking due to time constraints.
windows -
comments -
21.12.2007Itanium to gain Red Hat VM support and more
The imminent next version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is to come with Xen virtualisation optimised for Itanium 2, Intel said today as part of a robust
defence of its server chip.
The hypervisor tweak will give Intels top-end part a shot at becoming the host of choice in server
consolidation projects, said Michael Demshki, Intel enterprise marketing manager and part of the Itanium Solutions Alliance, a grouping of supporters
that is just celebrating its second birthday.
Some people might be hesitant to have a web server alongside an ERP or HR system
on a virtualised server because they dont want the corporate crown jewels on the same system in case of a failure or malware traversing from one VM to
another, Demshki said. But with Itaniums RAS capabilities and electronically-isolated partitioning, the Red Hat Xen support is going to be a very
big deal.
winbeta.org -
20.09.2007A Switch from VMware Is a Tough Sell
Would you rather fight than switch from VMware vSphere to HyperV or Xen-based implementations? eWEEK Labs compares the benefits and drawbacks of
current virtualization platforms...
winbeta.org -
16.07.2009Mark Russinovich: On Working at MS, Server 2008 Kernel, MinWin vs ServerCore, HyperV and more
Charles Torre: I recently sat down with Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich to dig a bit into what's new in the Windows Server 2008 kernel. Of course,
we talk about many things including HyperV, application virtualization, kernel architecture (not everybody defines an OS kernel in the same way - tune
in to understand why this is the case. Mark has his own definition that may not be the same as yours....).
Recently, the MinWin
project was in the press after a university video lecture by a Microsoft Windows architect was released on the net. Most people immediately confused
MinWin with Windows Server 2008's ServerCore technology - the confusion stems from the incorrect assumption that ServerCore is a byproduct of the
MinWin work. In fact, they are not at all related. Mark explains the differences and hopefully this will end the confusion...
Of
course, Mark spends time on the whiteboard in this interview, drawing out the kernel architecture, explaining HyperV, touching on application
virtualization (running client applications without having to install them locally - tune in to understand what I mean...).
winbeta.org -
15.12.2007VM enables "write-once, run anywhere" Linux apps
A startup in Alameda,
Calif. plans to release a kind
of holy software grail the
third or fourth week of June.
Lina said its dual-licensed
Lina virtual Linux machine
will run more or less normal
Linux applications under
Windows, Mac, or Linux, with a
look and feel native to
each.
The
concept recalls Java, which
has long promised "write
once, run anywhere"
compatibility. As with Java,
Lina users will first install
a VM specific to their
platform, after which they can
run binaries compiled not for
their particular OS, but for
the VM, which aims to hide
OS-specific characteristics
from the application.
In Lina's case, the VM is
essentially a Linux
environment that supports
standard C/C++ applications,
or even perl and python, if
their respective interpreters
are installed. CTO Nile
Geisinger explained, "You
have to compile binaries
specifically for Lina, but
it's fairly trivial, no
different than compiling
binaries for SuSE or Red
Hat."..
winbeta.org -
27.05.2007Shelf-ware - the SCVMM Library
One of the things we heard fairly early on while planning VMM was that offline storage of VHDs was going to become an increasingly large management
task. Based on this need, we created the "VM Library" feature to allow users to save virtual machines that weren't currently running to a managed
location. As we developed the requirements for this feature, we quickly realized that people wanted to store more than VMs, they wanted to store all
of the stuff that they used to create VMs as well (ISOs, templates, OS profiles, Hardware profiles etc.) so we changed the feature's name to
"library" instead of "VM library". Before defining the feature in detail, we had to make some key design decisions and at the risk of boring you,
I'll walk through some of that decision making process.
winbeta.org -
18.12.2007What you don't virtualize can hurt you
In the frenzy to virtualize servers, companies are forgetting to virtualize an important and yet critical component of their infrastructures: the
network addresses and I/O of the Ethernet and Fibre Channel cards on the physical servers that host VMware virtual machines (VMs).
Virtualized Ethernet and Fibre Channel cards or their I/O is easy to overlook. Administrators may correctly assume that there is ample bandwidth
on the server's Ethernet and Fibre Channel cards to support the normal workload of the multiple VMs it hosts.
