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           -Where Virtualization is a Reality!

From VMware.com:

Are you up for the challenge of creating the industry’s most innovative virtual appliance? VMware invites you to put your skills to the test, go head-to-head with your peers, and develop the best virtual appliance the industry has ever seen. Using open source or freely distributable components and/or your own code, create the most inventive and useful virtual appliance and win the $100,000 first prize! The Challenge is open to anyone worldwide and will be judged by a panel of industry experts with input from the community.

Why the Challenge? VMware's customers are building valuable virtual appliances to solve a variety of IT problems. The Challenge will make those appliances available to the whole community while rewarding their creators with cash and recognition.

Top Prizes are:

• $100,000 - First Prize


• $50,000 - Second Prize


• $25,000 - Third Prize


• Five $5,000 Best of Category Prizes

Time to start thinking :)

This just in!

I just came across a VERY cool service that you need
to get signed up for RIGHT NOW! And it won't cost
you a dime. In fact, you will actually earn cash :-)

If you have a cell phone, click this link and get $5.00
INSTANTLY in your TextPayMe account...

http://www.vmwarez.com/textpayme

TextPayMe is like Paypal, only COOLER. While PayPal
allows you to send and receive funds via email, TextPayMe
lets you send and receive funds using your cell phone!

Let's say you go out to dinner or the movies and
need to split the bill. Simply TextPayMe your
friend instantly for your portion!

Or perhaps you want to buy or sell something on
Craigslist.com, TextPayMe the money!

When you sign up now for FREE (seriously, NO
strings attached...) they will give you $5.00
in your account.

I don't know about you, but I like FREE MONEY.

So that's why I am posting an ad on Friday, even
though it doesn't have anything to do with
virtualization, server consolidation, VMware
or Xen. I thought this was very cool and a great
way to end the week. :-)

Have a great weekend!

http://www.vmwarez.com/textpayme

Jim

My friend over at VoIPJots just released a very cool add-on to Asterisk@Home. I may be including it in my next pre-built asterisk virtual machine, but for now you can check it out yourself over at his website.

It seems everyone is talking about Click-to-Call functionality these days. Google has announced they are going to do it, EBay will be doing it before too long, and there are other websites out there that I've recently noticed are offering this service.

Click-to-Call seems like it would be a complicated task to setup; enabling a website visitor to click a button to allow them to submit their phone number, and receive a call from someone a few seconds later, with no long distance charges for the visitor.
If you have an AAH or Asterisk box, it really is not that difficult to add such a feature to your website. A very simple PHP page hosted either on your AAH box, or another PHP-capable web server (that has TCP connectivity to your AAH/Asterisk box) is all you need. Last night I developed such a script, and though it is rather simple, it's effective. I plan on doing more with it later, but thought I'd share it will all of you so that you can begin playing with it, or customizing it yourself. This script was written for AAH, so it probably will not work with a regular Asterisk box without some modifications, or even a heavily customized AAH box. However, it's very straight-forward, and should not be hard to debug if you have problems with it.

To the expert PHP'ers out there, this was my first attempt at doing anything with PHP (I'm an ASP guy), so have pity on me!:)

Go to www.VoIPJots.com to read the rest!

Welp, it is official, VMware has done a "success story" on WTC. WTC is where I work (my day job) as their Network Administrator. VMware was nice enough to spend some time talking to me on the phone about how we use their products and as a result, they came up with this nice article. Also, we've become a VMware Core Customer too. Woo Hoo! Click here to read the story.
 

Another good read:

ONStor’s Jon Toor explains why he believes that 2006 may be the year that use of virtualization technologies really takes off.

While we’ve heard about storage virtualization for years, wide scale deployment has not yet materialized. The technology was supposed to deliver benefits such as reduced management costs and better storage utilization, but for all the promise adoption among users remains low, its perceived cost and complexity remain high, and, frankly, the marketing hype has left users confused over the supposed advantages. In 2006, however, this will start to change. Virtualization will emerge this year as a useful tool, though it may not appear in quite the same form we’re accustomed to. To understand this transition, it helps to dig into what virtualization really is.

"Other companies fight server sprawl with virtualisation too"

This looks like a pretty good read...

Analyst firm IDC expects the number of servers in the US to grow from 2.8 million in 2005 to 4.9 million by 2009. Data centres "are becoming more and more swollen," causing IT costs to rise quickly, IDC analyst Vernon Turner said at the IDC Virtualization Forum, which was held here last week.

Desert Schools Federal Credit Union in Phoenix expects to cut costs significantly by running VMware's virtualisation software on two two-way, dual-core Opteron-based blade servers, which were installed last week, said Doug Baer, a systems engineer at the firm. Baer said the new systems are expected to handle the workload that is running on the five two-way, single-core Xeon machines they are replacing. "I can hardly imagine buying another server," said Baer, crediting the virtualisation software from EMC's VMware subsidiary. "Once you build your virtual infrastructure, you are definitely slowing down your server proliferation."

Looks like they've added a lot of new features, fixed a lot of bugs and have quite a bit new in the way of hardware support. While this would have seemed like tight competition for VMware a month ago, since the beta release of the free VMware Server product, this pales. It is still pretty cool software and is helping to get virtualization into the mainstream IT world.

Click here to read about it on their site and to download the beta.

New Features:

• A completely new, visually stunning user interface.


• Better virtual machine performance, stability and isolation.


• “Suspend and resume” functionality lets you instantly suspend a virtual machine’s state and resume it at a later time without having to completely shut down and start up a guest operating system.


• Support for Physical Address Extension (PAE) allows Workstation 2.1 to run on PAE-enabled primary OSes with up to 4GB of RAM.


