Embedded Virtualization

Xen version 3.3 enhances performance, scalability to open source hypervisor

Xen.org announced the release of a new version of the project’s open source hypervisor, Xen 3.3 today, with enhancements to security, performance and scalability.

The release is now available for download from the Xen.org community site and is the product of a distributed development effort by senior engineers from more than 50 hardware, software, and security vendors.

The new Xen 3.3 release provides users with the new features including:

* Power management in the hypervisor
* Hardware Virtual Machine (HVM) emulation domains for better scalability, performance and security
* Shadow pagetable improvements for the best HVM performance ever
* Hardware Assisted Paging enhancements
* Device passthrough enhancements
* CPUID feature levelling that allows safe domain migration across systems with different CPU models (within the same vendor brand - Intel or AMD)

Xen 3.3 provides virtualization for x64, IA64 and ARM-based platforms, and through close links with CPU and chipset vendors in the Xen project, Xen 3.3 also supports the latest hardware virtualization enhancements, like Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel-VT).

With Xen’s memory ballooning feature, the hypervisor can reallocate memory between guest Virtual Machines (VMs) to guarantee performance and allow greater density of VMs per server. Xen 3.3 also offers CPU portability to allow live migration of VMs across different CPUs, active power optimization to reduce server power consumption, and significant security enhancements.

Simon Crosby, CTO, Virtualization and Management Division, Citrix Systems, said in a statement, “In just two years, Xen has rapidly gained share in virtualization, much as Linux did in operating systems - and in the same period Xen has driven the price of competing hypervisors to zero, allowing any vendor to include virtualization for free.”

In addition to its growing development community, Xen hypervisor is the standard virtualization platform used by cloud computing providers like Amazon.com. It is also used in virtualization products from Citrix (XenServer), Fujitsu, Novell, Oracle (Oracle VM), Sun Microsystems (Sun xVM), and Virtual Iron, and is available as an embedded option in many x86 servers.

Sun xVM Virtual Box expands reach with global OEM agreements

Santa Clara, California-based Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced a handful of multi-year original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreements with Avanquest Software, Q-layer and Zenith InfoTech Ltd. to allow them to deliver Sun’s xVM VirtualBox virtualization platform.

Sun xVM VirtualBox software is a component of Sun’s broader xVM virtualization and management software portfolio, which includes Sun xVM Ops Center, Sun xVM Server and the Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Software. The xVM VirtualBox software is the free, entry-level offering into the Sun xVM platform.

Sun xVM VirtualBox supports whichever operating system and application stack a user chooses, and has a small enough footprint to be an embedded component in OEM equipment. 

Since its release in January 2007, Sun xVM VirtualBox has surpassed 5 million downloads, and is the first free hypervisor to support all major host operating systems, including Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, Solaris and OpenSolaris.

The 20 megabyte download installs in less than 5 minutes, and has received positive third-party reviews and awards, and is being used by the Texas Advanced Computing Center, or TACC on part of its 4,000-node supercomputer.

La Garenne-Colombes, France-based Software publisher Avanquest Software will produce and publish Sun xVM VirtualBox bundled with OpenSolaris and sell it in retail outlets in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and France. Beginning this fall, Avanquest will provide Mac users with a solution to run the Windows operating system through Sun xVM VirtualBox.Mountain View, Calif.-based Q-Layer, a provider of cloud computing through Virtual Private Data Centers (VPDC), is using Sun xVM VirtualBox to deliver virtualization capabilities for its customers.

Bombay, India-based Zenith InfoTech Ltd., a managed services and business continuity software provider, has built its network attached storage appliance for small and medium-sized businesses using Sun xVM VirtualBox.

Sun xVM VirtualBox is available free of charge under a Personal Use License. OEMs have two options for licensing xVM VirtualBox: open source edition under GPLv2 or under a commercial license.

Citrix XenServer now shipping in Dell PowerEdge servers

Citrix Systems, Inc.’s XenServer hypervisor is now shipping in Dell PowerEdge servers, following the partnership accouncement in October 2007.

With Dell, initial products available worldwide include the Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition and Citrix XenServer Dell Enterprise, both of which include Dell’s management software, Dell OpenManage System Management. Express Edition is a free download that can be upgraded to Enterprise edition. 

