So now I've got my HP DL360 G5
set up, and I'm starting to load hypervisors on it. I thought I'd walk you through what I'm experiencing, as it may provide some insight that you may find helpful -- or perhaps you can get a few good laughs at my expense (you know what they say: As long as you're reading...)
One note: This is quite literally my first time working with virtualization. I've been reporting on it for almost a half-year now, and am getting comfortable with understanding what it is and how it works. But there's nothing like getting your hands greasy to fully grasp its abilities. What I'm saying is that these steps are probably very basic for many of you, and I may be stating what seems ridiculously obvious. But as this is my first foray into this world, it's all new to me.
OK, caveats out of the way. I got my copy of Windows Server 2008 loaded on the server (and many thanks to the folks at Microsoft for setting me up with a copy of Windows 2008. You make my job easier.) Installation was a breeze, with no hiccups whatsoever. My copy of the OS had the beta version of Hyper-V, Microsoft's bundled hypervisor. Since the first release candidate (RC) is out, I downloaded that and installed it instead. Pretty easy to do. In Windows 2008, go to Server Manager > Roles > Add Roles and choose Hyper-V.
Easy as pie. That is, until I tried to create a VM and was told that the hypervisor wasn't loaded. Retry. Nada. Strange, since I was in the Hyper-V Manager (available at Start > Administrative Tools > Hyper-V Manager after you've installed Hyper-V as a server role). So the management console was fine, but no hypervisor.
A little clicking here and there, a little bit of TechNet later, and I determined that it might be my processor setup that was the problem. Since I have virtualization-capable procs (Intel Xeons), I assumed that they were enabled by default. Maybe not. So after a reboot and going into the HP BIOS, I learned that they were, in fact, turned off by default. The two BIOS settings that needed to be enabled were "No-Execute Memory Protection" and "Intel Virtualization Technology." After that, another reboot and voila! Hyper-V fired up. (Again: for seasoned virtualization admins, this likely qualifies as a big "Duh!" moment; for me, it was a revelation).
I loaded to two VMs yesterday: Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 R2 (64-bit edition). I've just started playing with them, and don't have much to report. One key combination you'll learn quickly: CTRL/ALT/Left Arrow. That frees up your mouse to leave the confines of the VM. It took about 40 minutes to load XP and about an hour for Windows 2003.
That's all for now. More updates coming.
Posted by Keith Ward on 03/25/2008 at 12:48 PM4 comments
I just took a briefing with
Phoenix Technologies (took a briefing is journalese for "I just did an interview with them about their company.") You're probably familiar with them as a maker of the BIOS firmware that runs on many of today's computers (and may of yesterday's, since they're about a quarter-century old).
It was a fascinating talk about their entry into the virtualization market. Phoenix is making a hypervisor that's embedded in a system's BIOS. It's what the company calls a "Type 3" hypervisor, meaning it lives in a layer between the physical hardware (where "Type 1" hypervisors like ESX Server, Hyper-V and Xen live) and the operating system (which houses "Type 2" hypervisors like VMware Server, Microsoft Virtual Server and PC virtualization products like VMware Fusion, Parallels for Mac and Virtual PC.)
Phoenix's hypervisor, called HyperSpace, runs essentially alongside Windows XP (the only supported platform at present.) It virtualizes and encapsulates certain programs, like a browser, e-mail program or media player. Those programs are nearly instantly available when turning on your laptop or desktop, since they live at the BIOS level below the OS. Phoenix assures me that using such programs within HyperSpace will be essentially transparent to the end user. I think that makes sense; what user will want to have two consoles from which to choose a browser, when all they want to do is surf the 'Net?
Another advantage (and one that I believe Phoenix should spend more time publicizing) is that they're available if something happens to your computer. Blue Screen of Death? No problem; you can still get e-mail or have Internet access through a browser if they're in HyperSpace. This might allow you to download drivers or updates that could fix your problem.
