Linux and virtualization

Red Hat virtualization: No Windows Server 2008, RHEL management

The new Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers platform made its debut yesterday, with Red Hat touting it as a “standalone, lightweight, high-performance hypervisor” that “provides a solid virtualization foundation for cloud deployments” and comes with software “for configuring, provisioning, managing and organizing virtualized Linux and Microsoft Windows servers.”

Sounds good so far, right? Well, there are a few things Red Hat neglected to mention in that press release. First, there’s this sentence buried in the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization data sheet, about the system requirements for management servers:

“Windows Server 2008 not supported.”

Isn’t that kinda like coming out with a hot new car and saying, “unleaded gasoline not supported”?

Continued »

Is Microsoft giving up on Windows?

You probably read the above headline and had a question of your own. Something along the lines of, “Colin, what have you been smoking?”

I know, it seems ridonklulous to think that Microsoft would give up on its Windows operating system — a product that dominates its market like few others in IT or any other industry. But in light of Microsoft’s recent Linux outreach, it’s a legitimate question.

Continued »

EsXpress: A good idea come ’round again

I had the opportunity to spend a little time at the esXPress booth at VMworld 2008 this year, and I could kick myself. Hard.

To go to the start of why … a long time ago, back when my office primarily used VMware GSX3 for virtulization at the server level, I had a real need to do backups of the virtual machine disk files (VMDK). My GSX hosts were Linux servers and I used a simple cron job to launch scripts on a schedule, which triggered a suspension, tarring of the VMs and scp-ing of the tarballs to a network-attached storage (NAS) box before re-starting the guests. It let me avoid buying backup licenses for my guests (which were mostly pre-production units, image builds, etc.) and gave me a complete point-in-time recovery solution better than anything I could buy off the shelf (at the time). It ws so efficient that when my company joined the Core Customer Program, I was asked to give a webinar on the topic. Sadly, that webinar is now so out-of-date that it’s been pulled from VMware’s site and I can’t find it on archive.org.

Now why would I kick myself? Because that simple idea is at the root of esXpress. It does it a lot better than I did and focuses on ESX rather than GSX/Server, but at the core it’s very similar. It gets around the need for downtime and uses gzip under the hood rather than tar, but it has a Linux OS guest that essentially copies, compresses and offloads other guests. I was pretty impressed by how simply and efficiently the product works, though I must admit to being bit jealous — if only I had realized there was a <i>product</i> there in that idea.

So kudos to esXpress for taking a good idea and making a good product out of it!

VMworld is packed! Good God … who’s manning the servers?

When you walk up to the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas this week, it is obvious something big is happening, and it sure as hell isn’t me winning the jackpot on those God forsaken slot machines.

When VMware Inc. announced there would be 14,000 people attending VMworld 2008 this week, they weren’t blowing smoke. Last year’s show in San Francisco held about 10,000 attendees and that seemed like a lot. Apparently, that was just the beginning.

The volume of IT administrators who are here in Vegas this week makes me wonder in a slight panic, who is manning all of the servers?

It reminds me of an episode of the cartoon American Dad, where the main character, a CIA agent named Stan Smith, storms into a Sci-Fi convention looking for someone and sees a place swarming with stereotypical techie types. “Good God, who is manning the Internet?,” he gasped.

Joking aside, the not-subtle point I am trying to make is that the huge turnout at VMworld 2008 signals how popular virtualization is today, reminiscent of the earlier days of Linux when LinuxWorld was a huge show.

Though the LinuxWorld organizers claimed there were 10,000 people at the show in San Francisco last month, it didn’t seem that way. “When Linux was an emerging technology that people were excited about, those LinuxWorld shows were like [VMworld] is today,” said AMD’s commercial products director Margaret Lewis. “But now Linux is mainstream, so the excitement is gone.”

She said AMD didn’t set up a booth at the LinuxWorld show floor this year because turnout the previous year was low. And by the way, AMD has a monster booth set up at VMworld this year.

Which means that when virtualization becomes mainstream, VMworld will no longer be “the place to be.” Maybe VMware 2015 will be held at a small conference center in a small state, like Rhode Island (which is great, by the way).

But for now, VMworld Las Vegas is it.

