Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

Hardware virtualization is not new. Chip makers are struggling hard to make it a reality. It will become a reality. Today virtualization vendors are dancing to the tunes of market developments and community needs. "Do we given them para-virtualization?", "do we keep going strong with full virtualization?'. Questions that plague not only market leader today such as VMware but also the competitors. Oracle and Sun have spoken about it in the past as well. Sun was right when it said: "The Network is the computer" and when I looked up (on FindArticles, a good place BTW to look for the "future", if you know what I mean) for some information about a Os-less application stack, I came across Oracle's "RAW Iron" project. Quoting this older news from 1998: By picking his Nov. 16 keynote speech to unveil the Raw Iron project, Ellison timed the announcement for the same day as Microsoft's heavily promoted launch of SQL Server 7.0, a major up...

Engineering teams from Neterion and VMware have worked closely to mutually optimize support of 10 GbE in ESX, now offering near-line rate 10 Gbps performance at parity with native Linux or Windows operating systems. This was demonstrated at VMworld in San Francisco when Neterion, IBM and VMware jointly ran virtualized machines at 10 GbE speeds comparable to servers running single, non-virtualized applications. Many network intensive tasks, such as VMware's VMotion, require a large network pipe to allow the nearly instantaneous migration of virtualized applications. As the datasets of these applications grow larger, Gigabit Ethernet will not be sufficient. Neterion's 10 GbE adapters remove this network bottleneck, enabling a new class of I/O-intensive applications to be virtualized. "VMware ESX 3.5 is the breakout play for the 10 GbE industry as it is the first major virtualization OS to support 10 GbE," noted Dave Zabrowski, president & CEO of Neterion. "Nete...

"There's a battle going on for the pole position on the physical system," said Pete Lindstrom, Burton Group senior analyst. "The idea here is you want to be first and at lowest level for some level of control. On the client, you can make things more secure through virtualisation, and since Phoenix can launch its hypervisor before everything else, it appears to have that pole position." Phoenix envisions up to 20 light apps running inside the BIOS, enabled by its HyperCore hypervisor. You can check your email, browse the Web or launch a media player without burning through your battery life. Phoenix is banking on software vendors seeing the market potential and developing HyperSpace-friendly offerings. Security apps, such as your antivirus product of choice, resistant to compromise and getting updates before malware gets a shot at your laptop, could be among the those running on HyperSpace. Techtarget Australia

Finally I see, Bridget, covering Hitachi. (That does remind me of something I had promised Bridget which I haven't yet provided due to crazy schedule here). Anyways, back to Hitachi's Virtage: The embedded technology, known as Virtage, runs on an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) coupled with embedded firmware designed to handle virtualization tasks at the hardware level. Virtage works with Intel Virtualization Technology (VT) chips and enables users to partition physical server resources into isolated logical partitions (LPARs) that can each run a different operating system, or guest. Hitachi designed Virtage for its BladeSymphony 1000 blade servers, which will be generally available by the first quarter of 2008. Other attempts to embed virtualization within a server don't do so in hardware. In September, XenSource Inc. announced an embedded virtualization platform called XenExpress that integrates into servers via flash or on the hard disk. Similarly, VMware...

Quoting CW: On Monday, the Milpitas, Calif. vendor unveiled a Linux-based virtualization platform called Hyperspace. Based on the HyperCore hypervisor developed by Phoenix and embedded within its popular BIOS, Hyperspace provides a thin software layer upon which cut-down versions of popular open-source software can be loaded instantly without the need to boot up Windows, said Woody Hobbs, Phoenix's CEO, in a telephone interview. "We call this embedded simplicity, or PC 3.0," Hobbs said. The goal is to allow faster access to applications such as Web browsers, e-mail programs, or video players on notebooks running Windows. Such quick-launch capability is common in smart devices such as PDAs or smartphones, and some ultra-mobile devices offer similar functionality with features such as AVN Now. But currently Windows-running PCs must either go through a lengthy boot process or wake up from standby mode -- still a hiccupy feature in many laptops. Link

VFE (Virtualization For Everyone has learnt that...aww c'mon go on the freaking Google and you can get that inverstors PDF by Phoenix ;-) Get that PDF here. The ball game is about to change. I have said that before, next year we will not even be talking hypervisors! We'll just come back to "Enterprise Applications"!

