Archive for the 'Virtualization' Category
Friday, December 21st, 2007
Daryl Stokes from IBM on open source virtualization
This looks like a great webinar (just landed in my inbox so I haven’t looked at it yet). I work with Daryl on a regular basis and am always impressed. Daryl also brought in Tony Iams from Ideas International who has a good knack for delving into the OS and platform details in a meaningful way. Hopefully my schedule will open up this afternoon to give me time to check it out before I head out on vacation!
|
||
 |
|
|
The benefits of virtualization in the datacenter are becoming well-known: Server consolidation, capabilities to deploy more applications and virtual machines on a single server, cost savings, power savings. Do these benefits encompass open source virtualization as well? Are there additional benefits of open source virtualization that would justify a serious evaluation against current solutions on the market today? Join Ziff Davis Enterprises for this panel on pairing server virtualization and open source technologies to learn more about how datacenter IT managers can achieve lower TCO, gain flexibility in a mixed-source environment, and increase data center efficiencies. The panel includes an analyst’s overview on open source alternatives for virtualization, a case study by an integrator on implementation, and explores:
Featured Speakers: |
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007
Resizing a KVM Windows virtual disk image
Just noticed the incoming link from Bryan Murdock on how he went through the process of resizing a Windows virtual image in a qcow2 file format to add more disk space on the virtual image. I haven’t actually done this myself, but it looks like there are issues resizing an image that has an NTFS filesystem. If you need to resize your image, check out Bryan’s post on how he did it here. (I like his method better than others)
I also found a good wiki page (I think it’s new) showing the guest OS’s that work (or don’t work) with KVM.
http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki/Guest_Support_Status
Monday, December 10th, 2007
rPath webinar on virtual appliance licensing featuring Mark Webbink
Very interesting webinar with Mark Webbink (formerly SVP and GC of Red Hat).
10 Rules of the Road for Licensing and Packaging Linux-based Virtual Appliances
December 13, 2007 @ 2:00 pm Eastern Time
Distributing software as virtual appliances with Just Enough Operating System – specifically Linux – is a rapidly expanding market opportunity. But for many traditional proprietary software vendors, open source licensing is an unfamiliar road.
If you are an ISV planning, building, or already shipping virtual appliances, don’t miss this webinar. Former SVP and Deputy General Counsel at Red Hat Mark H. Webbink will map out ten essential check points for packaging Linux with an application into a virtual appliance, addressing cumbersome roadblocks such as copyright protection for collective works v. derivative works.
Webinar seats for this event are limited so register early to reserve yours. All registrants will receive a copy of Mark’s white paper, “Licensing and Packaging for Virtual Appliances” after the event.
We are accepting questions in advance only and Mark will address them in the second half of the webinar. Please submit your questions on the registration form or send them to info@rpath.com .
Event Date: December 13, 2007
Time: 2:00 pm Eastern Time
Enroll Here: https://rpath.webex.com/rpath/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=686123039
Monday, December 10th, 2007
Alan Robertson on Load Balancing with Linux
Alan Robertson has a great post up providing an overview of load balancing techniques with Linux using LVS (Linux Virtual Server) and Linux-HA.
Friday, November 30th, 2007
InfoWorld: “Why Microsoft Rattles The Patent Saber”
Interesting article over at InfoWorld:
Imagine you’re Microsoft and you’ve spent years struggling to get
Windows Server 2008 out the door and will be struggling afterward to add server virtualization? Then along comes Linus Torvalds and his merry band and they add KVM to the Linux kernel over the course of a few months, release a new kernel for review every 2 to 3 months, and attract thousands of developers interested in the new features. Linux had both VMware and Xen hypervisors running on it just fine. Now it’s got another one freely available inside the kernel. It must feel in Redmond like Linux steals from the rich to give to the poor.
and…
Now the Linux kernel development process, which has been under way for 16 years, represents the largest, most complicated ongoing software development project in the world, with the possible exception of Windows itself. It’s moving fast, fluidly filling niches that Microsoft in the past had staked out. It’s leading in virtualization, in virtual appliances, in mobile devices. It’s threatening Windows on a number of fronts.