The problem is
that VM workloads can become abnormal. Spikes in read or write I/O on one VM may immediately adversely affect the I/O performance of other VMs hosted
by that physical server. Equally problematic are backups, especially full server backups. Backing up a single VM can quickly congest network pipes and
degrade the performance of other VMs on that server.
winbeta.org -
29.11.2007Virgin Media taps Microsoft in lengthy email outage
Virgin Media customers have been suffering email outages for several days, prompting the firm to call in Microsoft engineers to help with an urgent
upgrade. A mysterious configuration problem was identified on one of VM's eight email server clusters last Wednesday. Microsft engineers have
struggled to identify the cause, forcing several reboots. The ongoing failure has affected about 10 per cent of VM's 3.6 million subscribers.
Read
full story.....
neowin.net -
18.02.2008Xen in the Windows kernal or Hyper-V? Ha-ha
Every now and again we'll use this blog to correct errors in the public domain, mainly by journalists or analyst trying to do a good job but who
come up short on fact checking due to time constraints. Of course some of these errors are more obvious than others. The latest form of error pertains
to Hyper-V within Windows Server 2008. Somehow both
Greg in Australia and
Mario in New York believe that
Hyper-V is built on Xen
. Hyper-V, the new
beta feature in Windows Server 2008 RC1, running on top of Xen .
Maybe they're confused over our July 2006 interop announcement with XenSource? Or maybe
they take too serious the work MS Research did during the development of Xen 1.x by developing a port of Windows XP to
Xen? Or maybe they're working with Oliver Stone, who is exposing yet another cover-up?
Can you
imagine GPL code running in the Windows kernal (hypervisor layer) ... now that'd be something. I think Jim Allchin would come out of retirement for that one ;-)
winbeta.org - 20.12.2007
VMware vSphere 4: The once and future virtualization king
VMware vSphere 4, out today, is a big release, with plenty of new features and changes, but it's not your run-of-the-mill major update. The new
features, which range from VM clustering to agentless VM backup, are especially significant in that they may mark the moment when virtualization
shifted from the effort to provide a stable replica of a traditional infrastructure to significantly enhancing the capabilities of a virtual
environment.
winbeta.org - 22.05.2009
Red Hat buys virtualization specialist Qumranet
The Linux vendor will now add KVM to its existing hypervisor-based approach to virtualization, an advantage the company envisions as providing as
complete a portfolio as VMware, Microsoft, and Xen...
betanews.com - 06.09.2008
VMware, Citrix Shed Light On The Importance Of Hypervisors
What's so great about
hypervisors? Seldom has a
piece of software gained the
aura that VMware's ESX Server
or the open source Xen, both
hypervisors, carry with them
at the moment.
It doesn't hurt that
VMware just staged a
successful IPO Tuesday raising
$957 million on Wall Street.
On the following day, Citrix
said it would pay $500 million
to acquire XenSource, the
little company behind Xen, the
other major hypervisor on the
market. If nothing else, we
know hypervisors are hot.
Does the
money lining up behind them
mean hypervisors are about to
replace the venerable
operating system, as VMware
CTO Mendel Rosenblum, appeared
to say at LinuxWorld last
week. Or is the hypervisor
just another marcher in the
long column of faceless
software soldiers inside the
data center?
winbeta.org - 17.08.2007
Microsoft a distant third in mock debate on virtualization
VMware's going to win the virtualization battle, and Microsoft wont even be its nearest competitor.
That was the outcome of a
mock debate Wednesday in which analysts representing VMware, Microsoft and the Xen open source hypervisor lobbied for votes from an audience of IT
executives attending Forrester Researchs IT Forum
in Las Vegas.
When asked which server virtualization software will be their strategic platform over the next five years, 35 or so
audience members raised their hands for VMware, about 15 for Xen, and only five for Microsoft.
winbeta.org - 23.05.2008
AMD and Red Hat are chased by Microsoft on VM live migration
It's a feature which could be ubiquitous in more data centers if it could just get out of the labs: the ability to move running virtual machines
between platforms with next-to-zero downtime. Now, it's being done cross-platform...
betanews.com - 20.11.2008
VM Security Risks: Phantom or Menace?
Virtual machines are threatening to crack the walls of data centers with a host of potential security threatsnothing that's been publicly exploited
yet but a fact that's borne out by a slew of vulnerabilities patched over the past seven months by major virtualization vendors VMware, Microsoft and XenSource.
