Sun christens its Xen-based virtualization xVM
64941
xVM will be built into the Linux-like version of Solaris due in March, Project Indiana.
146015
Sun signs up the software company to support its attempt to make useful a version of its Solaris operating system for x86 chips.
310066
XenSource and Virtual Iron, which aim to profit from Xen open-source virtualization software, release free new versions.
478853
Availability, licensing and promises revealed Microsoft's virtualization team has finally stirred as the market gears up for VMworld next week. A bundle of announcements today include a virtulization management software released to manufacturing, solidified pricing and licensing, and promises for future versions.â¦
242884
Using its strengths in virtual machine technology, VMWare Inc. on Monday unwrapped new beta software for the desktop that allows administrators to more securely deploy and mange work environments outside the corporate network.
208980
VMware Inc. has unveiled the first release candidate of its Fusion virtualization software, with the final version due out next month.
671985
A Linux developer has come up with a virtualized I/O system that allows competing virtualization software to use one mechanism for handling storage and other virtual devices.
203786
One of the most ambitious new features ever to be built into an x86 motherboard is now publicly available: a hypervisor-based computer that runs both the operating system and its underlying BIOS under the control of a virtual machine monitor. Underneath these physical and virtual layers is Intel's latest and boldest implementation of the Trusted Computing platform.
468258
Sun Microsystems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. are both building storage virtualization tools and storage grid technology to help customers drive adaptable intelligence and unified management deeper into multivendor storage environments.
299799
OS features virtualization technologies intended to help companies get more use from their hardware.
622667
(InfoWorld) - While many IT shops see virtualization as a question of adopting EMC's VMware on servers running Windows or Linux, Nationwide Insurance has adopted the technology for both x86-based and mainframe-hosted servers. After all, notes Buzz Woeckener, the company's zLinux/Unix server manager, virtualization was invented for mainframes. On the x86 server side, Nationwide reached 5,000 servers two years ago, running all sorts of departmental applications, notes Scott Miggo, vice president of technology solutions. "We were growing at a steady pace, so we wanted to control the server space and the costs for new development," he says. "A lot of our servers had only a 10 percent utilization rate," he notes, wasting much of the server capacity. Roughly half are production application servers and half are test-and-development servers. Today, there are 3,500 physical servers in operation but still 5,000 instances under management. The VMware servers typically host a dozen instances per physical server. "We assume every new server or application can be virtualized," Miggo says. He expects to have more than 1,000 virtual servers running on 89 physical servers by 2009. His team works to tweak I/O requirements or settings for virtual servers that may have trouble supporting I/O needs in their default state, and it works with vendors to support VMs where possible, before falling back to dedicated servers. Lotus Notes and database applications are examples of where the I/O requirements make virtualization not an option. Although it's easier to deploy servers in a virtual environment by using predefined images, "our staffing has stayed pretty much the same," Miggo says, because the same number of servers must still be monitored. The slight reduction in management overhead is offset by the need for VMware experts to manage the VMware environment, in addition to the server instances. And Nationwide learned the hard way that it needs to monitor both its virtual and physical servers, then correlate the two to identify potential trouble spots, Miggo says. Not doing so can make diagnosis hard, since a VM issue may be caused by a physical issue that a server monitor application running in only the VM won't detect. There's also more overhead needed for Miggo's shared-services group to coordinate all users (such as developers and application managers) of a physical server, as changes to the physical server could affect them all -- and because adjustments to one VM's application mix could affect I/O and other physical server performance characteristics. "We now have to coordinate with 12 users," Miggo says. "People were used to having their own boxes and doing their own thing. Now they're more tightly controlled, which they don't like. But they have to follow control processes like code management and release management since what they do could affect others," he notes. The use of EMC's VMotion software to load-balance and failover VMs across physical servers might reduce management, but the insurer is still exploring that technology. One barrier: Its requirement that all server instances run on physical servers with the same CPU family, requiring a consistent server pool to be in place. Nationwide runs its Web servers in a zLinux environment on IBM zSeries mainframes, supporting 650 guest operating systems (VMs) today, with space for another 650 before additional hardware frames would be needed. Often, using z/VM to support the virtualized Web servers requires a different strategy than using VMware to support virtualized Windows servers, Woeckener notes. For example, you might add memory, CPUs, or network cards to increase I/O on a VMware server. On a zSeries, the CPUs just