VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘ovf’

Shortly after VMworld  I posted about my experience using vCloud Express. One of the things that I expected to see but found missing from the solution was the ability to perform virtual machine (VM) uploads and downloads between my own vSphere infrastructure and the hosted VMware environment. To be able to move my workloads (running on VMware VMs) from my private data center to the cloud or visa versa was an expectation I had based on the federated and private cloud discussions I’ve listened to over the past year. I expected to be able to at least manually export or import an OVF, but unfortunately did not find that capability while testing.

Before continuing allow me the liberty to reference a common expression - Can’t see the forest for the trees:

“An expression used of someone who is too involved in the details of a problem to look at the situation as a whole”

VMware has created the opposite scenario described in this expression with their concept of the Cloud. That is, VMware has allowed us to visualize what the forest will be before we have the trees. Of course, they had to. Was anyone besides Amazon talking Cloud before that, and if they were, was anyone even considering allowing companies to create their own internal clouds? I’d have to say VMware put the concept in my head. All I can say for sure is that I know I wasn’t listening to Cloud discussions before VMworld 2008.

Getting back to my vCloud Express testing and expectations, I was finally looking at the trees instead of the forest. I have since found some interesting information about how these trees are growing (if you will). To complete my reference, some of the details about VM transfer between private and public clouds are revealed by a VMware project has been privately referred to as Project Redwood. Read the rest of this entry »

VMware has recently announced the public availability of the VMware Studio 2.0 Beta, a tool to create virtual appliances and distribute them in OVF format, and today’s VMTN Roundtable Podcast provided a lot of discussion about the possible scenarios for using this new version. I’m still struggling to get my mind around the potential of Studio 2.0, but I did come away from today’s podcast with a few ideas that make me think I have either blurred the functions of several existing products or I have suddenly realized there may be some great “outside the box” use case scenarios for this new VMware software.

Before continuing, it is most clear that VMware Studio’s designed intent is for ISVs and developers to package their applications as preconfigured, ready to import virtual appliances. Now with version 2.0 even multi tiered applications can be wrapped up as a vApp in vSphere and exported as an OVF containing several VMs and then imported by any VMware virtualization host (free, hosted, or bare metal). If you are not already familiar with VMware Studio check out the Studio 2.0 Beta Overview web page for a complete listing of features, but the primary topic of interest (to me and the others on today’s podcast) seems to be centered around how enterprises can leverage VMware Studio, vApps, and OVF templates.

This is where the lines get blurry to me, and I’ll outline potential Studio / OVF usage that may be “outside of the box” from the VMware software’s intended purpose. Or is it? You tell me. Read the rest of this entry »

This is just a quick post to let readers know that VirtualBox announced on April 8 that version 2.2.0 was released. From the VirtualBox web site:

“Sun today released VirtualBox 2.2.0 which marks another major milestone for the world’s most popular free and open source hypervisor. Among the many improvements are support for OVF appliances, 3D acceleration for Linux/Solaris guests and support for up to 16GB of RAM per virtual machine. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 2.1.”

New features listed in the Changelog:

VirtualBox 2.2.0 (released 2009-04-08)

This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:

• OVF (Open Virtualization Format) appliance import and export (see chapter 3.8, Importing and exporting virtual machines, User Manual page 55)
• Host-only networking mode (see chapter 6.7, Host-only networking, User Manual page 88)
• Hypervisor optimizations with signi?cant performance gains for high context switching rates
• Raised the memory limit for VMs on 64-bit hosts to 16GB
• VT-x/AMD-V are enabled by default for newly created virtual machines
• USB (OHCI & EHCI) is enabled by default for newly created virtual machines (Qt GUI only)
• Experimental USB support for OpenSolaris hosts
• Shared folders for Solaris and OpenSolaris guests
• OpenGL 3D acceleration for Linux and Solaris guests (see chapter 4.8, Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL), User Manual page 70)
• Added C API in addition to C++, Java, Python and Web Services

I have upgraded my installations and plan to test the OVF import and export features soon. I will post again when I do.

Simon Crosby, Citrix CTO, just posted some details about the Project Kensho Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) tools on his blog. The post titled Kensho – Portability, Ubiquity… Now with Extra Freedom! is apparently a follow up from his Keynote speech at LinuxWorld this morning. Crosby confirms Citrix is on target for a technical preview release in September as well as offering some specifics on what virtual formats the tools can convert.

“This morning in my keynote at LinuxWorld I announced that the tools will not only be easy to use… but the core Kensho components will also be free, not only distributed at no cost (“free beer”) but licensed under an open source license (“free speech”) as well, to encourage open development and wider adoption.

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For maximum flexibility and portability, Kensho will support Read the rest of this entry »

Citrix has announced this week the projected September 2008 preview release of the Project Kensho tools to create virtualized application appliances in the Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF). The official Citrix news release, Citrix Unveils Project Kensho for Hypervisor-Independent App Workloads, states the following:

“Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, today announced “Project Kensho,” which will deliver Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) tools that, for the first time, allow independent software vendors (ISVs) and enterprise IT managers to easily create hypervisor-independent, portable enterprise application workloads. These tools will allow application workloads to be imported and run across Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMware ESX virtual environments.”

In the future Citrix will deliver OVF tools for the first time?

VMware’s OVF Tool already exists today and can be used on VMs created with Workstation, Player, and Fusion. VMs on ESX can also be exported to OVF via the VI Client version 2.5. Here’s some more information from the VMware OVF Tool technical note published in December 2007: Read the rest of this entry »