Proxmox PVE offers VM mash-up for the virtualization market

The mashup market is for more than just those out there making rich-media web apps. They’ve taken the concept of the mashup to the virtualization market. The resulting product is a mash-up of two virtualization platforms, OpenVZ and KVM, which Proxmox has combined into a delightful new offering that will run just about any operating system as a virtual machine. Virtual appliances are also included in the mashup.

Like VMware VI, VirtualIron and XenServer, Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE) is a bare-metal, type-1 hypervisor that installs onto a fresh server and turns the machine into a dedicated virtualization host. It is an open source product based on open source products, making it transparent to developers, and thereby it has all the advantages and disadvantages associated with OSS deleopment projects (I find few disdadvantages myself, but I’m admittedly biased because I think that the transparency of OSS is highly valuable.) The goal, outlined in their vision page, is to create an enterprise-class virtualization platform that affords unparalleled flexibility (my words, not theirs.)

The short-list of what PVE supports:

• Web-based Administration via SSL
• Bare-metal installation based on Debian Etch (64-bit)
• Your choice of Container-based (OpenVZ) or Fully-Virtualized (KVM) virtual machines, both on the same server, as well as Paravirtualization for Windows via AMD/Intel CPU extensions and KVM’s built-in ability to handle them.
• Built-in backup and restore
• Live and offline migration

This is one of those will-be-great-if-it-lives products. It has a lot going for it, particularly in the ability to manage multiple types of virtualization platform strategies. That said, there are still many drawbacks, as expected of a pre-1.0 release (currently at 0.9). As such, it’s got it’s share of issues to get through before it’s really ready.

PVE currently doesn’t seem to have much in the way of granular user management for the web interface (though the forums do state that it is on the roadmap). Physical-to-virtual (P2V) capabilities are still a little raw, without any in-house tools to handle migrations. The Wiki site for PVE does explain how to use existing tools such as vmzdump, VMware Converter, etc. to migrate servers into formats that PVE can handle. There’s nothing in the way of DRS/HA equivalents, and while PVE does have tools for Live Migration, they don’t work due to a”kernel error”, according to the Wiki.  KVM backup is limited to using LVM2, whereas OpenVZ has that option as well as vzdump, though a tool for KVM  on the roadmap for 1.0. Guest SMP is described as unstable, as well.

The cluster management feature looks a little like this image, from their website:

The more day-to-day function of creating a new virtual machine looks like this:

Because it’s a Debian operating system, storage choices are limited only by the availability of drivers for the hardware platform.  iSCSI, NFS, and other remote storage file systems can be mounted and used to store virtual machines.

The product looks like it will shake up some thinking in the virtualization platform market and may get people thinking more about what it means to be limited to only one type of virtualization option. When it hits that magic 1.0 mark, and most of the major flaws above are fixed for the majority of users, this product could really shine. Overall, I rate this product a seven poker for stirring things up, down from nine because it’s still cooking.

Tripwire offers free security utility for VMware ESX 3.5 hypervisor

VMware Inc. and Tripwire Inc. have co-developed a free, downloadable utility to address the leading security concern in virtual environments today: misconfiguration of the hypervisor.

Portland, Ore.-based Tripwire ConfigCheck is a free Windows and Linux based utility that assesses the security of VMware ESX 3.5 hypervisor configurations compared to the VMware Infrastructure 3 Security Hardening guidelines, which were released in February.

The Security Hardening guidelines explain in detail the security-related configuration options of the components of VMware Infrastructure 3 and how security affects certain capabilities.

Tripwire ConfigCheck makes sure ESX environments are properly configured according to these guidelines and lends insight into vulnerabilities in virtual environments. It also provides the necessary steps towards full remediation.

Dan Schoenbaum, senior vice president of marketing and business development for Tripwire
said the utility is being offered for free to encourage the proliferation of VMware’s Hardening guidelines and to increase virtual machine (VM) security.

Tripware hopes that by giving a taste of their technology for free, users will become familiar with them and invest in their software products with more security capabilities, Schoenbaum said.

Colorado Springs, Co.-based Configuresoft Inc. also provides a toolkit for compliance with VMware’s security hardening guidelines. The toolkit consists of a set of rule-based templates, reports and dashboards that plug into Configuresoft’s Enterprise Configuration Manager (ECM).