The apps should also be much more secure than programs within Windows, given the extremely small footprint that hypervisors generally enjoy. Phoenix says that it's not competing with other hypervisors, being much more complementary. Guarav Banga, Phoenix's CTO, says they're not interested in the classic virtualization uses like server consolidation. I believe him; Phoenix is marketing this much more as a consumer and small business technology.
HyperSpace is a fascinating technology, and I'm interested to see it hit the marketplace. Phoenix is undoubtedly hitting up their cadre of OEMs that use Phoenix BIOS to include HyperSpace. Currently, the hypervisor is in the testing stage, and Phoenix didn't give a deliverable date (which might be hard anyway, since OEMs could largely control that.)
I'm very curious about whether you would use HyperSpace. Would it have advantages for you, and if so, how? Let me know.
Posted by Keith Ward on 03/21/2008 at 12:48 PM4 comments
Interesting
story on how one of the world's most secretive organizations -- the National Security Agency -- is using virtualization to gain more security.
Security is becoming more and more of an issue in virtualization. Admins are realizing that although the machines are virtual, the security issues are very real. In some ways, they're worse -- having five, 15 or 55 VMs on a single server means that, potentially, a lot more servers and data are at risk.
Posted by Keith Ward on 03/20/2008 at 12:48 PM0 comments
The embedded hypervisor arms race is heating up. The latest company to join in is Citrix,
announcing an embedded version of its hypervisor, Citrix XenServer HP Select Edition, in (you guessed it) select HP ProLiant servers.
XenServer is Citrix's standard, enterprise-class hypervisor, built on the the open source Xen platform. The Select Edition is a stripped-down version of XenServer, tuned to work with the ProLiant brand. It also provides an easy upgrade path to the full version of XenServer for organizations.
You may recall that Citrix bought what was then XenSource last year for a cool half-billion dollars. Since then, Citrix has been extremely aggressive in building its virtualization portfolio. XenSource was renamed XenServer, Presentation Server was renamed XenApp, and a suite of end-to-end virtualization products, called Citrix Delivery Center, was unveiled. That's a lot for the first few months of 2008.
Embedded hypervisors have suddenly become very important in the virtualization community. There's a fight afoot for market share, with everyone trying to horn in on VMware's business, and one way to do that is to give admins built-in virtualization functionality; something they can try right out of the box. Microsoft, of course, has done it with Hyper-V, which is bundled with Windows Server 2008 (64-bit editions only).
But they all still trail VMware, which made the first big splash in the embedded arena with an announcement that it had secured embedded hypervisor deals with IBM, Dell, Fujistu-Siemens -- and HP. They are embedding a lightweight version of ESX Server, called ESX 3i, into the servers. So HP is becoming a server OEM pioneer in virtualization, giving customers a choice of which embedded hypervisor they want. It's smart business for HP, and you can bet we'll see the other big hardware manufacturers doing similar things.
Xen has been embedded in various flavors of Linux for years, so the ultra-geek admin crowd -- you know, the ones who love command-line interfaces -- have had access to a hypervisor for a long time. But Citrix is going a serious step beyond that with this announcement. You don't need to have Linux to use XenServer, or even be a CLI dweeb; Simon Crosby, CTO of the Virtualization and Management Division at Citrix, implied in a video announcement that XenServer Select will have a graphical management UI, something missing in its VMware competitor. That may appeal to Windows admins, the majority of whom prefer clicking to typing.
Citrix says that XenServer Select will be available and supported on March 31. No price was listed.
Posted by Keith Ward on 03/20/2008 at 12:48 PM2 comments
You've probably noticed by now, but the release candidate for Hyper-V is
out now. Kudos to Microsoft for releasing it so quickly and allowing admins (and the rest of us geeks) to start playing with the near-final code.
