VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘windows’

First announced at the Microsoft getVirtualNow launch event on Sept 8, Microsoft’s stand alone, bare metal installable Hyper-V Server 2008 is now available for free download. Go to the
Microsoft Hyper-V Server page to get your copy.

Patrick O’Rourke’s Windows Virtualization team Blog post Bare metal hypervisor is here, along with new training, services announced the availability yesterday (Oct 1). Patrick summarized the new product as follows:

“This is the no-cost, bare metal hypervisor. Think ESXi, but with Windows and not Linux.”

Patrick appears to be confusing ESXi with another version of VMware’s servers as ESXi does not require or use Linux as an OS. Regardless, the feature comparison is justified.

More on the new training from Microsoft in another post.

When you are ready to build your Hyper-V Server 2008 host, here’s a quick screen shot summary of the hardware requirements for your reference: Read the rest of this entry »

Although it’s VMware’s conference, every year I’ve attended Microsoft (and various other virtualization competitors) has always had a booth in the Solutions Exchange and/or presented their own session. VMworld 2008 was no exception. In fact, this year Microsoft’s presence was a little more noticeable than in the past. Starting with a marketing stunt of handing out $1 casino chips with anti VMware propaganda on Day 1, continuing throughout the conference with activities in the Solutions Exchange at their booth, and finally ending the week with their own session, Microsoft did their best to grab the attention of the attendees.

On Thursday 9.18 at 2:00 pm I sat in on Microsoft’s Virtualization session hosted by David Greshler and Edwin Yuen. The presentation was informative and entertaining with David explaining Microsoft’s server and desktop virtualization products and Edwin providing some great demos of Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. This post is a summary of my notes along with numerous links to related videos, blogs, and sites.

What’s New in Microsoft Virtualization? Read the rest of this entry »

This post is a summary of notes from the 1:30 pm VMworld 2008 session titled Managing ESX in a COS-less World. The discussion was about various options for managing ESXi without the Service Console OS (COS). The session was hosted by members of the ESXi team and contained forward looking statements about possible future directions. As always, the disclaimer was discussed with the audience before the presentation began. (Do I need to keep explaining this? Probably the safe thing to do.)

Scott Lowe apparently was in the same session so check his
TA2659: Managing ESX in a COS-less World post for a lot of additional information besides what I have recorded here.  Scott, my 3 finger “peck typing” doesn’t compare to your keyboard skills!

One of the first things mentioned was that the next major release of ESX/ESXi would be the last release of the two products together. I guess this means that ESXi kernel development will be independent of the ESX versions that provide the VDC-OS. We were told ESXi will continue without the COS and that ESX would include a stripped down COS.

There are several reasons VMware needed to remove the COS from ESX. Read the rest of this entry »

If you missed the Microsoft Get Virtual Now Virtualization Event in Bellevue, WA today then check out the recorded Keynote session presented by Bob Muglia, Senior Vice President Server and Tools Business, and Kevin Turner, Chief Operating Officer. This 45 minute video, recorded and provided by Microsoft, provides live demonstrations of App-V, VDI with Windows Vista on Citrix XenDesktop, Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, and the newly announced, bare metal installable, and free Hyper-V Server 2008. This Keynote also features the first public demonstration of the new Live Migration feature announced to be included in the future release of Server 2008 R2.

Much like when VMware used to frequently demonstrate Vmotion, at around 35 minutes into the Keynote Bob Muglia streams a video from a virtual machine that is live migrated between hosts in a Server 2008 cluster. When the migration is completed without any disruption Bob declares “There is no magic in Vmotion. It’s just a feature.”

Click this link to watch the video in your desktop media player. If the link does not work from your browser then right click the link and save the .asx file to your desktop. Then double click the saved file.

300_ms_virtualization_PM_OD_080908.asx

The following summary of announcements from today’s event was also provided for the Press by Microsoft: Read the rest of this entry »

A critical piece of the migration to virtual infrastructure is the consideration of how to backup the new virtual machines and the data they contain. Although switching to a full VM backup strategy is desirable, the reality of the required tape or disk media needed to support the large backup file sizes causes companies to continue to use the existing physical environment’s agent based backup.

However, Vizioncore and Datadomain offer a feasible backup solution using commonly available IP based storage that should make IT departments with even the tightest budgets look twice. Combining deduplication with LAN based VM backups to CIFS shares or NFS mounts, this solution provides a cost effective transition to full VM backups with minimal storage space consumed. Datadomain and Vizioncore established a certified partnership for VMware infrastructure in September of 2007 and therefore provide established solutions with technologies proven to work well together.

The image to the right was taken from Vizioncore’s solution .pdf titled Cost Efective Backup & Recovery & Storage for Virtualized Environments with Vizioncore Solutions and Data Domain Deduplication Appliances. The .pdf provides an overview of the design as well as recommendations for ensuring performance. This diagram illustrates a solution for not only VMs but also physical servers backed up as VMs by vRanger Pro’s P2V-DR feature.

To provide more specifics about this solution’s possibilities Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft is throwing a free virtualization event next Monday. The September 8th Launch Event at the Meydenbauser Center in Bellevue, WA is obviously strategically timed to grab the world’s attention before VMware holds it’s annual VMworld conference the week after in Las Vegas. So, what does Microsoft have planned while they have the spotlight to themselves? The Microsoft Virtualization launch web page explains they are doing a lot!

“Find out how Windows Server 2008® with Hyper-V™, Microsoft System Center – including Virtual Machine Manager 2008 – and Microsoft Desktop and Application Virtualization allow you to deploy, manage and get VIRTUAL now like never before.

• Learn about Microsoft’s virtualization strategy and roadmap from senior Microsoft executives and industry analysts from Burton Group, Forrester Research and Greenmonk
• Hear from customers who have deployed Microsoft Virtualization products
• Get a free Microsoft Virtualization evaluation software kit*
• Visit the exhibit hall and test-drive the latest hardware and software solutions for a virtual environment from Microsoft and its partners.
• Take a technical deep dive by attending one of the conference sessions or hands-on labs.
• Join us at the closing launch party featuring the band Live.

This is a FREE event!”

With Keynotes from top Microsoft Executives mixed between Breakout Sessions covering Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I had a customer ask me for help with a repetitive administrative task that is extra aggravating for shops with a lot of Linux virtual machines (VMs). The customer was frustrated with the manual process of upgrading VMware Tools after kernel upgrades in their VMs. It’s a problem unique to Linux since the Windows operating system kernel does not change very frequently, but the development cycle of several Linux distributions can mean multiple kernel versions each year. After each upgrade and subsequent VM reboot the VMware tools must be re-installed so the tools are compiled correctly with the new kernel. Not exactly fun to do when you have a lot of Linux VMs.

I suggested 2 alternatives for the customer. The first is a scripted solution configured inside each Linux VM and the second is a built in feature of VirtualCenter and ESX for versions 2.0.1 and 3.0.1 or greater. I have not tested either of these solutions. My reason for writing this post is partly to explain the options, but also to get some feedback from the community. Let me know if you use or have tried either of these solutions or anything similar. If there is a better way please comment on this post! If you try one of these for your Linux virtual guests let me know what works and what doesn’t.

The following methods require that VMware tools are already installed in the Linux guests. For instructions for installing the tools check out the current VMware .pdf guide titled Basic System Administration Update 2 Release for ESX 3.5, ESXi version 3.5, VirtualCenter 2.5. if you are wondering if you should even install VMware tools in Linux guests than check out my post “Why do I need to install VMware Tools?”. Read the rest of this entry »