VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘Xen’

So everybody and their mother has a virtualization product now. Too bad all the vendors could not standardize on the same key (or key combinations) that releases the mouse from a virtual machine’s (VM) console window. Until that day happens (don’t hold your breath) this post will be my listing of known host key or key combinations by vendor and product for when your mouse is stuck in a VM.

Please leave a comment on any products I have not included and I’ll update the list.

Updated 10.03.08 – corrected key combination for Mac versions and created separate rows for VMware Fusion and Parallels Workstation

One of the posts I used as a research reference was Common Virtualization Keyboard Shortcuts from x86virtualization.com. Check out this post for a complete listing all keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft and VMware products besides the one for escaping the mouse from the VM console.

On Thursday September 18, 2008 I was lucky enough to be in the audience for Brian Madden’s first ever VMworld Session. As a well known Citrix administrator and a popular blogger, Brian’s opinions and recommendations regarding Citrix, Microsoft Terminal Server, and Server Based Computing (SBC) in general are followed worldwide. With the audience overflowing the Ballroom D of the Venetian Hotel / Sans Expo Conference Center, Brian provided a thought provoking, entertaining, and often times humorous presentation comparing the pros and cons of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Terminal Services (TS) today. Then Looking forward, Brian analyzed the future of SBC and rationalized the potential of VDI. I would have to rank this session as one of the best that I have personally attended at any of the three VMworlds I have been to.

To get a feel for Brian’s presentation style, watch the footage Eric Sloof shot and now provides In streaming video from his NTPRO.nl blog site. Eric has spliced together roughly 17 minutes of the 1 hour presentation, but it is still worth watching in conjunction with reading my notes that I have provided in the rest of this post.

Brian started out by likening Terminal Services to the Read the rest of this entry »

Building on my previous post about the XenDesktop Hands On Lab training I attended last week, this post is dedicated to the real magic of Citrix XenDesktop. Ardence, a software streaming solution aquired by Citrix in December of 2006, is now Citrix Provisioning Server for Desktops with the amazing ability to deliver desktops from a single disk image. Provisioning Server, coupled with the Desktop Delivery Controller as the VDI Connection Broker, delivers complete Microsoft Windows, SUSE Linux, and Red Hat Linux operating systems images from networked storage. These OS images are quickly brokered to bare metal user’s desktops at Active Directory Domain log on. With VDI, the bare metal desktop happens to be the virtual hardware of virtual machines hosted on either XenServer, ESX Server, or Windows 2008 Server Hyper-V.

The Provisioning Server home page (linked above) explains the advantages achieved with the Ardence technology. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve heard VMware briefly speak about the Virtual Machine Interface (VMI) standard for the last few years. For example, it seems VMI is always a topic during one or more of the Keynote sessions at VMworld. However. I can’t recall ever hearing about VMI in the real world – that is , hearing about the progress of different operating systems integrating VMI. So, when I read the Techworld article Novell gives Suse kernel a VMware boost it made me realize that the open virtualization standard is alive and well. In fact, after a little research I discovered that popular GNU/Linux distributions now ship with VMI support enabled by default.

First of all, what is VMI? VMware has a couple of web pages on the subject. The Transparent Paravirtualization page provides a good introduction. Read the rest of this entry »

John Troyer from VMTN has hosted the first podcast episode of VMware Communities Roundtable and has posted a summary of the call notes at VMware Communities Roundtable podcast #1 | VMTN Blog. I am honored to have one of my “things that make you go hmmmm” (on the Quick Migration vs VMotion discussion) posts listed as a reference for one of the topics of the episode.

John announces the new series and the objective of the Roundtable podcasts with the following summary:

“Each week, we’ll bring together experts and leaders from the VMware Communities and virtualization blogs to discuss the interesting topics in virtualization. Think of this as if it were a group meeting up at VMworld over a pint to chat about the latest news.”

The episode lasts somewhere between 50 minutes to an hour and is a recorded call between John and an attendee list consisting of some of the virtualization community’s top minds from all over the world. VMware Community profiles of the individuals contributing to episode 1 are:

• Steve Beaver – sbeaver
• Tom Howarth
• Alex Mittell – mittell
• Eric Siebert – esiebert7625
• Edward Haletky -Texiwill
• Dave Mishchenko

Go to John’s VMTN post to listen or download the podcast, but the following is my quick summary and take-aways from the call. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week’s post about Dell’s embedded hypervisor options and the Help Me Choose: Hypervisor page sparked some reader discussion about whether XenServer can be used with shared storage. The answer to that question is that it depends on which version of XenServer you order. Dell is offering either XenServer Express or XenServer Enterprise versions as embedded options. Express is a limited version and can not use shared storage while Enterprise is fully featured and capable of using a SAN.

Citrix also offers a XenServer Standard edition, but apparently that version is not an option as an embedded hypervisor when ordering Dell hardware.

updated 05.17.08 – image updated to reflect changes to Citrix’s product comparison page after this post was publihsed and to show the 4 versions of XenServer. The table below has not been updated and does not show the Premium Edition. Click on the image for a larger version.

The image in this post and the following table were copied from the Citrix XenServer v4 web page. They offer a quick overview of the differences between the 3 versions.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was researching Dell’s latest announcement, Dell Unveils Virtualization Blockbuster – From Servers and Storage to Software and Services and trying to find definitive proof of the $99 price for embedded ESXi or the $299 price for embedded Citrix XenServer Express as reported by virtualization.info. Although I did not find the pricing in the announcement, I was able to find it by going through the process of using the Dell Online Store to build a R805 server. By clicking the green “customize it” button I was eventually able to see the Optional Virtualization Offerings section with the pricing for the embedded hypervisors. See the screenshot to the right. (click for larger view)What surprised me during this process was the “Help me Choose” link in this section. Clicking that link took me to a Help Me Choose: Hypervisor page from Dell that is basically accurate and helpful for comparing high level features of ESX 3.5, ESXi, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Here is a screenshot of the comparison table from Dell’s page. Read the rest of this entry »