Red Hat

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 »

Red Hat turning VMworld into KVMworld?

VMworld 2009 is still two months away, but at least one virtualization competitor is already planning to steal some thunder at the show.

The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) suite will hit general availability Sept. 1, according to LeMagIT — which, for those of you who don’t parlez francais, means “The IT Mag.” Sept. 1 is the first full day of VMworld 2009, when VMware typically makes most of its major announcements.

RHEV marks a shift from Xen to KVM as Red Hat’s open source virtualization technology of choice, as senior virtualization director Navin Thadani said on last week’s edition of This Week in Virtualization.

Continued »

Virtualization performance benchmarks needed ASAP, vendors say

Big players in the virtualization world griped about the absence of performance benchmarks for virtual machines on CIO Talk Radio yesterday and discussed some of the issues surrounding virtualization standards.

Guests on the show included: Simon Crosby, Chief Technology Officer of the Virtualization and Management Division of Citrix; Tom Bishop, Chief Technology Officer, of BMC Software; Dr. Tim Marsland, Sun Fellow, Chief Technology Officer, for the Software Organization at Sun Microsystems Inc.; and Brian Stevens, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Engineering at Red Hat.

The glaring ommission in this lineup: VMware, Inc.

The panelists on CIO Talk Radio didn’t mention VMware by name, but did complain that some companies aren’t being open with their performance data, thus prohibiting the virtualization industry from publishing comparative performance data.

VMware’s licensing agreement for ESX allows users to conduct internal performance testing and benchmarking studies, and allows those users (and not unauthorized third parties) to publish or publicly disseminate the data provided that VMware has reviewed and approved of the methodology, assumptions and other parameters of the study.

Users that have published benchmark data, like Sr. Systems Engineer Mark Foster did on his blog, have had to unpublish results because of VMware’s stipulations.

VMware introduced its own free benchmarking tool, VMmark, last year for certain applications.

Meanwhile, the SPEC Virtualization Committee has been working to create standard benchmarks for VMs. The committee’s goals are to deliver a benchmark that will model server consolidation of commonly virtualized systems such as application servers, web servers and file servers; provide a means to compare server performance while running a number of VMs; and produce a benchmark designed to scale across a wide range of systems.

SPEC expects these benchmarks to be available by the end of this year, but the timeline is not set in stone, according to the website.

Sun’s Marsland said benchmarking progress has been slow because there isn’t an easy way to define a workload, and a large number of benchmarks are required.

“We are talking about a virtual computer, with lots of aspects that need to be benchmarked,” Marsland said. “Every component that gets virtualized needs to be benchmarked.”

Having an open, standardized way of benchmarking is expected to push virtualization further into the mainstream because it will eliminate false perceptions about performance, panelists said. For instance, “there is the thought that I/O intensive workloads can not be virtualized, and the absence of benchmarks prevents us from proving otherwise. It is important for us to have good benchmarks out there,” one panelist on the show said.

Though users look at benchmarks, this type of data is most useful to vendors and OEMs who can use the performance standards to improve the technology, and of course, market their products.

“More open scrutiny of performance results will help us to improve as an industry overall,” Bishop said. “There are ways to measure performance in non-virtual environments, and people are adapting those techniques to get the most out of their virtualized environments.”

In terms of application performance in virtual environments, the issues differ depending on the data center infrastructure. The network, the servers and the storage all affect performance, said Stevens of RedHat.

“The areas that have to progress are around I/O. Intel and AMD are improving around page tables, and we will see improvements around I/O adapters soon,” Stevens said.

Another problem with virtualization? There are support challenges. If an application running in a VM starts acting wacky, the application vendor may not support it, Crosby said.

Licensing and support in virtual environments has been a major gripe with Oracle, for example, which does not support running its applications with VMware.

“It is a reasonable concern…right now there is irrational market based control. Some folks are abstaining from supporting certain apps [in virtual envionments]. As customers demand support, things will hopefully get rational, by next year I hope,” Crosby said.