This is a good webcast, a few screenshots: Go see the webcast!

Dave thinks so: It calls out a bunch on "new features" that we have either been doing for ages, or have announced that we will have in Windows Server Virtualisation (WSV), when we ship Windows Server 2008 - I'm confused (seems like someone is trying to introduce a load of FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). They call out 64GB virtual machines and 128GB physical machines. We'll do 64GB virtual machines with WSV and 64-bit Windows will work with systems with up to 1 Terabyte of physical memory. The reason for this, if you're interested is that our hypervisor is 64-bit and ESX is still 32-bit. They call out support for virtualisation-aware (para-virtualised) Linux operating systems. We are working with both Novell and XenSource, so we'll do that too (we already support both RedHat and SUSE Linux on Virtual Server). Link

I have been away in Africa and internet bieng slow, I couldn't cover the 3i buzz in the "Admin World". I came back home to see my Admin's buzzing with activity and so I thought I'd share this link with you. Here's the thread .

The packages, which VMware calls "acceleration kits," are based on VMware Infrastructure 3, its virtualization suite for servers and storage networks. VMware, a subsidiary of EMC Corp., said between 60% and 70% of its customers are small and midsize businesses. The packages offer varying levels of features depending on price. At the core of all three is either VMware's ESX Server or ESX Server 3i, a product released last month whose hypervisor is embedded in flash memory in the server hardware. The hypervisor enables multiple operating systems to run on one machine. VMware said it hopes the ESX Server 3i, which has a small, 32MB footprint and is easy to use, will keep it ahead of competitors such as XenSource Inc., which Citrix Systems Inc. bought in August for $500 million, and Microsoft Corp.'s Viridian project. VMware holds more than 80% of the market for virtualization products. Link

“The ESX Server 3i hypervisor — think of it as a single server virtualization that is what the capability is and then customers will have the option to add more management and functionality on top of that,” Byun said. Byun was responding to comments made by Keith Norbie, director of storage at Plymouth, Minn - based Nexus Information Systems. In a blog item that appeared last week, Norbie wanted clarification on exactly what would be embedded into other vendor’s hardware Now that he knows, Norbie said he is relieved and thinks partners can make good money adding features to their customers systems. Link

With 3i, instead of executing scripts directly on the Linux-like console, administrators will have access to a remote command line interface (CLI) from a standalone virtual infrastructure (VI) client to perform old ESX commands, said Raghu Raghuram, VMware vice president of platform products. But remote CLI allows administrators to invoke only ESX-specific commands, such as those that start with the "esxcfg" string; Linux-specific facilities are not included. That means that "the commands we use to gather information will remain the same but how we invoke them will have to change," said Alistair Sutherland, director of Taupo Consulting, a VMware integrator in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted, running scripts in the service console is somewhat of a relic from a previous era, said VMware's Raghuram, even if the practice persists today. "Before VirtualCenter, we had the service console concept, and we used to encourage people to go there," he said. But with t...

Hitachi will continue carving out its own place in the virtualization market with a Xeon-based blade server that includes a built-in hypervisor. In the first quarter of next year, Hitachi America – a subsidiary of the big guy – will ship a Xeon version of the BladeSymphony 1000 system outfitted with homegrown Virtage technology. Virtage stands as Hitachi's firmware-based hypervisor that has been available with the Itanium-based version of BladeSymphony since last November. The pre-loaded hypervisor gives Hitachi a unique attack in the server game with the company claiming performance and security leads over rivals with the technology. Click here to find out more! Built-in hypervisors have suddenly become all the rage. VMware and XenSource have revealed plans to work with OEMs on embedded hypervisors that pop into the flash memory of servers. Hitachi, however, thinks it's creating a much tighter bond between hardware and the hypervisor with its Virtage approach. "All they a...

OK, so you got the drummer, lead guitarist, bass guitarist, vocalist, so what do you do? You grunge it all out. VMware has released its first embedded hypervisor. The new ESX Server 3i runs directly on the server's hardware (refered to as 'bare iron') without requiring an operating system. Users run their virtual machines directly on this software. Virtualisation users previously had to install their own operating system and install virtualisation software on top of that. Measuring only 32MB, the embedded hypervisor is 90 per cent smaller than the average operating system and virtual machine combination, VMware claimed. Its smaller footprint renders it more secure and more stable than mainstream operating systems which offer many features that are needless to the average user, VMware chief executive Diane Greene argued in her opening keynote at VMworld in San Francisco. Read on...

