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News, Thoughts and Experiences on Virtualization.

Archive for May, 2007

VMware Player 2.0 released

by Gerben | May 11, 2007 in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

VMware Player 2.0 is now generally available.  New features include Windows Vista support, USB 2.0 support, shared folders, appliance view, and experimental support for Virtual SMP.

VMware ACE 2.0 Released

by Gerben | May 11, 2007 in virtualization | No Comments

Yesterday VMware announced the release of VMware ACE 2.0:
VMware ACE 2.0 is now generally available, offering the ability to deploy and manage secure, portable client PC environments across the enterprise and beyond. With ACE, your organization can combine the power and versatility of virtual machines with the security and control of centrally managed PCs, making it easier to:

  • Manage virtual desktops from a single point of control
  • Increase security and flexibility for mobile and remote workers
  • Safely extend corporate resources to 3rd party unmanaged PCs
  • Deliver fully configured virtual desktops for demos and training
Click here to download (evaluate or purchase)
You can now create, package, deploy and manage portable vm’s. VMware Workstation 6 which was released a day earlier together with the ACE Option Pack can be used to create the VM’s you want to deploy. The nice thing about it is that you can apply your company (security) policies to them.
ACE 2 comes in three tastes: starter, standard and enterprise
1. Starter comes with 10 ACE licenses, offers pay-per-request support and includes VMware Workstation 6 together with the ACE Option pack, but ACE Management Server is NOT included and volume licensing is not possible.
2. Standard comes with 50 ACE licenses and offers platinum and gold support, ACE Management Server is included as is VMware Workstation 6 together with the ACE Option pack
3. Enterprise differs from Standard in a way that it comes with more ACE 2 licenses (200) and two licenses instead of one for VMware Workstation 6 together with the ACE Option pack

Windows Server Viirtualization Features postponed

by Gerben | May 11, 2007 in virtualization | No Comments

Just before the launch of WINHEC Mike Neil (GM, virtualization strategy) posted an article on the Windows Server Division Weblog.
Key issues covered:

  • The beta of Microsoft Windows Virtualization (aka Viridian) will be available with the RTM of Longhorn (H2 2007)
  • And the corresponding version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager will be available 60-90 days afterward.

Mike continues to explain what features will be part of the ‘viridian’-release and ends with the following striking paragraph:

"But with all this progress comes the occasional tradeoff. Earlier this week we had to come to grips with some universal truths about product development:
·         Shipping is a feature, too.
·         The quality bar, the time you have, and the feature set are directly correlated.
·         The mythical man-month – resources are not infinite and even if you could add more it does not help get more done faster.
So we had some really tough decisions to make
[...]
So we are making the following changes, and postponing these features to a future release of Windows Server virtualization:
·         No Live migration
·         No hot-add resources (storage, networking, memory, processor)
·         Support limit of 16 cores/logical processors (e.g., 2 processor, quad-core systems is 8 cores; or 4 processor, quad-core system is 16 cores)"
Striking enough these are some of the key features Microsoft showcases with when presenting and demo-ing Windows Server Virtualization.

VMware Workstation 6.0 released

by Gerben | May 10, 2007 in virtualization | No Comments

VMware relaesed it’s 6th generation of Desktop Virtualization:

New features in VMware Workstation include:

  • Windows Vista support: Users can deploy Windows Vista as a guest or host operating system, facilitating re-hosting of legacy systems, enabling upgrade and migration projects with minimal end-user disruption and simplifying Windows Vista evaluations.
  • Multiple monitor display: Users can configure one virtual machine to span multiple monitors or multiple virtual machines to each display on separate monitors with this industry-first capability, enhancing desktop productivity.
  • USB 2.0 support: Users can take advantage of high-performance peripherals such as Apple iPods and fast storage devices.
  • ACE authoring capabilities: As a companion to VMware Workstation 6, VMware now offers a VMware ACE Option Pack, which enables VMware Workstation 6 users to create secure, centrally manageable virtual machines. Mobility is one of the primary benefits of this Option Pack, as it allows users to securely transport virtual machines on portable media devices such as USB memory sticks.
  • Integrated Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) functionality: Users can create a virtual machine in minutes by “cloning” an existing physical computer.
  • Integrated virtual debugger: Users can deploy, run and debug programs inside a virtual machine directly from their preferred integrated development environments (IDEs), accelerating debugging with this industry-first integration with Eclipse and Microsoft Visual Studio.
  • Background virtual machine execution: Users can run virtual machines in the background without the VMware Workstation user interface for an uncluttered user experience.
  • Automation APIs: Users can write scripts and programs that automate and help quicken virtual machine testing with support for VIX API 2.0.