Citrix’s Acquisition of XenSource - Chris Wolf sounds off

Chris Wolf, Burton Group senior analyst, analyzed Citrix’s acquisition of XenSource in a recent Burton Group blog post. He sizes up the situation, saying:

“While having the technology is one thing, bringing it to market is an entirely separate issue. This is where the Citrix acquisition makes great sense for XenSource. Financially fueled by Citrix, XenSource now has the financial clout, sales, and channel resources to go after the large stake of unclaimed virtualization market share in the enterprise. Don’t get me wrong. This will not be easy, as Citrix and XenSource are competing against powerhouse vendors with strong sales, channel, and IHV partnerships. VMware, Microsoft, Red Hat, and Novell are well established in the enterprise, and are all looking to add to their share of the market. Virtual Iron has been making a lot of noise in the SMB space lately, and they should see the explosion of the XenSource sales channel as a serious threat.”

Wolf sees the acquisition as a win for Citrix and Xen and for users, too.

“In the coming months and years, we should expect to get enterprise-class virtualization technologies at lower costs, with more features, and a motivated group of vendors that are eager to push innovation to remain competitive.”

Read his blog in its entirety on the Burton Group Data Center Strategies blog.

Is virtualization where Linux will top Windows…perhaps stealthily?

Virtualization is the theme of the LinuxWorld 2007 Conference & Expo this year, and that’s as it should be, according to industry veterans I’ve interviewed recently. Virtualization a big boon for Linux adoption and a way to steal some of Microsoft Windows’ thunder, they say. Overall, they agreed that succeeding in that space is a make-or-break proposition for Linux.

“It’s appropriate that LinuxWorld focuses on virtualization this year, because virtualization is a must-have for Linux,” said Jim Klein, Information Services and Technology Director for Saugus Union School District in Santa Clarita, Calif. “Without virtualization, Linux will fade away in the data center.”

Klein doesn’t think doomsday scenario is going to happen, however.

“From my experience, Linux and open source virtualization technologies are top-notch, certainly superior to Microsoft’s and reaching parity with VMware’s. The openness of Linux virtualization technologies make it easier to run multiple operating systems in one box.”

On the other hand, some industry vets think that Linux and Xen in its various forms have a lot of catching up to do, and they hope to see some significant announcements at LinuxWorld. Summing up this side of the equation, Alex Fletcher, principal analyst for Entiva Group Inc., said:

“Xen is definitely mature enough to warrant consideration by corporate accounts. Recent moves, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)5.0 adding Xen as its fully-integrated server virtualization functionality are intended to spur corporate adoption of Xen, but will need time to play out. Granted, RHEL is a fully-robust operating system, but this is the first release that’s included Xen, giving risk-adverse decision makers reason to hesitate. Efforts like libvirt, an attempt to serve as a stable C API virtualization mechanisms, have potential but need to mature.”

Then again, others said, many factors weigh in Linux’s favor in the virtualization arena. For one thing, RHEL and SUSE are very robust enterprise-level operating systems. For another, Linux is not fully-dependent on Xen’s success, because VMware is optimized for Linux. The proven reliability of Linux in data center deployments is another plus. Indeed, consultant and author Bernard Golden believes that virtualization will pave the way for wider usage of Linux. Virtualization makes stability much more important, he said, because after virtualization more systems run on a single piece of hardware. In this situation, he thinks Linux is a better choice than Windows, as Linux has a better track record for both stability and uptime.

Virtualizing Windows-centric applications on top of Linux is a good path to follow, said Golden, author of the soon-to-be-released book, Virtualization for Dummies:

“For those companies that need to move aging Windows applications onto new hardware and want a more stable underlying OS, virtualizing Windows on top of Linux is a perfect solution. Also, Linux’s scalability marries well to two trends driving virtualization: the increasing power of hardware and Linux’s ability to scale across multi-processor machines.”