It looks like at this point that there won't be any more features added, so what you see with the RC is what you get. It will support Microsoft's updated desktop OSes, Windows Vista and Windows XP, along with SUSE Linux 10 (that still puts it nearly a generation behind Novell, which is set to release SUSE 11 sometime soon -- at least we hope.)
It's another strong sign of Microsoft's desire to get into the enterprise virtualization game. As I pointed out in the news story, the first public beta was months ahead of schedule, and the RC means I'll be shocked if we have to wait until August to get the final bits -- although Microsoft is still holding to that timeframe. Microsoft knows it has a lot of catching up to do, and it needs to get this first rev of Hyper-V out before it can start adding more functionality that will allow it to more directly compete with VMware, Virtual Iron, XenServer and the Xen variants by Novell, Sun, Red Hat, etc., etc. First on my list, and those of most, I'd imagine, is the death of "Quick Migration" and the birth of "Live Migration."
I would guess that when R2 of Windows Server 2008 comes out, we're likely to see a v2 of Hyper-V that includes Live Migration and other upgrades. BTW, a great review of Hyper-V is going to appear in the launch issue, due out within the next week or so (I'm hoping). In it, analyst Chris Wolf dives into the deep end of the pool to give you the straight scoop.
Posted by Keith Ward on 03/19/2008 at 12:48 PM2 comments
You know you're a geek at heart when getting a new server makes you weak-kneed with giddiness. Well, I guess I qualify.
I just got my new test server, courtesy of the good folks at HP. They've shipped me a ProLiant DL360 G5 for an extended loan, so that I can play with all this cool virtualization technology. It's a 1U "pizza box" (perfect for my home) with two 64-bit, quad-core Xeons and 4 GB RAM. Yes, that means eight screaming processors, all for little ol' me. Excuse me while I wipe the drool off of my keyboard.
I plugged in the two power cords, and was up and running in minutes. One of the first things I noticed is that this sucker is quiet. I tried this with another 1U server several months ago (an older Sun from my company's IT department), and the 64-bit processor and fans were so loud that I had to turn the server off to talk on the phone. Not so with my 360. It's not as quiet as a desktop, but it's definitely a purrer in the land of the growling cats.
At this point, it's appropriate to say a few words about support, which is a critical part of any server buy. After all, you're purchasing a company as much as a product.
This is actually my second HP server. My first was a ProLiant DL580 G5, which is a 4U, fire-breathing monster of a server. After turning that on, I couldn't get anything to come up in my monitor -- couldn't even get a video signal from the box. After calling my HP contact, they got me in touch pronto with an extremely able technician. We weren't able to solve the problem over the phone, so I sent the unit back in (it was really too big anyway for a home office), and I got another one from HP in no time flat. They were extremely responsive throughout the process, and I never had trouble getting responses to e-mails. (It turns out that the original server was damaged during shipping). Special kudos go out to Calvin Walker, who's been my HP contact through all this. I couldn't have asked for a better representative or more helpful person.
The 360 is absolutely perfect for me. It's fairly small (for a server), quiet and extremely powerful. I haven't used much of its functionality yet (just got it up and running yesterday), but I'll give you regular updates on its performance, reliability, etc. over the coming months. So far I've loaded Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V on it, and have downloaded (but not yet installed) VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3). I also plan on adding XenServer, Virtual Iron, and Parallels server virtualization platforms to the server. It will get a real workout. Keep an eye out for future reports (and pictures, and video, etc.)
Posted by Keith Ward on 03/18/2008 at 12:48 PM2 comments
Novell has
announced the next version of its flagship Linux platform; the most interesting thing for readers of this blog are the many hints dropped about Novell's virtualization strategy.
We don't know when SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 is coming out; Novell says it will release details about availability "later this year" (thanks for that Novell; that's extremely helpful information. Like, major "Duh"). One thing the press release strongly implies, however, is that Novell wants to compete with VMware in the embedded hypervisor space.
