As server virtualization technology makes its way from test environments into production, IT organizations are struggling to keep up with the inherent management challenges involved in dealing with virtual environments.

The ease with which VMs are created makes it that much easier for VMs to be launched and moved willy-nilly regardless of the security and software licensing cost issues, just to name two common problems. Vendors of course have been hip to these challenges. This month, Embotics Corp. released version 2.0 of its V-Commander management software designed to automatically nip virtual sprawl in the bud. One way the software does this is by automatically enforcing policy dictating such things as VM expiration dates and through role-based security access that defines just who can do what in terms of VM creation and migration.

Also this month, Netuitive Inc. revamped its Service Analyzer business service management (BSM) software to include virtualization management capabilities. Nick Sanna, Netuitive’s president and CEO, said the company’s self-learning correlation software can monitor the status of applications across the environment, whether they are physical or virtual. “The idea [behind Service Analyzer],” said Sanna, is to eliminate IT management silos by automating performance management and providing end-to-end visibility into business services.”

On Monday, June 9, Symantec Corp. of Cupterino, Calif., announced the release of Veritas Virtual Infrastructure (VxVI), a server and storage virtualization product built on Citrix Systems Inc.’s XenServer technology. By exploiting Veritas’ block storage management model, VxVI hopes to compete with VMware-Infrastructure-3-in-production environments by offering increased capabilities for storage and availability-critical systems.

The new Xen-based virtual infrastructure platform from Symantec provides storage management and high availability with cross-platform connectivity for the virtual data center. It’s essentially XenServer with the Veritas storage management layer on top — all wrapped in a Symantec management console.

According to Symantec Senior Vice President of Storage and Availability Management Rob Soderbery, the time is right for a product that addresses the needs of testing and development, needs that have been underserved by VMware. “Users understand the storage management challenges with VMware,” he said. Symantec has delivered something “fundamentally new” in how server virtualization works with storage management, he noted.

The key difference between VMware and Veritas is in how each handles virtual machines (VMs). Soderbery argues that the Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) file-based system that VMware uses can’t compete with the block storage system of Veritas VxVI.

As enterprises build out the x86 data center, Symantec’s product seeks to serve those who want to bring physical capabilities into the virtual environment. Veritas Virtual Infrastructure brings dynamic storage layouts, enclosure and array mirroring and storage-area network (SAN) multipathing/load balancing to server virtualization, adding features such as shared VM boot images with which Symantec hopes to lure VMware customers that are not satisfied with the storage capabilities of the leading server virtualization platform. 

Soderbery says that VxVI will work well with Microsoft’s forthcoming Xen-inspired hypervisor, Hyper-V. “Microsoft has done something pretty interesting here in being open to the Xen community and encouraging the Xen community to be open with Microsoft,” says Soderbery. “Veritas Virtual Infrastructure is technology that we can apply across the Xen ecosystem and Hyper-V as well.”

With another Xen-based virtualization product on the market engineered to be more compatible with the forthcoming Hyper-V, VMware may feel the pinch as users see more options with the other big players in the server virtualization market. But will the $4,595 per two-socket server for Veritas discourage VMware users from even running a demo?

What do you think? If you plan on deploying Veritas VxVI, we want to hear from you. Send us your thoughts via email.

Microsoft announced today it has delivered a complete release candidate (RC) of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and is on track to deliver the final product — at a bargain price — in August 2008.

Hyper-V, code-named Viridian, is hypervisor based virtualization for x64 versions of Windows Server 2008. The Hyper-V hypervisor will also be available as a stand-alone offering, without the Windows Server functionality, as Microsoft Hyper-V Server.

Microsoft has been giving public users a taste of its virtualization offering with Beta releases of Hyper-V since December 2007. Microsoft also released a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Hyper-V in September 2007.

This new release candidate includes three areas of improvement:

* An expanded list of tested and qualified guest operating systems including: Windows Server 2003 SP2, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1, Windows Vista SP1, and Windows XP SP3.
* Host server and language support has been expanded to include the 64-bit (x64) versions of Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter editions in various language options.
* Improved performance and stability for better scalability and high throughput workloads.