Microsoft-centric IT organizations probably won’t rush into virtualizing on Linux. In particular, said Golden, sticking with Windows could suit companies that are not ready to make a full commitment to building a virtualization-based infrastructure. He explained:

“The upcoming virtualization capability in Windows Server 2008 — and beyond, given that much of the previously-targeted functionality for Server 2008 has been dropped — will enable [those organizations] to extend the life of aging Windows-based apps. Of course, being able to extend the life of those apps will, to some extent, reduce pressure to migrate those apps to Linux or replace those apps with Linux-based apps.”

Such IT organizations usually move to virtualization using their existing hardware, rather than bringing in more modern, highly scalable hardware, said Golden. In these cases, there is less need to move to Linux. This strategy and the efficacy of using old hardware will be short-lived, in his opinion.

Microsoft-centric shops will also be encouraged to stay that way if Microsoft delivers the promised virtualization-friendly licensing terms for its upcoming Longhorn-plus-hypervisor release, said John Lair, business development manager for Prowess Consulting.

Linux may not gain even if Microsoft’s operating system and virtualization platform price tags are more than those of Linux and, say, Xen, according to Fletcher.

“There is a chance that the savings gained from consolidation will actually work to make Linux’s lower software acquisition costs less of a selling point,” Fletcher said. “Higher licensing costs for Windows aren’t as much an issue when fewer servers are running.”

Then again, Lair and others noted, virtualization will probably decrease the importance of operating system (OS) selection, shifting attention to application and virtualization platform choices. Kamini Rupani, product management director at Avocent, summed up this side of the equation, saying:

“Virtualization doesn’t help or hinder adoption of either Linux or Windows on the server side, because virtualization isn’t directly related to operating systems. Virtualization is about the hardware, about adding more virtual machines running on top of an existing hardware environment.”

In this point-counterpoint discussion, others said that Linux stands to gain even if virtualization devalues OS selection. These folks think that Linux will be the power, or platform, behind the scenes in virtualized enviroments.

“Linux is so easy to use and reliable that I think it will be used ubiquitously and not get much attention,” said Klein. “People won’t care that their VMs are running on Linux. Choosing Linux will stop being a big deal. Also, I believe that the majority of virtual appliances will be running on Linux, so that people will just drop them in without a thought about which operating system is inside.”

If this scenario plays out, Linux will return to its roots as a stealth OS. IT managers brought Linux into IT shops through the proverbial back door to use for applications that didn’t need top-level approvals. While it moved up to a more visible position in data centers, Linux also infiltrated cell phones and numerous other devices without fanfare. Today, Linux appears to be a front-runner as ISVs’ top OS choice for virtual appliances. Perhaps even Microsoft’s resistance is futile.

Is Xen ready for the data center? Is that the right question?

Article after article and post after post have compared and contrasted Xen, VMWare, Veridian, and a host of other virtualization technologies, with opinions on performance, management tools, implementations, etc., etc. in abundant supply. Inevitably when it comes to Xen, the story comes full circle with some sort of declaration about “data center readiness.” The definition of “ready for the data center” is quite subjective, of course, based largely on the author’s personal experience, skills, and their opinion of the technical capabilities of those managing this vague “data center” to which they are referring.

Sadly, most seem to think that IT professionals managing the data center are buffoons who are somehow incapable of working with anything that doesn’t include a highly refined set of GUI tools and setup wizards. Personal experience shines through when an author balks at the notion of editing a text or XML configuration file - a common task for any system administrator. Consequently, a declaration of immaturity is often the result, without regard for the performance or functionality of the technology. In the case of Xen, this is particularly prevalent, as the Xen engine and management tools are distinctly separate. In fact, there are already several dozen management and provisioning tools available and/or in-development for the highly capable Xen engine, at varying degrees of maturity.

And yet, I can’t help but think that comparing features of management tools is completely missing the point. Why are we focusing on the tools, rather than the technology? Shouldn’t we be asking, “where is virtualization heading” and “which of these technologies has the most long term viability?”

Where is virtualization technology heading?