handle executables, offloading physical I/O (such as network bandwidth and resource scheduling) to dedicated processors, so you don't need to worry about performance-sapping overhead incurred by server resource management. Another difference: Increasing heap size can improve performance in a Windows application but also degrade it in a zLinux application, Woeckener says. That's because Linux steals resources wherever it can find them, so any extra heap space is used by Linux for its own purposes, degrading application performance. When the heap size is reduced, Linux seeks resources elsewhere, giving the full heap to the application and improving performance. In both the VMware and z/VM environments, the ease of deploying new virtual servers has led Nationwide to align demand with real needs, as well as to encourage the use of VMs rather than physical servers. Virtual Windows servers cost a requestor $750 per month versus $2,000 per month for a physical server. And zLinux VMs add a per-MIP rate for weekday usage exceeding 15 MIPs. This overage charge steers batch processing to overnight and weekend periods, when overall demand is less, and forces developers of applications in use during the business day to optimize for performance, saving datacenter resources at the same time. Virtualization special report Case study: Credit Suisse Case study: Purdue University Case study: Stonebridge Bank Case study: Transplace
728025
(InfoWorld) - With an incremental update to its Solaris 10 OS, Sun is extending the platform's virtualization capabilities to accommodate Linux and Solaris on the same computer. Sun will add to the Solaris Containers capability, which has bolstered server usage by allowing for multiple instances of Solaris on the same server, said Dan Roberts, Sun director of marketing for Solaris. With Solaris 10 8/07, being announced Tuesday, users can run Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS Linux, and Linux applications via Solaris Containers for Linux Applications. "You can now consolidate your Solaris and Linux apps onto one chassis," Roberts said. Solaris Containers debuted in Solaris 10 two-and a half years ago. Virtualization, Roberts noted, has become a popular way to get more out of servers that had been running commonly at only a 10- to 15-percent utilization rate. Because Red Hat and CentOS are only supported on Intel x86 systems, the new Solaris Containers for Linux capability is only supported on that hardware. Customer demand will dictate whether this functionality is extended to other Linux distributions. Sun's accommodation for Linux helps Solaris in its battle for users with Linux, said analyst Richard Jones, vice president at Burton Group. "I see this as a way for [Solaris] to definitely continue to survive in the market because they're now allowing for a greater level of interoperability with Linux," Jones said. The move expands the number of applications and services that could run in a Solaris environment, said Jones.Â  Sun, naturally, sees Solaris as superior to Linux. "You would want to go with this over Linux because you want the most reliable, most secure operating system," as well as features like Solaris Containers, said Roberts. Sun views the upgrade as making it easier to migrate to Solaris. Also with version 8/07, Solaris can be used to manage resources within a container at a finer grain level. "For example, you can now define how much memory or CPU you want a particular app or container to use," said Roberts. This prevents one container from overwhelming an entire system. Users can assure that high-priority applications get the CPU cycles needed. Sun will include separate IP stacks for each container with Solaris 10 8/07 to enable administrators to know how much network bandwidth is being consumed by a container. Determinations could be made on whether to move an application to another server. A Large Send Offload feature reduces CPU workload by offloading networking processing operations to a network interface card. Jumbo Frames support in the 8/07 release means the OS supports very large network packages beyond the 1,500 bytes limit specified in Ethernet. This is useful for applications shipping high volumes of data. Version 8/07 will include a copy of the open-source PostgreSQL 8.2 database, a high-capacity transactional system with performance enhancements for Solaris and support for DTrace probes. These probes provide the ability to observe application performance. Users theoretically could replace an Oracle database with PostgreSQL 8.2 "We fundamentally believe Solaris is the best OS for running databases," Roberts said. Solaris 10 8/07 does not include any technologies from Project Indiana, which is Sun's project to make Solaris more palatable to Linux users by adding capabilities like distribution of Solaris binaries. The project is part of the OpenSolaris effort, which offers Solaris in an open source format. Sun's Solaris is a commercial distribution of the platform.
118440
Dec. 23, 2004. VMware on Thursday rolled out a public beta of its Workstation 5, the newest edition of its desktop virtualization software.
242036
The "Lx86" feature will be included in IBM's PowerVM virtualization software and will allow System i servers to automatically detect and run Linux-based binaries designed for x86 environments.
676248
First Xeon blade servers today join Sun's lineup of AMD-powered blades.
413816
InfoWorld - Virtualization software leader VMware Inc. is testing a desktop virtualization program that can be stored on a USB drive and moved from one computer to another.
193275
Sun's BrandZ technology, which lets Linux applications run on a virtual slice of a Solaris x86 installation, is finally ready for prime time.