Despite Microsoft’s image as a market dominatrix, the computing giant may have a tough time chipping away at VMware’s dominance in x86 virtualization, said Charles King, principal analyst with Hayward, Calif.-based Pund-IT, Inc in his weekly Pund-IT review today.

“The conventional wisdom around Microsoft’s market impact tends to follow a common theme; that the company’s sheer size makes it a serious competitor wherever it decides to play, but we see a number of obstacles in the way of Microsoft’s leadership goals,” King wrote. “First, though the x86 virtualization market is relatively small (Microsoft estimates that only 10% of servers are currently virtualized) VMware has found a remarkable number of Fortune 1000 customers who drive significant sales and revenues.

“In addition, those large companies tend to be among the most conservative of IT users; once they choose a reliable technology and vendor they tend to stick with them through thick and thin,” King said.

But considering its relatively low entry price of about $28 per Hyper-V Server, Microsoft could be the pathway to virtualization for a wider audience than other high priced players like VMware have been able to reach, King reported. If purchased standalone for hard-drive installation, ESX Server 3i list price is $495 per 2 processors, according to VMware’s website. “If Hyper- V’s features prove to be as robust and beneficial as Microsoft claims, the company could become a significant virtualization player for years to come,” he said.

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.

IT pros are split on the potential impact of VMware ESX Server 3i and on the importance of new bells and whistles, such as Hewlett-Packard Co.’s plug-and-play deployment capabilities and support from other major hardware vendors.

Last week, VMware and HP announced that at the end of March, VMware ESX 3i will be packaged on 10 models of HP ProLiant servers. So do embedded hypervisors like ESX 3i represent the next stage of the virtualization evolution?

Of course VMware seems to think so, saying the integrated offering will provide “greater speed and simplicity for customers new to virtualization, as well as increased capacity expansion for customers who already use VMware’s data center virtualization and management suite, VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3).”

Will this optimism translate into increased virtualization in the enterprise? VMware and virtualization expert Andrew Kutz thinks that the exclusivity of the plug-and-play capability of 3i on HP is a stretch:

Plug-and-play is another no-win for 3i. The plug-and-play functionality of 3i is as artificial as its simplified management. VMware asserts that independent hardware vendors (IHVs) will be able to ship servers with 3i directly to the customer, where the customer can simply plug the box into the network and storage, boot it, and presto: installation complete. That’s fantastic! But I can order a server from an IHV with ESX 3 pre-installed on it today. The difference is that VMware has added this data center plug-and-play functionality exclusively to its 3i product. There is no reason that it cannot work with 3.0 or 3.5 as well. This is just another example of a company trying to promote a new product with features that do not have to be exclusive; they are exclusive only because someone decided they should be.

While Kutz believes that 3i is a significant step up, he says on SearchVMware.com that “ESX 3i is simply an evolution, not a revolution.”

The biggest change between ESX 3i and its predecessors (ESX 3.0, 3.5) is that with 3i, agents cannot be installed on a host. Erik Josowitz, the vice president of product strategy at Austin, Texas-based Surgient Inc., a virtual lab management company, says that for independent software vendors, “VMware’s roadmap for virtualization management runs through VirtualCenter.” Putting 3i on solid state “sends a clear signal that VMware doesn’t want people installing on the host anymore,” according to Josowitz. He notes that “from a security standpoint, it’s a good thing,” since it locks down the partition that used to be available under the host, thus keeping out any applications that might weaken a system. But now, organizations that want to work with blended images will need to architect their tech support to talk through VirtualCenter rather than a host agent.

While the solid-state product promises plug-and-play deployment of VMware’s thin hypervisor product on HP’s ProLiant servers, some analysts are still saying, “Don’t believe the hype about 3i.” Citing problems with monitoring and scaling of 3i, the ToutVirtual blog complains that 3i is “a complete disappointment” at general release. “Combine this weak infrastructure design issue with the fact that you can not get any realistic information out of the hardware state of a 3i server,” makes VMware ESX 3i “dead on arrival.”