By factory-integrating the Citrix XenServer hypervisor into Dell PowerEdge platforms, users can deploy virtual machines (VMs) when they start up their systems for the first time. Also, the XenServer Dell Enterprise Edition does not require additional management licenses or hardware. Also, upgrades for features like live migration on Dell’s MD3000 direct attached storage arrays can be made easily, by imputing a license key.

In March, Hewlett-Packard began shipping XenServer embedded in ProLiant servers. HP’s servers also have specific versions of XenServer called HP Select Edition, which differs from traditional XenServer in that it is tied into HP management tools, like HP Insight Control and HP Integrated Lights-Out for remote server management, according to a Citrix spokesperson.

In light of its partnerships with HP and Dell, Citrix simplified its licensing model recently to per-server, instead of per core, as reported on SearchServerVirtualization.com. This way, users can deploy an unlimited number of virtual machines or guest operating systems on each physical server for a single price, regardless of whether it has one, two or four CPU sockets.

VMware’s ESX 3i for free?

The Inquirer recently published a story on how Dell is considering giving away VMware VI 3i licensing on its PowerEdge servers. While I won’t rehash the details of the rumor here, I’ll add my opinion and analysis on why this bold move is being made, since it appears VMware is actively supporting this tactic after having said that hardware vendors will be free to choose what fees to charge customers for 3i, if any.

Hypervisors are destined to become a commodity item, even more so than other software, because everyone will be utilizing virtualization within the next few years. Dell and VMware aren’t reacting so much to competition from Virtual Iron, Hyper-Hype (oops, I mean Hyper-V) or Virtuozzo as they are to Phoenix’s Hyperspace and Xen’s Embedded offering. Hyperspace is the big target here, as it’s embedded virtualization from a BIOS manufacturer.

Putting a hypervisor at that level takes the old “I need to dual boot” equation from power-users who need access to Linux and Windows or Mac and Windows, etc., to another level in addition to being another virtualization offering. Virtualization originally took that need away for most people. I for one stopped dual booting and ran Linux in Windows, Windows in Linux and Windows and Linux in Mac via virtualization products from the minute I got my mitts on VMware Workstation all the way through Parallels Desktop. Now, Phoenix is turning the tables, and taking virtualization away from being built on top of the BIOS like a conventional OS and making a run to own the space from the board-level up. Phoenix is virtually going from the niche unthought-of product to an enteprise contender (no pun intended.)

VMware saw this coming. It anticipated the inevitable, embedded hypervisor, which is why 3i came out in the first place. It also knows that we, the computer-consuming public, don’t really consider the BIOS when we buy a computer (be it a personal machine or a server.) We don’t even realize that we pay for the BIOS, because BIOS builders charge chip- and board-level makers a licensing fee. That licensing fee per machine is passed on to us in the cost of the board, and it’s minimal.

I am convinced this is where virtualization is headed: Virtualization will be a commodity, practically free for all without needing much to install or configure after the fact. VMware is betting on this core hypervisor as a lead-in to its flagship products. I expect VMware to focus this new strategy of transitioning customers from base-level embedded hypervisor to high-end pricing on management, replication, storage, etc.

Dell is also wise to this trend. They see the advantage of the embedded hypervisor as much as they saw the advantage of selling VMware’s ESX product line pre-installed on their hardware. They see that sooner or later everything they sell will have virtualization built-in. I expect them to sell Hyperspace alongside 3i. I also expect that will need to make the price points equivalent, lest there be howls from customers buying Hyperspace wanting to upgrade to a higher-level of virtualization management.

Advanced features like VMotion, DRS, HA, CB, etc. are licensed at the license server level, making 3i as good a choice for virtualization as ESX 3.5. This comes from VMware’s own 3i announcement:

“VMware ESX Server 3i is the new architectural foundation for VMware Infrastructure 3, the most widely deployed virtualization software suite for optimizing and managing industry-standard IT environments. VMware customers will be able to easily implement the entire suite of VMware Infrastructure 3 products on top of this foundation, including VirtualCenter, VMotion, Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), High Availability (HA) and VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB).”

As it stands, 3i is cheap at around $500, so don’t expect this shift in pricing to impact VMware’s bottom line.