Here are the relevant passages:
"Novell plans to leverage the latest in Xen technologies in SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 to deliver virtualization in multiple formats, both directly as a component of the operating system and also as a stand-alone or embedded virtualization platform."
"Work is also underway to develop a stand-alone virtualization platform that can be embedded in new hardware or can be deployed on existing hardware."
"A new embedded version of SUSE Linux Enterprise is also planned so independent hardware vendors (IHVs) can embed virtualization and operating systems directly in their hardware."
Now, when you mention something three different times in the same release, you're doing the Internet equivalent of SHOUTING WITH ALL CAPS. Novell is taking on VMware directly with this embedding play (Xen, for those of you who don't know, is an open source hypervisor used as the virtualization platform of choice for many vendors, including Novell, Citrix, Sun, Oracle, Red Hat, Virtual Iron and others.)
Also of interest is the mention of a "stand-alone virtualization platform". That's interesting wording; could Novell be working on something new here, since they don't call it a Xen-based offering? Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but maybe not.
Novell is also moving beyond server virtualization. It began with the recent acquisition of PlateSpin, which gives it a stronger foothold in the management, capacity planning and disaster recovery aspects. It now continues in desktops, a segment that's seriously heating up. Back to the press release:
"Moreover, planned investments in new desktop virtualization technology will decouple end users' computing environments from the underlying hardware and allow them to work anywhere, anytime."
I wonder if that means Novell is developing desktop virtualization products, or is planning on buying their way in, a la PlateSpin. (Note the timing: Microsoft just bought its own desktop virtualizaiton vendor, Kidaro.) It will also make some folks over at Citrix sit up and take notice, as a new competitor for XenDesktop.
In all, this one little announcement is an important event. It signals that Novell plans to stake its claim in what it hopes is the coming virtualization gold rush.
Posted by Keith Ward on 03/18/2008 at 12:48 PM2 comments
Very interesting news to see that VMware's stock price is
back down to its post-IPO levels. The company had ridden the coaster to the very top, and has now plummeted down the other side.
My quick take: this is much ado about nothing. VMware's stock has been wildly overvalued since the IPO, and has now returned to the level at which it should be. Virtualization, while I'm quite sure is the coming thing, is still in its infancy. Witness the fact that most companies still use one facet of virtualization: server (also called hardware) virtualization for consolidation purposes. That functionality alone is not enough to continue to propel a company into the outer stratoshpere (to quote the Wonderful Wizard of Oz).
Remember one other thing, as well: Even at its post-IPO levels, the stock is still very strong. It's not exactly at Netscape levels. That IPO was sensational, and for the stock to remain there means that it's quite healthy.
Business is slowly moving into other areas, like storage virtualization, disaster recovery and network infrastructure. But VMware doesn't have a name in those areas, although they're starting to move in that direction. Thus, I'd expect their stock to start moving steadily back up, as their new offerings begin to impact the industry.
Microsoft's Hyper-V release probably has something to do with it, as well as more competition from other vendors like Citrix, Virtual Iron, Sun, Oracle, Red Hat, IBM, and all the interesting third-party developers out there. But, mostly, I think it's just the rebound we should have expected all along. In other words, I wouldn't be cashing in my shares if I held stock in VMware (and I don't own stock in VMware, or any other companies, in the interests of full disclosure.)
Posted by Keith Ward on 03/14/2008 at 12:48 PM0 comments
Well, things are moving along on the magazine front. I've seen the near-final version of the launch issue, and I have to say that I'm impressed by what we've got. Everything has come together nicely, and I'm confident we'll produce a magazine that will quickly be on your "must-read" list.
It's not often that you get to be the first in the world to do something, but that's the situation we find ourselves in. When Virtualization Review launches as a print magazine later this month, it will be the first print pub in this space -- ever. And, for now at least, the only one. That's a nice feeling, and one that an editor doesn't get very often.
We worked hard to make the issue great, and I think we've succeeded. Let me give you a sneak peek into what you'll find when you start flipping pages.