In addition, VMware Workstation 6 advances the state of the art in virtualization technology with groundbreaking new capabilities including:

  • Continuous virtual machine record and replay (experimental): Users can record the execution of a virtual machine, including all inputs, outputs and decisions made along the way. On demand, the user can go “back in time” to the start of the recording and replay execution, guaranteeing that the virtual machine will perform exactly the same operations every time and ensuring bugs can be reproduced and resolved.
  • Virtual Machine Interface (VMI) support (experimental): VMware Workstation 6 is the first virtualization platform to allow execution of paravirtualized guest operating systems that implement the VMI interface.

Registration VMworld 2007 is open

by Gerben | May 9, 2007 in virtualization | No Comments

Now is the time to reserve your spot at the premier event for the virtualization industry—VMworld 2007. Join thousands of IT professionals, software developers and industry experts from around the world on September 11-13  at the Moscone Center in scenic San Francisco to experience the latest and greatest in virtualization technology and business solutions.
register at: http://www.vmware.com/vmworld/

Ultimate Deployment Appliance 1.4 released

by Gerben | May 2, 2007 in virtualization | No Comments

Today on his site RTFM Education Mike Laverick announces the Ultimate Deployment Appliance (UDA) 1.4 with support for ESX 3.x.x
The UDA is a DHCP/TFTP/PXE appliance which comes with a web-based management tool which simplifies installing an operating system to either physical or virtual machines. Expressed very simply once the UDA is correctly configured (which does not take much time at all) via the web-management tool, the operator powers on the physical or virtual machine and press [F12] to trigger a PXE boot. The operator then selects a build from a menu, and then an unattended/scripted installation is triggered by either using either Windows unattended files or Linux kickstart files depending on your OS. UDA also supports using CD-ROM boot utilities such as BartPE delivered via PXE. In short UDA allows you kiss goodbye your manual CD-ROM based installations – and say hello to remote builds via ILO/RAC/IP-KVM cards or from your virtual machine console window.

UDA 1.4 was released today – and support deployment of ESX via PXE boot and kickstart scripts

More info and download links here

Vmware Converter 3.0.1 released

by Gerben | May 2, 2007 in virtualization | No Comments

After three months since launch of Converter, 3rd generation of its P2V migration tool, VMware is ready to launch first minor update.

Anyway Converter 3.0.1 (build 44840) is not just a bug fixes release, since it introduces some remarkable new features:

  • Capability to import VMware Consolidated Backup images
  • Partial capability to import StorageCraft ShadowProtect images
  • Experimental command line interface (for Enterprise Edition only)

First feature is particularly important: VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB), introduced with VMware Infrastructure 3, is not a real backup solution, but more a sort of proxy, helping 3rd party backup solutions to access virtual machines stored in SANs facilities.

VCB anyway is not currently providing any help in restore saved virtual machines, and customers have to find their own way to perform this operation.

Introducing this new capability in Converter, VMware is seriously simplifying restore but it’s also showing future directions for disaster recovery: possibly in near future VMware Converter will be the only backup solution, performing a virtual to image (V2I ?) migration for backup, mimicking approach currently taken by PlateSpin.

Download the free Starter Edition here.

Vmware ACE 1.0.3 released

by Gerben | May 2, 2007 in virtualization | No Comments

VMware just released a minor updated for ACE 1.0.

This 1.0.3 release (build 44385) fixes five security vulnerabilities disclosed today:

Check complete release notes here. Download a trial here.

VMware Workstation 5.5.4 released

by Gerben | May 2, 2007 in virtualization | No Comments

VMware just released a minor updated for Workstation 5.5.

This 5.5.4 release (build 44386) fixes five security vulnerabilities disclosed today:

Check complete release notes here. Download a trial here.

VMware Player 1.0.4 released

by Gerben | May 2, 2007 in virtualization | No Comments

VMware just released a minor updated for Player 1.0.

This 1.0.4 release (build 44386) fixes five security vulnerabilities disclosed today:

Check complete release notes here. Download it here.