Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

Get them here . You can also freely upgrade your Fusion 1.x to 2.0. All links here .

Getting up and talking about "alive and breathing" data center is not just a dream but is something a CIO so desperately needs for his business. When VMware first debuted or spoke about the record and replay, I though to myself: "Hmmm...the agile data center is not far away!" These tools will make us do a lot of root cause analysis and eventually there won't be a hiaat between the business and the IT folks. It will all be one. That is what I have been calling about the great convergence of the business and the often misunderstood and even mischevious IT domains. Anyways check this out: VAssert is a new API, debuting in Workstation 6.5 , that uses the Record and Replay functionality that we've been talking about for some time now. As you can tell by its name, VAssert is a relative of your standing programming ASSERT debugging tool, but by delaying assert-checking until later when the exact machine instructions are replayed, it can be very fast. That's so...

What's new? * Use Unity to integrate your guest apps with your host * More Powerful VM Record and Replay * Support for Smart Cards & Smart Card Readers * Enhanced ACE Authoring * Link State Propagation Networking * Improved 3D graphics Support Go get it!

New features: New in Version 6.0.3 Workstation 6.0.3 adds full support for the following operating systems: * 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 7.10 as host and guest operating systems * 32-bit and 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.6 as host and guest operating systems * 32-bit and 64-bit Asianux Server 3 as a guest operating system * 32-bit and 64-bit Turbolinux 10 Server as a guest operating system Note: The Eclipse Integrated Virtual Debugger is not yet supported on Ubuntu Linux 7.10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.6 hosts. Workstation 6.0.3 addresses the following security issues: * On Windows hosts, if you have configured and enabled a shared folder, it is possible for an attacker to write arbitrary content from a guest system to arbitrary locations on the host system (CORE-2007-0930). (bug 200360) * An internal security audit determined that a malicious user could attain and exploit LocalSystem privileges by causing the authd process to connect to a named pipe...

This is indeed a great product and really deserves those awards! "The annual Technology of the Year Awards recognize the best and most innovative products reviewed by the InfoWorld Test Center in the past year that are transforming, and will continue to transform, IT in the coming year," said Doug Dineley, Executive Editor, Test Center at InfoWorld. "2007 was a big year for virtualization, and VMware continues to lead the way." InfoWorld's 2008 Technology of the Year Awards recognize 49 IT products across 9 general categories and identify the highest scoring products and technologies reviewed in the past year by the InfoWorld Test Center. Selected by InfoWorld Test Center editors and reviewers, the annual awards identify the best and most innovative products on the IT landscape. InfoWorld's Technology of the Year Awards are not open to outside nominations. Winners are drawn from all of the products tested during the past year, with the final selections m...

This is a maintenance release which fixes the following bugs: # Hosts with AMD Duron processors might not be able to power on virtual machines. This problem resulted because Duron processors that are based on Athlon do not have Intel SSE (Streaming SIMD Extensions). (bug 183866) # Ubuntu 7.04 virtual machines sometimes power off unexpectedly if paravirtual kernel support is enabled. (bug 190499) Link

I can still feel the excitement my class went through last week in Kampala. They have a couple of copies of all our "VMware Movies". As a trainer, it is really the coolest thing to have, really!! Enjoy this movie... Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Share Photos - Free Video Hosting PS: Sorry YouTube had some issues with the Vid Length, so I went to MotionBox and later to Dropshots ;)

Go get it.

Creating a virtual OS from an install DVD went smoothly, just as we would have hoped for with no problems. VMware offered a minimum spec in processer but we’d advise a reasonable Core Duo, especially in the installation stage. As it can be a system hog at times. Importing an OS went well too, all though not every OS could be brought across - some of the old NetWare systems seemed to have trouble. It has been confirmed that VMware uses Workstation as its own test-bed for features to be seen in their grown-up products VMware Server and ESX. So look forward to seeing some of these abilities in future editions of their platforms. In Short Whatever your use for VMware Workstation 6, whether development, disaster recovery or IT literacy - version 6 is useful. Really, I will be demo'ing a complete datacenter workshop on my laptop with my workstation demo in Africa! Let me rephrase myself, and this time in capitals: COMPLETE VIRTUAL GREEN DATACENTER ON YOUR LAPTOP. Anybody would go n...

vulnerable software: VMware Workstation 6.0 for Windows, possible some other VMware products as well type of vulnerability: DoS, potential privilege escalation I found a vulnerability in VMware Workstation 6.0 which allows an unprivileged user in the host OS to crash the system and potentially run arbitrary code with kernel privileges. The issue is in the vmstor-60 driver, which is supposed to mount VMware images within the host OS. When sending the IOCTL code FsSetVoleInformation with subcode FsSetFileInformation with a large buffer and underreporting its size to at max 1024 bytes, it will underrun and potentially execute arbitrary code. Security focus

Don't believe me? Watch these videos yourself! Videos are great ways not only to demonstrate the power of virtualization but also can bring a lot of clarity within an organization. Imagine, plugging in videos and replaying them after you have committed the change in your organization! PS: I know, the quality is awful, trying Google Video. Setting up Security (rsh here) Doing Final Checks:

All of those cool features that make developers/testers happy can make a data center admin happy as well! That is what Workstation release are doing. The best used features are all added to the server core product. In particular, Phillips pointed to two experimental Workstation 6 features that have a place in future versions of ESX. Record and replay First shown on stage at VMworld to audience applause by VMware chief scientist Dr. Mendel Rosenblum, Workstation's new record and replay feature allows a developer to "record" the behavior of a virtual machine, including system behavior such as interrupts, and later "rewind" the VM and precisely "replay" its behavior. "Think of it as a surveillance video" trained on a VM, Phillips said. Read more on this...

Go to the download site and get it now and also check out that long list of features with it !

I just love the copy feature. It not only copies fast across the host to guest and saves me huge amount of time. Previously I either FTP'ed the files or downloaded them from the VMs. But this one is very fast! And not only that , it also carries the permissions across the machines. That is very crucial for me when testing RAC as the permissions always kills me. Be it a tar, zip or even a edited bash_profile filer on windows and then copying it to the Linux VM. Check out the lovely print screens!

This proud VMware employee took on the challenge of making the lives of hundreds of developers easier. I began by talking to a few Workstation customers who also use Eclipse for Java development so I could get a feel for their workflow and pain points. Then I sketched out the proposed workflow model for virtualization-assisted remote debugging and ran it by them along with rough mockups of my UI ideas. Based upon their feedback, I designed the feature as an Eclipse plugin that adds a new type of Launch Configuration to the stock set. The UI for this new launch config reuses most of the tabs already familiar to Eclipse users from running Java apps locally and adds a new one with a few virtualization options, of which only one requires the user to make a choice: in which VM should the code be executed? Once a launch configuration has been created and a VM selected, as with any other launch config, it can be activated in future simply by clicking on the Debug button in the Eclipse toolbar...