David Lynch, vice president of marketing at Embotics, a VM life-cycle management vendor, said during a presentation here at Interop Oct. 23 that a fundamental issue with
VMs is that they've come into enterprises via the back door, thereby slipping past standard security hardening. Meanwhile, VM sprawl has
virtualization instances popping up with nobody keeping track of them. Simply stated, organizations won't be able to secure these things, given that
nobody knows how many have been created, Lynch said.
"Even if you just replace completely,
how do I make sure I replace all instances of virtual appliance?" Lynch told eWEEK following his presentation. "I asked the audience how many
people knew how many virtual machines . Three people put their hands up, out of about 50. That's a fundamental issue. People
don't know how many machines they have out there. How can you manage them? How can you make sure configurations are maintained, that they're where
they're supposed to be?"
winbeta.org - 25.10.2007
Virtual Machine for Exchange Calendar Update Configuration Tool
The Exchange Calendar Update Configuration Tool enables administrators to update, using the Time Zone Data Update Tool for Microsoft Office Outlook,
multiple user mailboxes, thereby avoiding the challenges involved with broadly deploying the Outlook Time Zone Data Update Tool to all end-users.
The VM contains a trial version of Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Outlook 2007, Excel 2007 and Word 2007. The Exchange Calendar
Update Configuration Tool is preinstalled as well. The VM can be used on both Virtual PC or Virtual Server.
winbeta.org - 14.09.2007
Windows Virtualization Opened
to Linux
Microsoft late Monday
announced a partnership with
open source virtualization
company XenSource in order to
offer interoperability between
Xen-enabled Linux
installations and the upcoming
"hypervisor"
technology coming to Windows
Server Longhorn...
betanews.com - 19.07.2006
New management tool for Virtual Server and Viridian
You'll be interested to read Chris' post about the release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007. This first version is for managing VMs
and apps within Virtual Server 2005. The next version of SCVMM will manage VMs and apps running within Viridian/Windows Server 2008. But not only
that, Chris' team is building the next version of SCVMM to also manage VMs running on ESX Server/VI3 and Xen. Here's part of what Chris wrote:
Our next release is planned to coincide with the release of Windows Server Virtualization (codename Viridian) so that we can
expose all the great features it provides. In addition to Viridian support we are also adding some key customer driven features. We have heard loud
and clear from customers and partners that we need to manage other virtualization environments in addition to Windows virtualization. They want a
single management solution that manages all the different hypervisor technologies. So in our next set of releases will be adding support for
non-Windows virtualization environments specifically VMWare and Xen. We listened to you!!! And when I say we will manage these environments I mean
really manage them covering all the key scenarios they offer. From a single console and a single command-line you will be able manage Virtual
Server, Viridian, VMWare and Xen.
winbeta.org - 07.09.2007
Oracle Debuts Its VM Virtualization Software Amid New Competition
You'd think there was a virtualization conference this week. But as it just so happens, three companies are vying for status in this growing market:
market leader VMware, the perennial up-and-comer Microsoft, and a newcomer with a familiar ring to it: Oracle...
betanews.com - 14.11.2007
Massive Bug Found in VMWare ESX 3.5U2
This was first reported yesterday evening on both the VMWare Community forums and on DeployLinux.com. From what anyone can tell, there is a bug in
the VMWare License Management code and it is causing any system that is running ESX 3.5U2 to not be able to boot this morning. VMware is attempting
to figure out what happened and put out a patch, but the more important question is, "Why wasn't this caught before it shipped?" As Matt
Marlowe posted:
OK, while we're all remaining calm....just imagine the implications that bugs like this can occur and get past QA
testing....5 years down the road, nearly all server apps worldwide pretty much running in VM's (pretty easy prediction)......some country decides
to initiate cyberwarfare and manages to get a backdoor into whatever is the prevaling hypervisor of the day.....boom. All your VM's belong to us.
<...>
I'd love to find out what happened here. Don't they do any regression testing on new releases to check for date based bugs? I
thought that would be pretty obvious.
Read full story.....
neowin.net - 12.08.2008
Microsoft postpones live VM migration for Hyper-V two more years
At a virtualization product launch today, Microsoft give a long-delayed demo of Hyper-V live migration, but then went on to slate the feature's
eventual release for the next edition of Windows Server -- which isn't due until 2010...
betanews.com - 09.09.2008