To even the most passive observers it has to be obvious that virtualization is here to stay. What may not be so obvious are the trends, the first being integrated virtualization. Within a year, every major server operating system will have virtualization technology integrated at its core. Within a few short years, virtualization functionality will simply be assumed - an expected capability of every server class operating system. As it is with RHEL now, administrators will simply click on a “virtualization” checkbox at install time.

The second trend is in the technology, and that is the “virtualization aware” operating system. In other words, the operating system will know that it is being virtualized, and will be optimized to perform as such. Every major, and even most minor operating systems either have or will soon have a virtualization aware core. Performance and scalability sapping binary translation layers and dynamic recompilers will be a thing of the past, replaced by thin hypervisors and paravirtualized guests. Just look at every major Linux distro, Solaris, BSD, and even Microsoft’s upcoming Veridian technology on Windows Server 2008, and you can’t help but recognize the trend.

Which of these technologies has the most long term viability?

Since we now know the trends, the next logical step is to determine which technology to bet on, long term. Obviously, the current crop of technologies based on full virtualization, like KVM and VMWare (it’s not a hypervisor, no matter what they say,) will be prosperous in the near term, capitalizing on the initial wave of interest and simplicity. But, considering the trends, the question should be, “will they be the best technology choice for the future?” The reality is that, in their current state and with their stated evolutionary goals, full virtualization solutions offer little long term viability, as integrated virtualization continues to evolve.

And which technology has everyone moved to? That’s simple - paravirtualization on the Xen hypervisor. Solaris, Linux, several Unix variants, and, as a result of their partnership with Novell, Microsoft will all either run Xen directly or will be Xen compatible in a very short time.

Of course, those with the most market share will continue to sell their solutions as “more mature” and/or “enterprise ready” while continuing to improve their tools. Unfortunately, they will continue to lean on an outdated, albeit refined technology core. The core may continue to evolve, but the approach is fundamentally less efficient, and will therefore never achieve the performance of the more logical solution. It reminds me of the ice farmers’ response to the refrigerator - rather than evolving their business, they tried to find better, more efficient ways to make ice, and ultimately went out of business because the technology simply wasn’t as good.

So then, is Xen ready for the “data center?”

The simple answer is - that depends. As a long time (as these things go, anyway) user of the Xen engine in production, I can say with confidence that the engine is more than ready. All of the functionality of competing systems, and arguably more, is working and rock solid. And because the system is open, the flexibility is simply unmatched. Choose your storage or clustering scheme, upgrade to a better one when it becomes available, use whatever configuration matches your needs - without restriction. For *nix virtualization, start today.

For Windows virtualization, the answer is a bit more complex. Pending Veridian, the stop gap is to install Windows on Xen with so-called “paravirtualized drivers” for I/O. Currently, these are only available using XenSource’s own XenServer line, but will soon be available on both Novell and Red Hat platforms (according to Novell press releases and direct conversations with Red Hat engineers.) While these drivers easily match the performance of fully virtualized competitors, they are not as fast as a paravirtualized guest.

Of course, you could simply choose to wait for Veridian, but I would assert that there are several advantages to going with Xen now. First, you’ll already be running on Xen, so you’ll be comfortable with the tools and will likely incur little, if any conversion cost when Veridian goes golden. And second, you get to take advantage of unmatched, multi-platform virtualization technology, such as native 64bit guests, and 32bit paravirtualized guests on 64bit hosts.

So what’s the weak spot? Complexity and management. While the engine is solid, the management tools are distinctly separate and still evolving. Do you go with XenSource’s excellent, yet more restrictive tool set, a more open platform such as Red Hat or Novell, or even a free release such as Fedora 7? That depends on your skills and intestinal fortitude, I suppose. If you are lost without wizards and a mouse, I’d say Xensource is the way to go. For the rest of us, a good review of all the available options is in order.

What about that “long term?”