Thursday, November 15th, 2007
IBM introduces Blue Cloud
I rarely link to press releases, but this one looks good enough. The Blue Cloud is built on Linux on both x86 and POWER processors. This is very cool. Congrats to Dan Frye and his “kStart” team on bringing a great vision to reality.
Blue Cloud — based on IBM’s Almaden Research Center cloud infrastructure — will include Xen and PowerVM virtualized Linux operating system images and Hadoop parallel workload scheduling. Blue Cloud is supported by IBM Tivoli software that manages servers to ensure optimal performance based on demand. This includes software that is capable of instantly provisioning resources across multiple servers to provide users with a seamless experience that speeds performance and ensures reliability even under the most demanding situations. Tivoli monitoring checks the health of the provisioned servers and makes sure they meet service level agreements.
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
Fedora 8 sees strong first week adoption; but what will it take to quadruple or exponentially grow?
While the Fedora camp may be excited about 54,000 users, I have to admit given the stats I’ve seen 54K users is a small drop in the Linux user base ocean. I’m not sure exactly how they track this …
I’m actually one of those 54,000 users as I installed Fedora 8 on my home PC which now dual boots Fedora and Vista (solely for Photoshop and my Sony HD camcorder video editing). I actually replace Ubuntu Gutsy with Fedora to try out the new virtualization features in Fedora 8. I must admit, when it comes to virtualization, no distro comes close to Fedora (I tried Ubuntu 7.10 and OpenSuse 10.3). The polish, focus, and achievements with Xen and KVM are second to none. The Fedora 8 Virtual Machine Monitor is fantastic – worth testing the distro out alone. I have not (yet) seen any other distro port this with as many features available.
However, from an end user experience perspective, I would recommend every Fedora developer force themselves to use Ubuntu for the next month. The Ubuntu competition has a huge leg up on Fedora from a user experience perspective and it’s as if they don’t even know it (or Fedora has decided just to not care). For instance, just try watching an MPEG movie, try even finding how to use the licensed, paid for codecs, try listening to an MP3, try enabling 3D desktop with nVidia drivers, try customizing the 3D effects. When you need help, does the Wiki really help? Does the FAQ that is still stuck on Fedora 7 content apply? Fedora has now released quite a few well done releases – why are there still issues?
It truly was difficult to accept that Fedora was still as far behind as it was from an end user perspective. Now, I don’t want to scare anyone off – as a Linux user – I’ve grown accustomed to self help and working through these issues one by one. None are insurmountable and Fedora 8 is no more complicated for these things than Fedora 7. However, Fedora 7 should not be the bar against which you’re competing. I’ve said many times that Linux distros should ignore Windows and focus on the value Mac OS X offers its users (security holes, firewall issues, and upgrade dilemmas aside).
Thursday, November 8th, 2007
Fedora 8 is Out; KVM is the default virtualization technology
I’m installing Fedora 8 and just noticed that when you add “Virtualization” during the install, the default is KVM (not Xen). Very interesting and very cool. Xen is also an option.
You can grab Fedora 8 yourself over here:
http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
Running Windows Server 2008 with KVM on Linux
See my prior post on KVM if you want to get started with KVM setup. Assuming you have KVM working on your system, it takes just 3 easy steps to get started using Windows Server 2008 on Linux in KVM. Before starting, you must have a copy of Windows Server 2008 of course. If you don’t have one handy, you can download and burn an eval DVD ISO from here.
Once you have your DVD ready, just execute the following in a terminal:
- # qemu-img create win2008EE.img -f qcow 10G
- # kvm -m 750 -cdrom /dev/cdrom -boot d win2008EE.img
- # kvm -m 500 win2008EE.img
That’s it. Windows Server 2008 seems to require ACPI so the -no-acpi option gave me an error. I will also note that I could not get the 64-bit Enterprise version working and instead opted for the 32-bit Standard (I suspect the issue is the 64-bits and has nothing to do with the edition).
First impression: Windows Server 2008 will feel just like Server 2003 and in some ways feel different. It does seem to startup/shutdown faster than before but there are so many variables it’s hard to tell. 2008 is actually quite visually appealing… can’t point to one thing, but the polish is nice for a server version (I’d call it a Vista minimalist look). Server 2008 of course has all the Microsoft GUI config screens newbie Linux admins dream to find… you have to give Microsoft credit for making it very simple to access and setup server services out of the box.