But SearchServerVirtualization.com expert Rick Vanover begs to differ. Vanover holds ProLiant servers in high esteem, and if ESX 3i is good enough for HP, then it’s good enough for him:

I’ve worked on many different types of servers, and I think the ProLiant servers are superior. The big reason is that the ProLiant BL blade series do not have a competitor to the Insight Control Environment. Further, the Integrated Lights-Out 2 Standard Blade Edition (or iLO) is a better management interface compared to its competition. If VMware takes HP as a partner (or at least as their first partner) for an ESX 3i supported platform, I would choose it in a heartbeat.

But does it really matter that 3i is overhyped? Major vendors now put 3i inside their servers. This reduces the need for major evaluation and opens the door for IT shops to choose servers with “3i inside” and use it when and how they want.

What do you think? Leave us a comment below or send us your thoughts.

If your company is buying into the virtualization game, you may want to consider Virtuozzo 4.0.

I work in a VMware shop (one of these days I’ll post on my 3.5 experiences) but I follow the virtualization market, and since SWsoft/Parallels released Virtuozzo 4.0, I think there’s  room for Parallels in the market.

Right now, SWsoft Parallels/Virtuozzo owns virtualization in the Web-hosting provider space. Their other products have a lot of traction in that space too (think Plesk and SiteBuilder). And of course, there’s the Mac virtualization product to beat - Parallels Desktop, the gold-medal standard that runs a few laps around poor Fusion, and the forthcoming Parallels Server which will let people virtualize OS X Server (as long as it’s all on Mac hardware!).

From their recent market moves, the company seems to be trying to take on Citrix’s Xen and Microsoft’s Virtual Server, perhaps even make a run on some of VMware’s market share by making some bold moves in the virtualization space. Once again, they are touting their OS-encapsulation variation on virtualization with Virtuozzo, which just released version 4.o.

From the Parallels blog:

Parallels Virtuozzo Containers is different because is virtualizes the OPERATING SYSTEM, not the hardware. This means that you can install an OS (Windows or Linux) and then run workloads off that single kernel in isolated execution environments that we call “containers.” Because all of the containers are working in direct contact with real hardware and are all working off that one OS install, performance is exceptional…about 97-99% of native, regardless of how many containers are running. And, container footprints are tiny - only 10 MB of RAM and 45 MB of disk space required at the bare minimum.

From a product feature view, you get many of the same features that one finds in other high-end products like VMware and XenServer:

1. Management Interface - Groups virtualized systems logically making them easier to manage. You can also assign role-based administrative and reporting rights to users.
2. P2V Tool - Allows you to migration from your old virtualization platform of choice to Virtuozzo. Allows for upgrading of Win2K servers to Win2K3 as part of the migration!
3. Backup - Allows you to take a virtual machine and make a backup while the machine is running, and then stores the backup on another host.
4. Templates - Allows you to install a virtual machine, make it into a template, and deploy new machines based on that template.
5. CPU restriction - Since this is not a true virtual machine, the guests typically see all of the CPUs. This can now be restricted on Windows systems so that guests see only a set number of processors.

Some problematic areas in the past were with OS-level clustering and network load balancing in the virtual machines (now called “virtual environments,” since they really aren’t seperate machines).

The new version appears to address these issues and improves upon the handling of multi-NIC hosts and how particular virtual environments see and use those NICs (as well as other devices such as USB external drives, USB product key fobs, etc.). Virtuozzo containers, like most virtualization products, support both 32-bit and 64-bit virtual environments.

In a Web-hosting environment, this is a great tool because of the massive number of sites that can be provided to clients. Considering that the average corporate data center is not entirely different from a hosting provider (especially when you start talking about chargeback), Virtuozzo may work out well, but the cons and pros must both be considered.

Virtuozzo won’t do much in file/print or in in Terminal Services, but in putting out Web-based applications to users, or even standard client-server apps, Virtuozzo has a lot of the same advantages of VMware, Xen, Virtual Server, VirtualBox and so on in regards to server consolidation and controlling hardware growth.

I wouldn’t count on the thousands-to-one ratio often touted in the Web-hosting space because of the very small footprint required per Web site, but there is undoubtedly a much higher container-per-host ratio than traditional hypervisor-based virtualization. There is a risk of failure if something hoses on the operating system (kernel panic on a Linux box, BSOD on a Windows box, driver dropout on either, etc.,) because that OS runs the entire show - but that’s the same on any platform: lose the host OS, lose all the guests.