So we know that virtualization aware operating systems are the future, but how might they evolve? Well, since we know that one of the key benefits of virtualization is that it makes the guest operating system hardware agnostic, and we know that virtualization aware guests on hypervisors are the future, then it seems reasonable to conclude that most server operating systems will install as a paravirtualized guest by default, even if only one guest will be run on the hardware. This will, by its very nature, create more stable servers and applications, facilitate easy to implement scalability, and offer improved performance and manageability of platforms.

As for my data center, this is how we install all our new hardware, even single task equipment - Xen goes on first, followed by the OS of choice. We get great performance and stability, along with the comfort of knowing that if we need more performance or run into any problems, we can simply move the guest operating system to new hardware with almost no down time. It’s a truly liberating approach to data center management.

Linux users: Xen, VMware, or Virtual Server?

In Monday’s newsletter column, I included a question to our Linux users: Do you prefer Xen, VMware or Virtual Server, and why?

It’s only Monday afternoon, but I’ve gotten some interesting responses. Chris, the CIO for Oxford Archaeology: Explorying the Human Journey, wrote:

In response to your question, we prefer VirtualBox, which offers a degree of flexibility that only VMware VI3 gets close to. Without the entry costs! We currently are working with VMware server, and a lack of a Linux client for VMware VI3, along with its MS SQL dependency, prevented a planned migration to VI3. VirtualBox is the young upstart on the block; the list of features that it is currently lacking in comparison with ESX grows shorter at an alarming rate, it is cross platform, independent of hardware extensions (but can benefit from them), high performance, and remarkably quick to get to grips with.

David of Code No Evil, LLC wrote:

I prefer VMware because it’s a non-free commercial product with support.  Microsoft, for example, doesn’t even list in their support site VPC 2K7 as a product.  As for Xen, I’m rarely a proponent of the OSS community.  As for VMware, my current support case just became a known bug # 154399.  Nice to know that VMware was willing to admit a fault in their platform and intends on fixing it. 

I asked him for clarification on the bug. Here’s what he said:

I am running Vista x64 on a Mac Pro.  My intent was run XP off the hard drive from my old machine (a Dell Precision 340) in a USB enclosure using VirtualPC 2K7.  VPC crashed every time I attempted to access the virtual drive (mapped to the physical drive).  Support is non-existent for VPC 2K7 because Microsoft doesn’t even list it as a product at the support website.  I even reached out to the  “Virtual PC Guy”0, but he was no help either.  At this point, I figured that I should try VMware Workstation.  At least if it didn’t work, I could open a support incident and I’d get some help.  Well, long story short, there is a permissions issue that despite going back and forth with VMware tech support (in India none-the-less) was irresolvable even in VMware Workstation.   The support overall was not bad.  A few times I had to send an extra email to get them to wake up, but all-in-all it was satisfactory.  The rep even called me because the issue became too difficult to talk about on the phone.  Now, the real test is to see how long it will be before a fix is released.  I would gather that it will  be soon because this bug precludes anyone from using a VMware virtual drive instance mapped to a physical drive on Vista.  I would, as a developer, classify this as critical defect.

Richard of OnX Enterprise Solutions Inc. wrote in suggesting Virtuozzo.

Chris, a system architect, wrote in with his preference for Xen:

I prefer Xen as it’s free on Red Hat 5 or SuSE 10 for Linux environments.  EMC ESX rocks though if customers can afford with its small Linux Red Hat kernel and the various tools for both Linux and Windows environments.  MS Virtual Server is better for test labs and with Microsoft platforms.  I had a very bad experience with MS Virtual Server and NetWare systems although that’s another OS.

Possibly with improvements in MS Virtual Server there might be a point where if it’s free and if MS really does support Red Hat and especially SuSE underneath it that if it’s free with MS licenses that it could move up within the server marketplace.

More to come. In the meantime, what are your thoughts, readers?

Server virtualization: Three top methods, plus pros and cons

Currently, there are three main styles of server virtualization, and each has its benefits and drawbacks, according to open source consultant and author Bernard Golden, a presenter at the Red Hat Summit, happening right now in San Diego.