Still no Linux VMware VI client

As this long running thread in the VMware forums indicates, many users are frustrated with VMware’s lack of support for a Linux-based Virtual Infrastructure client to manage VI3 environments. Currently, the VI Client will run only under Windows (as it’s written in .NET), so Linux shops are forced to purchase and install Windows to run it. An alternative web interface does exist; however, it can only manage virtual machine operations and not the ESX hosts which severely limits its usefulness to VMware administrators.

While VMware has not officially announced any plans to develop cross-platform versions of the VI Client or any of its other Windows-only applications, the above-mentioned thread includes one response from a VMware employee who hints that VMware may eventually release a Linux version. A Linux version of a VI Client would be considered a welcomed addition by many VMware customers, if not as an essential feature for those that are using ESX servers in non-Windows environments.

Many customers have also been wanting a Linux version of VirtualCenter, VMware’s centralized management product for ESX,  and support for open source databases like MySQL. VirtualCenter will only install on a Windows server and its required database only supports Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle databases. You can also use SQL Express with VirtualCenter, but it is not recommended or supported for production environments. Because of this limitation, customers that wish to use VirtualCenter must also plan on the additional expense of Windows operating systems licenses for the VirtualCenter server as well as a database license if they do not already have an existing SQL/Oracle database server that they can use for the VirtualCenter database.

Unless more customers speak up and request that VMware produce cross-platform versions of their current Windows-only applications, they will probably not end up developing them. If the demand exists, there’s a better likelihood of it happening. Having Linux versions would also help VMware compete in an increasingly competitive virtualization market. If you would like to see VMware develop a Linux version of the VI Client and other applications, contact your VMware sales representatives and let them know.

Sun adds a connection broker to VDI offering

Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced this week it has added new features to its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure software, originally released at VMworld in September 2007, including Sun’s Virtual Desktop Connector (VDC).

Sun’s VDI 2.0 provides interfaces to PCs, mobile devices, and thin clients including Sun’s own Sun Ray thin client offering. With it, centralized desktops can be delivered through the LAN or WAN to Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X, Solaris or Linux on the desktop, which is fairly unique in the Windows-centric desktop market, said Chris Kawalek, Product Line Manager, Desktop & Virtualization Marketing, Sun Microsystems.

Sun’s VDC, meanwhile, is is more or less a connection broker that interfaces with ESX 3.5 and 3.0.x and Virtual Center Server 2.0.x and 2.5 (VMware infrastructure 3) to create pools of virtual machines that can be defined based on templates.

With Sun’s updated VDI offering, administrators can statically or dynamically assign users to specific VMs, either for a set number of days or indefinitely. Another feature is the ability to ‘reset’ end users’ virtual machines (VMs) if problems arise. For instance, if the user contracts a virus while on the web, the VM can be reset to a date before the issue occurred and operate as it did on that date, Kawalek said.

The tight integration with VMware virtualization software can be attributed to the OEM agreement Sun signed with VMware Inc. in February. Thus, with VDI 2.0, users can actively manage VMware virtual machines, but VMs from other vendors like Virtual Iron can only be statically created and assigned, Kawalek said.

Kawalek said Sun moved into the VDI space last year because it embodies Sun’s ‘the network is the computer’ message. Another reason? It’s the popular thing to do. “Everyone is very interested in centralizing their desktop environment, which is why vendors like Hewlett-Packard and VMware are in this space,” he said.

Sun’s VDI Version 2.0 became available March 18 at $149 per user, including one year of support. Sun Ray thin clients start at $249. Directions on how to install VDI 2.0 are available online, and a free trial can be downloaded from Sun’s website.

Installing the VMware Server MUI on Centos 5.1 x86_64

As a follow-up to my prior post on getting CentOS 5.1 (x64) to host VMware server, this is a short instruction on what to do to get the MUI installed on your 64-bit CentOS box. I didn’t mention it last time because it’s a separate download and install, and I don’t personally install the MUI in VMware server unless I have a compelling reason (on Windows or Linux hosts). This is documented on VMware’s website as well, but it bears some simplification from a two-pager to a six-liner.