The risk may be higher on Virtuozzo hosts because of the difficulties of a single-OS that gets put into a container - things like “DLL hell,” missing dependencies, etc. that are less pervasive in hypervisor hosts (but that remains to be seen).

Also, one Virtuozzo server of a given operating system can run only other servers of that same operating system (or in the case of Linux, of that exact same kernel). Lastly, there is more risk involved if your hardware isn’t redundant, and this is where the business models differ:

• Traditional Hypervisor: Cheaper (commodity) hardware front-end, expensive storage, smaller ratio of virtualized machines.
• Container Virtualization: Expensive (clustered commodity or other redundant HW) front end, expensive storage, higher ratio of virtualized machines.

A good analysis of a virtualization project proposal will include Virtuozzo as a candidate not only for the features, but because it is important to review the overall costs. As a simplified example (one that I deliberately am making equal out so as not to show any bias) without any licensing networking, operations, and soft-costs included may look like this:

Proposal 1: Virtuozzo - Virtualize 100 servers

• 2 x (Passive-Active) Clustered Server: $50,000
• 1 x New SAN: $100,000
• Total: $150,000

Proposal 2: VMware / Xen / Etc. - Virtualize 100 servers

• 10 x Generic Server: $50,000
• 1 x New SAN: $100,000
• Total: $150,000

Bearing all of this in mind, it’s time to add Virtuozzo to the watchlists when virtualization comes up.

Today at the Technosium Global Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, Calif., I saw a cool demonstration of FastScale Composer at work deploying virtual (and physical) servers.

FastScale Technologies Inc., maker of Composer, is a VMware alliance partner. FastScale Composer is a tool that facilitiates building physical and virtual servers from bare metal with a configurable inventory of operating systems, applications and updates. FastScale Composer is suited for data centers with 250 servers or more.

I met with FastScale CEO Lynn LeBlanc and Richard Offer, vice president of engineering, who discussed FastScale Composer’s key feature:  a software component repository that contains operating system binaries, software packages, updates and user-configurable material available for systems.

Within the Composer interface, systems are allocated with your configured inventory to be used when they boot. The underlying technology for arriving new systems is a pre-boot execution (PXE) environment that will have the configuration for the system delivered. Composer excels at this step because the package that arrives to the new system is just what’s needed. For example, in a demo I saw, a base Linux install for a Red Hat system arrived to the system as only an 8 MB image via PXE. While that is not an entire installation, the full inventory is made available to the servers via the respository. 

What impressed me is this: Should any element of the system need something from the repository, it is automatically retrieved. Also, servers can be built without the need to retrieve from the repository if you want everything available locally or the repository not be available.

FastScale also has an interface into VMware. While you can perform traditional PXE builds on virtual systems as you would on physical systems, FastScale Composer’s Virtual Manager plug-in will populate new servers directly to VMware ESX. The Virtual Manager option to Composer will allow a virtual machine to be created as VMDK files and imported to ESX or VMware server. A small agent is required on at least one ESX server to receive the VMDK from Composer.

LeBlanc and Offer told me that a new version of FastScale Composer, coming soon, will incorporate Microsft Windows version support and an improved interface.  For more information or to arrange a demo, visit the FastScale web site.

VMware’s flagship products ESX 3.5 and Virtual Center 2.5 have been available for a little over a month now. When the upgrades were made available, there was much excitement on the newly touted features. So, many IT professionals quickly hurried off and downloaded their product updates and then came to a collective stopping point. How do we upgrade ESX while in use? Sure we upgraded from ESX 3.01 to 3.02 with very little impact. But the change from 3.0x to 3.5 may seem worthy of more preparation because the scope of the change is larger with some of the new features, like Storage VMotion. With the release, here is a simple upgrade strategy that many are adapting:

• Allocate two ESX 3.0x systems as 3.5 candidates (not everyone will be able to do this, I realize).
• Carve these two systems into their own cluster or data center. 
• Make sure all existing VMware DRS rules would be okay with two systems removed.
• Upgrade or fresh install one of the systems to ESX 3.5.
• Test migration from ESX 3.0x to the new ESX 3.5 system.
• Test VMware tools versioning and test any upgrade virtual machine tasks.