Microsoft has made quite a few changes (I haven’t explored them all) and I have not used the Core version yet. One noticeable change is (sit down for this)… IIS 7.0 has gone modular – yes, it’s true. Setting up IIS 7.0 will actually look like you’re installing packages using a Yum or Apt-Get GUI. You will be asked to confirm “features” which are akin to dependencies. Whoever redesigned IIS used Apache and Linux – the influence is notable.
I’m barely scratching (or seeing) the surface here so I’ll end with a promise to post more as I play around with the eval over the next few weeks.
Oh, I guess I did also skip the fourth step:
4. Install Windows Server anti-virus, anti-everything security software :-)
And here are some screenshots for those who are interested or require visual confirmation:
(Initial configuration screen)
(IIS 7.0 Install with dependency confirmation)
IIS 7.0 setup – I dare anyone to create an informative intro for newbies to Apache like this)
(IIS 7.0 add features/modules)
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
Using Linux KVM Virtualization on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10
I _really_ like KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machines) . It’s extremely simple to setup and use and lacks the intrusiveness of hypervisors like VMware and Xen. In this post, I’ll show you how to setup KVM on the latest Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”. Ubuntu already has a decent howto available here that walks you through the steps, but I’ll go a few steps further in places (and shorter in others) using the new Gutsy Gibbon release.
First off, you need a system with full virtualization enabled processors, or virtualization assist. AMD calls this Secure Virtual Machine (or SVM) and Intel calls its technology VT-x (or vmx). You can read more about this at LWN if you would like here.
I’m using Ubuntu 7.10 64-bit on an AMD64x2 dual core processor that has the AMD hardware virtualization assist extensions . To find out if your processor supports this, use the following command:
# egrep ‘(vmx|svm)’ /proc/cpuinfo
Example output from an AMD system (hence, “svm” is highlighted). If this were Intel based, you would see “vmx”:
First, start by installing KVM and QEMU using apt-get or Synaptic Package Manager
# apt-get install qemu kvm
# modprobe kvm-amd (or kvm-intel for intel procs)
Note that if you do not modprobe the KVM module, you will get an error such as the following when you try to start KVM in the steps that follow:
Installing an Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon server guest OS
# qemu-img create gutsy-server.img -f qcow2 6G
This creates a file for your virtual machine image in your current directory. QEMU and KVM actually support many other useful file formats as described in the qemu documentation. One of the more userful options here is to use “-f vmdk” as the vm image that you create and setup will be compatible with VMware 3 and 4. Obviously the ability to export and use the same image with VMware can be valuable.
One question you may have at this point is “why use KVM; doesn’t QEMU do this too?”. The simple answer is that KVM uses processor extensions for virtualization whereas QEMU uses processor emulation. QEMU emulates the processor and system devices. KVM does not need to emulate the processor but relies on QEMU to do its device emulation. The interesting use case for QEMU is that it can also emulate other processor architectures such as SPARC, PowerPC and MIPS (see this website) on an x86 host. While the difference may seem subtle, there are definite performance advantages to KVM (and once can assume stability advantages). Someday, we may see them merge… but I doubt it. You can find a great overview of the differences between various Linux virtualization technologies at developerWorks here.
Back to KVM, the command above creates an image file that grows as the VM requires. With an inflatable disk image, your VM grows with the space used by the virtual machine up to 6GB (versus pre-allocating a full 6GB disk image). Now, let’s startup an Ubuntu install for our new virtual machine.
# kvm -m 750 -cdrom /home/user/ubuntu-7.10-server-amd64.iso -boot d ubuntu-server.img
For new users, the /home/user/ should just be the path to where you stored your Ubuntu iso download. If you execute this command and only see a black window pop up that looks empty, you can hit enter to start the install and the screen will come back. Or, you can add “-std-vga” to the kvm command above to help with the framebuffer Ubuntu startup.