Our cover story does something that I don't think has ever been done in a magazine before: we profile the three most important and influential companies in virtualization -- VMware, Citrix and Microsoft -- and have Q&As with some of the most senior executives of each company. It's incredible coverage that's vital to understanding the virtualization landscape.
That's only the beginning. Storage virtualization is absolutely going to be a key technology in this space, and we've got a terrific overview of what it is (currently is, I mean; storage virtualization has been around for a long time under other guises -- for instace, RAID is essentially a virtualization technology. We'll be updating the definition) and why it's important for your environment.
We'll also have a feature on Microsoft's Hyper-V, from an industry vet who knows this stuff inside and out. He goes deep inside and will unveil some features (and lack of others) that are likely to surprise you. He'll also give a verdict on how enterprise-worthy Hyper-V is out of the box.
We also introduce our two columnists, Greg Shields (Virtual Architect) and Chris Wolf (Virtual Advisor). Greg will be familiar to anyone who attends 1105 Media's TechMentor conferences or reads Redmond magazine. He'll focus on broad architectural issues -- for instance, the benefits of OS virtualization over server virtualization (if you're asking "You mean there's a difference?", this column is definitely for you). (Side note: I take some pleasure in having helped "discover" Greg. He won a competition to be "Editor for a Day" way back when Redmond magazine was still Microsoft Certified Professional magazine. From then, he's grown a great deal as a writer (although he started out very strong), and he's now writing fulltime for a number of publications and Websites. He does a fantastic job, as you'll see in our pages, or have already seen elsewhere).
Chris Wolf is, quite simply, the man when it comes to virtualization. A Burton Group analyst who specializes in virtualization, he's quoted constantly in the media because of his expertise. His first column is an absolute "can't miss" about virtualization licensing -- which companies do it right, and which ones get it wrong (wonder where Microsoft fits in? You might be surprised). It's hard not to be excited about having two of the field's top virtualization experts writing for us, and is another reason Virtualization Review will be a valued addition to your magazine stack.
We also have a bunch of product reviews, including a roundup of PC virtualization products featuring VMware, Microsoft and Parallels (formerly SWsoft). So much innovation in virtualization is driven by vendors, both small and large, and we'll be covering them closely.
There's also lot of other news coverage and cool stuff. It should be out around the end of March, and in your hands shortly thereafter, if you're a subscriber. If not, it isn't too late!
I can't wait to hold the print issue in my hands. After reading it, I hope you'll share my enthusiasm for what we've begun here (and even want to be a contributor yourself. E-mail me in that case).
Posted by Keith Ward on 03/10/2008 at 12:48 PM5 comments
Vista, folks, is in trouble. Big trouble. Microsoft's latest desktop OS now faces a class-action
lawsuit, on top of all the other issues that continue to dog it nonstop. Even Microsoft execs, according to internal e-mails, hated it.
I've been wrong plenty on technology topics, but on Vista, I've been right. I felt almost out of the gate that it was going to have trouble gaining traction in the consumer and business markets. There has, of course, been lots of talk about application incompatibility and driver problems. But the main issue, it has always seemed to me, was a simple one: Windows XP works well. Darn well. It has a huge ecosystem around it, and is extremely stable. It does what most users need it to do.
In other words, if you use XP on a daily basis, what was the "killer app" that made you want to upgrade? What reason did you have to rip out a perfectly good OS and install a brand-new one; especially one that required more horsepower than the old one? We're not talking about an upgrade from Windows 95 or 98 to Windows 2000 or XP here; there were plenty of very good reasons to upgrade in that case. What's the reason here?
Microsoft could have actually used virtualization here to mitigate some of the issues. It could have included Virtual PC in the base OS, the way it's integrated Hyper-V into Windows Server 2008. It could have even made Windows XP a virtual appliance, so users would have a way to access all their non Vista-ready apps, devices and so on. Then they may have been able to find out what Vista could do for them while not having to deal with all the incompatibility issues.