This strategy will replicate what you will likely face in a real upgrade situation, as you may not be able to. Because you may only be able to have a limited number of systems available for maintenance at any given time, it is good to be able to replicate that in a test datacenter or cluster. In smaller implementations, this could be repeated with one host where the migration test would be from a live ESX host. Evaluation software may also be a consideration to make available the correct number of hosts to simulate the co-existence of ESX 3.0x and 3.5.

Keep it moving

Should your configuration allow seamless migration between your ESX 3.0x and 3.5 hosts - that should not be a crutch for undefined periods of mixed versions. A good practice would be to have all hosts on the same version of ESX within a cluster. Larger environments may have difficulty moving all systems to the new version, but strategize within your Virtual Center configuration to determine the best configuration for temporary mixed versioning. The goal should be to get all systems on the same version enterprise wide - but only after you are completely comfortable with 3.5 in your infrastructure. 

The horse’s mouth

VMware provides many quality resources online, I’ve saved some work for you and collected some of the highlighted pieces here for review in relation to ESX 3.5 upgrades:

ESX 3.5 upgrade guide

ESX 3.5 compatibility matrix

What’s new for storage in ESX 3.5

VMware Consolidated Backup improvements in ESX 3.5

These resources are a good strategy in being well informed for the what your plan for ESX 3.5 will entail. Simply installing without preparation is surely a recipe for mis-configuration or incorrectly applying your configurations as intendend. And the test upgrade procedure to become familiar with a mixed environment will allow you to clear the way for an end-state configuration of a single version of ESX.

When you think virtualization, VMware comes to mind as the leader, correct? Sure ESX is the premium product right now for x86 virtualization, but there is a movement that needs awareness right now. Last week I mentioned that we should evaluate Citrix XenServer and this week I will expand the scope of that recommendation. The base technology of virtualization will soon be a commodity, and basic elements are free with VMware Server, XenServer Express Edition, Microsoft Virtual Server, and Microsoft Virtual PC. The base virtualization technology is now readily available so many ways, that the real distinguishing factor will be the management of the virtual environments, the high-availability, costs, and ease of use.

Once shunned out of many IT shops in lieu of the “Windows Revolution” Novell now offers a virtualization management layer, Novell ZENWorks Orchestrator. Now, before you blow off to some other post - consider this - most Novell products are really good at what they do. NetWare was a superior file server (sure - there were client issues and interoperability issues - but there still is no better rights assignments for file serving), Novell jumped on the Linux boat early, and you can see how Linux has clearly maintained its momentum. So, from the management standpoint we will really need to evaluate this solution as well. Orchestrator also is going to embrace cross-platform (Xen, VMware, and Microsoft) management. That alone should be enought to get your ears perked up. Remember, virtualization is relatively young in the x86 space - so anything we can do to not close any doors from the intial embracing of the technologies would be a good idea.

With two clear players emerging in the premier virtualization space, VMware’s ESX Server platform and the Citrix XenServer, every serious virtualization shop needs to evaluate XenServer for fair comparison. Why? Well, right now ESX is the top product in the popular opinion, but after attending a summary of the recent Citrix iForum it became clear that XenServer will pose a significant challenge in all areas to the VMware offering as the resources of Citrix are integrated to the XenServer platform as the products mature.  Just to be fair, VMware is constantly working to improve their offerings as well.

Following in the Footsteps of Free Software

Just as Microsoft and VMware released virtualization products as free pieces, XenServer Express Edition is available to use as a free download. The full enterprise management pieces are not available on the free download (as is the case with VMware Server vs. ESX), but this is a great way to get started with being familiar with the XenServer platform.  This is critically important as virtualization in the x86 world is relatively young in the data center, so in my opinion there will be many arrivals quickly onto the scene and I do not want to entrap myself into one product without full knowledge of the other offerings.

Explore Additional Management

In part of your evaluation, it may be a good idea to determine the differences from the management side between VMware ESX and Citrix XenServer Enterprise edition. There are some differences, and as the next release of XenServer that has had the Citrix touch on the whole build, there should be some exciting new features that will surely give VMware a challenge for the best enterprise virtualization product. Regardless, we all win, as a better suite of products will be made available to the enterprise.