This will start up KVM and boot the virtual machine off of the Ubuntu iso image. You can also boot from a CD/DVD drive by using this command:
# kvm -m 750 -cdrom /dev/cdrom -boot d ubuntu-server.img
Once you execute the command, QEMU will startup and you will see the normal boot options as if you started your computer with an Ubuntu install disk in the drive. I had to use -no-acpi with Ubuntu 7.10 or else I would get kernel panics once it went to install. The title bar should show QEMU/KVM. If you just see QEMU (as in the image below), then KVM failed (you most likely forgot to load the KVM module in the steps above) and you should exit even though it appears to be working. If you see QEMU/KVM, you should now have a working KVM install. Continue with the server install process and configuration as usual.
Once installation is finished, the Ubuntu guest will try to restart. This will fail, and that’s fine. You can close out the QEMU/KVM window, return to the command line, and start up your KVM guest Ubuntu server for the first time. I also tend to give running guests less memory than during the install…
# kvm -no-acpi -m 500 ubuntu-server.img
(note that I installed the text based version of Ubuntu server with no GUI or X windows)
Fedora Core 8 Beta as a KVM Guest
I’ll create an image for Fedora 8 first, using vmdk as the file format to later use this same image with VMware. You can click here for more information on how to use a QEMU created vmdk file in VMware.
# qemu-create fedora8.img -f vmdk 6G
# kvm -no-acpi -m 750 -cdrom /dev/cdrom -boot d fedora8.img
# kvm -no-acpi -m 500 fedora8.img
Windows Server 2008 in KVM with Ubuntu:
See my post here for setting up Windows Server 2008 in KVM
Next up: managing KVM processes, KVM networking, and sharing files between host and guests.
Other Resources to Check Out:
Virtual disk images: http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/qemu-doc.html#SEC24
KVM Wiki: http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki/Front_Page
Thursday, August 16th, 2007
Citrix will acquire XenSource
Rumors had been floating for some time so this acquisition is not much of a surprise. Congrats to the XenSource management team for a well played strategy – $500M can go a long way! (unless your first name is Larry and last name Ellison)
Having thought about how these open source software companies that have done well, it seems many of them either 1) are cool so Google buys them, or 2) they use open source integration with Linux or other platforms to essentially become a control point. Are companies really trying to acquire the software or the controls points? In light of this move the paravirt-ops interface by the Linux kernel team was brilliant ;-)
It will be interesting to see how this plays out – XenSource is not an extremely simple fit for Citrix …
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2171251,00.asp?kc=HOTTOPICS081507STR1
Monday, August 13th, 2007
Citrix courting XenSource?
I unfortunately missed my meeting with Simon at LinuxWorld as we both messed up the location. It looks like he may be quite busy and could have used the time back…
http://www.theregister.com/2007/08/13/citrix_buy_xensource/
Analysts at Credit Suisse last week issued a research note saying that Citrix is – or at least should be – in the market for hypervisor software key to virtualizing both PCs and servers. Either XenSource or Virtual Iron – developers of the open source Xen hypervisor – would stand as attractive buys for Citrix, according to the analysts. They reckon such software could help Citrix as it looks to expand a software empire based on the flexible use of server-side code.
Thursday, August 2nd, 2007
LinuxInsider: “IBM Turns a Brighter Shade of Green With Linux Mainframe Switch”
This is BIG news; 30 System z mainframes replacing just shy of 4,000 server! A large chunk of IBM’s own infrastructure is going to Linux – yes Linux, not z/OS, Linux. I find this very exciting b/c it shows just how much value the IBM Systems platforms bring to Linux, and Linux brings to IBM. By embracing Linux, IBM has turned it into a game changing platform for customer (and it’s own) solutions, rather than spend marketing dollars trying to point out flaws. Can we call this the largest Linux migration ever? Maybe not, I think we have some ex-Sun customers who have topped it. However, saving enough electricity to power a small town – very cool.
IBM will save enough electricity “to power a small town,” the company said, with its new initiative of replacing 3,900 computer servers in its datacenters with 30 System z mainframes running Linux, for an expected energy reduction of 80 percent over the next five years. This represents one of the most significant transformations in a generation for IBM’s datacenters.
Monday, July 30th, 2007
SAP Certifies its NetWeaver Apps for RHEL 5 AP
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070718/20070718005069.html?.v=1
Typical press release, however, noticed a couple things of interest:
1) It includes RHEL/Xen virtualization scenarios.