The rumors about VMware putting ESX Server on dietary supplements have been confirmed. The virtualization darling today revealed ESX Server 3i - a super-thin hypervisor that will be built into the memory of servers from companies such as Dell, HP and IBM. We've been writing about the so-called ESX Lite for some time now, particularly in conjunction with Dell. The Round Rock-based server maker plans to ship an appliance-like machine later this year that will include a hypervisor in flash memory. Such a move should lead to performance improvements by cutting application install and boot times and by letting vendors strip hard disks out of their servers to lower power consumption. Link

XenSource announced XenExpress OEM Edition last week, and market leader VMware this week is announcing VMware ESX Server 3i at its VMworld conference. The products run from flash memory built into a server instead of being installed on the hard drive. The embedded versions aren't just a fantasy. VMware has partnerships with IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Network Appliance. "We expect them to begin integrating ESX Server 3i into their servers later this year or early next," a VMware representative said. "With virtualization, where you can run any operating system on top, it seems a lot more logical that it would be effectively a layer sitting on top of a server. Why wouldn't it be supplied with the server?" --Gordon Haff, analyst, Illuminata Likewise, XenSource has a partnership with a tier-one server company that will use its software, but XenSource won't announce which company until 30 days from now, said Chief Technology Officer Simon Crosby. Stephen @...

This all will be unveiled at the VMworld. Hewlett-Packard, Dell, IBM and others will bake VMware’s software onto the the motherboards of their server computers. VMware is the runaway early leader in the market for virtual machine software that makes it possible for a single computer to simultaneously run different operating systems and applications. This ability to juggle several computing chores on a single computer yields savings in hardware costs, electricity bills and staffing in corporate data centers. The computer makers have agreed to put VMware’s hypervisor — the software socket in which the company’s virtual machines run — on their hardware (in flash memory on the motherboard). To get the nod, VMware accomplished the technical feat of shrinking its hypervisor more than 60-fold, from 2 gigabytes to 32 megabytes, says Bogomil Balkansky, senior director of product marketing.

VMware, one of the newest darlings on Wall Street and the kingpin of server virtualization, is hosting the VMworld 2007 show in San Francisco this week. And the company's slimmed down, bare metal hypervisor, called ESX Server 3i, is undoubtedly going to be a hot topic of discussion. ESX Server 3i, which is a much skinnier version of the company's flagship virtual machine hypervisor, is not only designed to have a smaller footprint on systems, but to actually be embedded into systems. Embedding a virtual machine hypervisor into a server, workstation, desktop, or laptop are the next logical things for the computer industry to do, and even VMware's main competition in the space, XenSource, agrees. Last week, knowing that VMware was prepping to launch ESX Server 3i ahead of the VMworld event, XenSource jumped the gun and debuted its own XenServer OEM Edition, a hypervisor that XenSource and Citrix Systems, the company's future parent if the $500 million proposed acquisitio...

The hype for virtualization may be reaching a fever pitch, but market penetration remains at a high-ball figure of only about 7 per cent. The aim now falls squarely on selling in volume, so it's not a surprise to see the market eyeballing OEM vendors. Rumors have blown about virtualization leader VMware prepping a "light" edition of its ESX Server hypervisor, which would run directly within a server's firmware. There have even been inklings it may be shown as soon as next week at VMworld. But XenSource is jumping that potential announcement by unveiling XenExpress OEM Edition. This new flavor of Xen will allow server makers to pre-install the hypervisor on a disk drive or flash memory — configured specifically for the machine —and ready to run on a x64 system out of the box. "It's a completely hidden component," said XenSource CTO Simon Crosby. "You buy a server, apply power to the box, and it will come up with a bunch of BIOSes. The whole ...

We'll soon find out though. VESO, according to a large Dell customer who was briefed on the product, will be available in the second half of this year, and will have extended memory and I/O capabilities, simplified iSCSI boot functionality, physical-to-virtual (P2V) migration services, and an embedded hypervisor, most likely ESX Lite. VESO's promise is that it would be incredibly easy to set up, the source said. "Just plug it in to the network, configure it through a Web browser and you're done," he said. This is interesting. Michael Dell is indeed shaking things up real good. Read on...