His lowdown on the three ways to virtualize provides a handy guide to the options today. Following his list, I offer some links to definitions, how-tos, tips and news about each method.

By the way, besides being a resident expert on SearchServerVirtualization.com and SearchEnterpriseLinux.com Golden is president of Navica Inc., an open source consulting firm, and author of the new book, “Virtualization for Dummies”. Check out his views on server hardware for virtualization in this post.

Here are the top three ways to virtualize:

Virtualization style: Operating system (OS) “container” emulation
Examples: Solaris Containers; SWsoft
Pros: Efficient; does not require additional software
Cons: Isolation; dependent upon OS; limits version choice within guest OS types

Virtualization style: Hardware emulation
Examples: VMware Server; Microsoft Virtual Server
Pros: Relatively easy to install and use; true isolation of OS instances
Cons: Less efficient than paravirtualization

Virtualization style: Paravirtualization
Examples: Xen, VMware ESX, Microsoft Longhorn virtualization
Pros: High herformance; true Isolation of OS instances
Cons: Extra software layer; complex to install and administer

Don’t expect these ways and means to remain fixed in time. In five years, all operating systems will be virtualized, simplifying every aspect of server virtualization from planning to upgrades, Golden predicts. Even better, built-in operating system virtualization will make it very difficult for application software vendors to respond to every helpdesk call by blaming the VM.

For more information on the three top ways deploy server virtualization, check out these resources:

For an overview, read Alessandro Perilli’s analysis of virtualization vendor strategies.

Here’s some info on OS container emulation:
IBM DB2 runs on SWsoft Virtuozzo virtualization; Virtuozzo sidesteps Windows Server costs; Sun boots Unix partitioning on Solaris; and Sun commits to Xen.

Get the scoop on hardware emulation: VMware Server on Linux: Installation through management; Optimizing Microsoft Virtual Server 2005; and emulation defined.

For more on paravirtualization, go to: Paravirtualization with Xen; Xen defined; How-to: VMware ESX, Linux virtual machines and read-only file systems; and Virtualization in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

Which style of virtualization do you use? What questions would you like to ask our resident expert, Bernard Golden, about server virtualization strategies? Tell all by commenting on this post or writing to me at  jstafford at techtarget.com.

VMware proof of concept shows big RHEL, app, management savings

TransUnion Interactive, a direct-to-consumer credit reporting bureau, is running a proof of concept (POC) project to determine if virtualization could deliver server and space reductions and better TCO than its current infrastructure.

I met Daniel Hahn, TranUnion Interactive (TI) associate director of technical services, today at the Blade Server Summit in Anaheim, Calif. He’s heading the POC project and described it during a user panel I moderated.

TI has too many servers that are costing too much money, Hahn said. Over 200 servers and operating system licenses. Of the latter, 80% were Red Hat Enterprise Linux and 20% Windows Server, with 15% of each of these OSes running in production.

“We’re not replacing any servers at this point. We’re taking two repurposed servers and putting virtualization software on them and chopping them up into virtual servers.”

The POC architecture was built on VMware Server 2.0, IBM 3455 servers, each with two dual-core Opteron CPUs at 1.8 GHz, 4GB of memory. RHEL Enterprise Server 3 is the host OS.

The POC team isn’t working with production servers yet, just Web and application servers. Databases, for instance, are not involved.

The results, so far, are dramatic.

“From a corporate standpoint, we’re saving 65% just on Red Hat licensing,” Hahn said. Also, there’s are substantial saving in price for TI’s two main apps, BEA and Resin.

TCO is yet to be determined, but Hahn has already seen systems management cost reductions of 30% in the POC project.

“We have a staff of people that has to physically reinstall servers constantly. We’ve reduced that to a couple of mouse clicks.”

Once this project is completed, Hahn is sure that a virtualization rollout will occur, probably using VMware ESX as the platform.

(Ironically, the POC project wasn’t done on blade servers. So, tell me your blades and virtualization stories, please, at  jstafford at techtarget.com)