1. Download the management interface (VMware-mui-1.0.4-56528.tar.gz) and extract (tar zxf VMware-mui-<xxxx>.tar.gz)
2. Update your campat-db (yum update compat-db.x86_64 0:4.2.52-5.1 or just yum update compat-db to get ‘em all) if you haven’t already.
3. Browse to the directory you extracted you mui setup files to and run the installer (./vmware-install.pl)
4. Accept / Change options as needed.
5. Start the http daemon (/etc/init.d/httpd.vmware start)
6. Browse to Whitebox, when they get WBEL 5 out). It should also work on RHEL.

SearchServerVirtualization.com Products of the Year - Not without their share of snubs

Fortunately for me, my job never requires me to determine vendor awards. However, Alex Barrett and the SearchServerVirtualization.com staff aren’t so lucky. While it’s great to have the power to name Products of the Year, it also means that you’re stuck hearing complaints from everyone that wasn’t named. In case you missed it, Alex recently published the SearchServerVirtualization 2007 Products of the Year.

I think that Alex and the editorial staff did a great job with selecting products, but thought that I would take a moment to highlight some vendors with excellent products that did not make the list. After all, it’s just as much fun to debate the vendors that were not recognized as it is for those who were.

VMware

Yes, VMware’s on the list, but at the same time they’re not on the list. If you didn’t notice, VMware ESX Server 3.5 is nowhere to be found in the article. The SearchServerVirtualization.com editors informed me that ESX 3.5 missed the cutoff date for award consideration (November 30th), and therefore wasn’t eligible. Editors do need time to work with a released product in order to make a fair judgment, so I understand the reasoning for the cutoff. Still, ESX 3.5 was a significant release from VMware, with features such as Storage VMotion adding significant value to VMware deployments.

Novell

Novell quietly had a great 2007, from a virtualization product perspective. Novell was right behind Citrix/XenSource in achieving Microsoft support for their Xen-based virtualization platform, and was pushing the innovation envelope throughout the year. Novell was the very first virtualization vendor to demonstrate N_Port ID virtualization (NPIV) on their Xen platform. Novell was even showing their work with open virtual machine format (OVF) last September at their booth at VMWorld. When you factor in Novell’s work with their heterogeneous virtualization platform management tool, ZENworks Virtual Machine Manager, you’re left with a pretty nice virtualization package. The vendors mentioned in the virtualization platform category (VMware, Citrix/XenSource, SWsoft) are all worthy of recognition, and I think it’s equally fair to recognize Novell’s work in 2007 as well. Perhaps Novell’s heavy lifting in 2007 will result in recognition in 2008; however, it’s safe to say that Novell is going to have some stiff competition from VMware, Citrix/XenSource, Microsoft, Sun, Parallels, and Virtual Iron.

Symantec

I thinks it’s hard to leave Symantec Veritas NetBackup 6.5 out of the discussion. In fact, amongst backup products, I’d list them as first, right alongside CommVault. Symantec was the first major backup vendor to announce support for Citrix XenServer backup, while all other backup products officially supported one virtualization platform - VMware ESX Server. The NetBackup team was also very innovative with VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB), as NetBackup 6.5 includes the capability to perform file level recoveries of VCB image level backups. Typically, a backup product performs two VCB backup jobs - an image level backup for DR purposes, and a file level backup for day-to-day recovery tasks. NetBackup 6.5 provides the ability to do this in a single pass, which I found to be pretty innovative. Factor in Data-deduplication (extremely valuable considering the high degree of file redundancy on VM host systems), also available in NetBackup 6.5, and it’s hard to see how NetBackup could be ignored.

SteelEye

SteelEye is another vendor in the data protection category that I’m surprised did not make the list. VMware HA by itself will not detect an application failure and initiate a failover job as a result, as it’s primarily designed to monitor and react to hardware failures and some failures within the guest OS. SteelEye LifeKeeper, on the other hand, provides automated VM failover in response to application and service failures (in addition to guest OS and physical server failures). Many failures are software-specific, and products that can automate VM failover or restarts in response to software failures go far to improve the availability of VMs in production.I’m limiting my comments only to the award categories, hence I’m only listing some of the products I’ve worked with in 2007 that fit into one of the SSV categories. I hope that for the 2008 awards, we’ll see a higher number of award categories, so all products in the virtualization ecosystem are represented.

Do you agree with editors’ choice of winners? Which deserving vendors do you feel were left off the list? I’d love to hear your thoughts.