The certification includes the virtualization technology embedded in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 for use with SAP® applications.
2) SAP is writing its applications to take advantage of Linux specific technologies that may have once been reserved to legacy UNIX platforms:
Furthermore, it offers a complete solution stack through the integration of Red Hat Global File System (GFS), Cluster Suite, SELinux and further technologies for high availability, storage management and security.
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
Linux is unstoppable: the contributor base is still growing.
Interesting article over at LinuxWorld.com:
A graph of all the developers involved in the upcoming 2.6.22 release, and the relationships of who reviewed whose patches, extends to a 40-foot-long printout with names in tiny type. The graph is on display at the Ottawa event.
The new “mess” results in innovative new features getting integrated into Linux distributions much more quickly, says Jonathan Corbet, author of the camera driver for One Laptop Per Child and another co-author of Linux Device Drivers. Previously, when developers maintained both “stable” and “development” kernels, it could have been two to three years before a feature made it from development to mainstream users.
Monday, June 25th, 2007
The greening of Linux
Saw an article over at CNet this morning highlighting the power saving improvements that are in the latest kernels. These “tickless” kernels can offer a boost in power efficiency for those of us running mobile Linux on laptops and also for Linux server users with scale out power efficiency concerns. This is truly an open community tackling a growing user concern both proactively and early.
http://news.com.com/Linux+coders+tackle+power+efficiency/2100-1007_3-6192865.html
Tuesday, June 12th, 2007
Video: Nationwide Insurance VP describes how to save $15M over 3 years with virtualized, mission critical workloads on Linux
Guru Vasudeva
AVP & Enterprise Chief Architect, Enterprise OCTO, Nationwide
During 2005 Nationwide, a Fortune 100 insurance and financial services company, embarked on a journey to aggressively exploit virtualization and Linux to address the growing software and data center costs, to simplify the environment, and to significantly improve the provisioning process. Today www.nationwide.com and 10 other mission critical applications run on virtualized Linux environment contributing more than $15 million of savings over the next three years. Guru Vasudeva, AVP and Chief Architect of Nationwide shares the approach, architecture, and lessons learned from this successful deployment.
UPDATE: Sorry, I forgot to include the link URL :-)
http://www.linuxworld.com/events/keynotes/lwsf06-guru.html
Recorded August 16, 2006
Wednesday, June 6th, 2007
ServerWatch Product Excellence Awards
Interesting survey of user preferences for product excellence. I was a bit shocked by the virtualization winner.. with VMware being so popular…
Wednesday, June 6th, 2007
CA Plugs the Mainframe: 10 Reasons Why the Mainframe is Growing in Importance
http://ca.com/us/news/article.aspx?cid=144435
I would actually add that IBM is not the only mainframe server maker – in fact Sun recently launched a line it wants to have considered in the mainframe category (unfortunately it doesn’t run Linux…). Fujitsu, HP, and many others are all battling in this market and guess what, mainframe usage is actually growing… Linux is a great platform for these workloads – it’s easily portable from x86 to RISC to mainframe.
The mainframe has come a long way since the 1980s, when it was cloistered away in some data center enclave. It’s now a fully-connected resource within the distributed, web-enabled enterprise, where it carries an ever-growing burden of business-critical processing tasks. The IBM System z9 mainframe’s new hardware and operating system technologies, complemented by innovative, ISV management solutions, further boost its capabilities and performance to meet the continuously evolving demands of today’s IT-centric businesses.
Here are 10 reasons why the mainframe is growing in importance:
[click URL above to see the list]
Wednesday, June 6th, 2007
BMW sporting flashy new Xen virtualization
http://www.linuxlookup.com/2007/jun/04/novell_supports_xen_virtualization_at_bmw
According to BMW, Xen virtualization technology built into SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 will allow the company to increase flexibility in managing server life cycles. BMW will also gain operational and cost advantages in other areas, in addition to having a flatter support structure through the integrated operating system and virtualization layer. Hardware resources can be more efficiently used through server consolidation, and BMW is able to cluster virtual servers and migrate them live from one physical server to another as needed. The company is also currently evaluating Novell ZENworks(R) Orchestrator as a way to manage the resulting virtual data center systems.
Subscribe to RSS/Atom Feed