That isn't to say that Vista is a bad OS. It isn't; I've been using it for more than a year now, and like it (as do my kids). But given its problems, and the growing perception that it's edging closer to the cliff, it may not ultimately matter whether it's any good or not.
My guess is that Microsoft is working feverishly to get Windows 7, as it may realize that Vista is teetering on the edge, and may soon fall into the sea -- the way the war elephants did in 300.
Posted by Keith Ward on 03/10/2008 at 12:48 PM2 comments
Parallels, the company formerly known as SWSoft, has released the second beta of
Parallels Server. I'll be interested to get my hands on it and start playing around, as soon as my "extended loan" server from HP comes in (one of the key benefits of being a technology journalist is getting to play around with stuff for free. And that reminds me -- I'm always looking for product reviewers. If you, similarly, like tinkering with new products, I can get you free reviewer's copies of these programs.
Let me know if you'd be interested. One caveat: you do need to be able to write, at least a little. We can work out those details.)
Server is Parallels' attempt to compete with VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, Virtual Iron and other traditional hypervisor vendors. Parallels has a very cool OS virtualization product called Virtuozzo, which essentially clones copies of an OS, like Windows Server 2003 or Linux, keeping each clone in its own container. The trick, though, is that each VM is based on the host OS; this being the case, it doesn't need to emulate hardware for each VM. The upshot is that Virtuozzo offers near-native performance for each VM, since hardware emulation incurs a (sometimes serious) performance penalty. You can load a lot more VMs on a server with OS virtualization than you can with server (also known as hardware) virtualization, and with no performance hit; the downside is that you can only have one OS per server -- no mix 'n match with OS virtualization.
Parallels, wisely understanding that making a more standard server virtualization product will allow it to offer a more comprehensive virtualization story than its rivals -- since it will have server and OS virtualization offerings -- went to work on Parallels Server. It shouldn't be too much longer before we see a shipping product. In the meantime, if you work with Virtuozzo or have used the earlier beta of Server, I'd like to
hear from you.
Posted by Keith Ward on 03/07/2008 at 12:48 PM2 comments
Very, very busy couple of days for me, as we're putting our launch issue to bed now, but I wanted to pass along one little tidbit of information from a managed service provider I took a briefing with yesterday.
This provider and I were chatting about his offerings, and about how his products work on top of VMware infrastructure. I asked him about the possibility of implementing his solution on top of Hyper-V. His answer was very revealing. He simply won't do it. His company has tested Microsoft's new hypervisor a good bit, and they've found it's simply not enterprise-ready in its current state; and he doesn't expect that to change when the final code of 1.0 hits, sometime this fall most likely.
A key reason for this is Hyper-V's use of "Quick Migration" of VMs. Quick Migration allows fast migration of VMs from one physical server to another. The catch is that the VM must be shut down to make the move. Even if it's only for a moment, it still has to happen. Compare that to VMware's VMotion, which is true "Live Migration." With VMotion, the VM is transferred without any interruption -- no lost session-state data, for example, which you will lose with Quick Migration.
For this MSP, the lack of live migration alone is a deal-killer. He sees Microsoft as well behind VMware, and doesn't see any scenario in the near future where he'll consider Hyper-V in his environment. It's a shame for Microsoft, since he hosts several important Microsoft applications for his customers.
Microsoft knew it was making some big compromises last year when it killed off live migration in order to make it ship concurrent with Windows Server 2008. I've talked to a number of high-ranking Microsofties in the virtualization group that put on a brave face about the lack of live migration; but I'm certain they were very disappointed about the compromise solution, for reasons like those given to me by the MSP.
While Quick Migration is a step in the right direction, it may be awhile before Hyper-V makes serious inroads into enterprise environments because of the lack of live migration.
Posted by Keith Ward on 03/05/2008 at 12:48 PM2 comments