• An improved, redesigned Parallels Tools package for Windows that provides useful add-on features that let each user customize their Parallels Workstation experience. New tools include guest/host time synchronization and complete support for normal video modes in Windows 95, 98 and Me.

Stronger Hardware Support

• USB Support enables you to access a wide range of popular USB devices directly in virtual machines.


• Wireless networking support in Windows frees users from network cables. Now, you can connect virtual machines to the internet via any WiFi connection.


• Improved sound support and sound recording feature. Now you can work with your favorite programs which require microphone or line in inside Parallels.


• Stronger support for Intel VT® technology that improves the speed, performance and stability of virtual machines running on VT-powered computers.


• Virtual processor supports more features and improves performance of a modern operating systems in virtual machines.


• Better programmable interval timer (PIT) support: extends legacy OSes and legacy applications support.

Broader OS Support:

• Primary and guest OS support for SUSE Linux 10.


• Guest OS support for Sun Solaris.

Major Bug Fixes

• Many major bugs were fixed.

Known Issues:

• Isochronous USB devices are not supported yet (such as web cameras, USB sound cards and so on).

OK, this is it. I now have VMware Server running on my desktop. I am running XP, so I did get an error and a little problem that was easily overcome. I'll explain.

The install went fine till it popped up this error:


Click to enlarge.

Or read it here:

The VMware Management Interface Website was correctly configured but failed to start. The site will have to be started manually from the IIS configuration console.

I clicked OK and the installation finished normally. When it was done, I had two new icons on my desktop, one for "VMware Server Console" and one for "VMware Virtual Machine Console." Which probably explains why we had to un-install the old VMware remote console before installing Server. This install also added the "VMware Server Console" icon to my quicklaunch bar.

Now that the install is finally done, I just need to start that website as described in the above error. Since I'm running on XP, and IIS in XP is limited to one virtual website, the new VMware Management Interface (VMI from now on)website would not start; as shown here:



So, to start it, simply stop the "Default Web Site" and then start the VMI website. Once that is done, you're good to go.



From what I understand, VMware will not support VMware Server running on XP. Once it is out of beta, they will only support it in a production environment if it running on a server class OS. I'm not sure what the requirements are for running it on Linux.... This is not official or anything, it is just my gut feeling. More will be known after it comes out of beta.

OK, I think that after this time, I'll get it installed. First thing that I did differently was to choose "Custom Install" to see what exactly is in the full install. Here's a screenshot:

Looks like we get the VMware Server, The VMware Management Interface, the VMware VmCOM Scripting API and the VMware VmPerl Scripting API. I opted for the full install... just in case I want to mess the the APIs.

Then, just as it seemed like it was going to finish, I got this error:

Setup has detected that VMware Virtual Machine Console is installed on this machine. Please uninstall it through Add/Remove Programs and try again.

So, here I go... hopefully just one more try. I'll get that uninstalled and try again.

Welp, I finally got some time to start playing with VMware Server. I uninstalled workstation (which may end up biting me in the tail) and started the Server install. It went through the first few screens just fine, then told me that I need to have IIS installed in order to install the VMware Management Interface. It said that if I want to go ahead and install VMware Server without the Management Interface, I could... Which means that you can probably manage multiple VMware Servers from one management interface? We'll see. Next I am going to install IIS and start over.

Click the picture for a full sized view.

Assumptions:

• We're talking about virtualizing servers in a VMware ESX environment.


• We know that it is possible to have a connection between a virtual machine's comm port and the physical machine's comm port.


• In a virtual infrastructure, it is common to have a 8 to 1 ratio of virtual machines to physical machines.

Problems:

• It is not possible to VMotion a VM while it is connected to a physical device on the host.


• Connecting a VM to a physical device is a large drain on the ESX box and that performance between the device and the VM will suffer because of it.


• Without using specialized hardware, there are commonly only 2 serial ports on a server. VMware ESX does not support much in the way of specialized hardware. If each of our virtual servers is using one serial port, there are not enough serial ports to go around.

The solution is quite simple. Thanks to the nice folks at Avocent, you can now connect your VMs to serial devices over the network and nobody's the wiser. Your applications will never know the difference... you'll still be able to VMotion your virtual computers, performance will not suffer and you'll have as many ports as your little heart desires.



With the ESP-4 MI from Avocent, you can have your cake and eat it too. Basically you install software on your virtual machine, whether it is linux or windows (or whatever else they support), then configure the software to create a virtual comm port. This comm port looks and feels like a comm port as far as any application is concerned. You configure the software to connect the virtual comm port to one of the physical comm ports on this ESP-4 via the network. Plug your devices in and away you go.

They have these units with up to 16 comm ports, some with specialized features such as opto-isolated I/O, RS-422, RS-485, etc... You can read their site if you're interested in more details.

These units have a nice management software package and broad OS support... including: WinNT, Win2k, Win2k3, WinXP, Citrix, Linux, AIX, SCO, Unix & Solaris.



It seems like they have not caught on to the virtual market place as a niche market for their products... Yet!

I have not tested this product myself, so I cannot say from first hand experience that this is a good product, but the idea seems solid. The company's been around for a long time and seems like they will be for a long time to come. Hopefully I'll be able to test one of these myself and report back on how it worked.

I have an immediate need to do so as soon as this year's budget stuff gets approved. We have a time clock that runs off a serial connection. If we want to virtualize that server, our options are to replace the time clock with an ethernet-based one (approx $1,500) or get one of these devices (approx $300). Also, our Digital Cable TV Head-End is about to get a face lift. New middleware. This new middleware requires that we use a serial-based EAS (Emergency Alert System). If we wanted to virtualize this new middleware server, we'd be out of luck without a device like this. I hope it works as well as I think it might!

Buy.com has these at a pretty good price and they have a coupon out now that will save a little money if you opt to order one. This coupon expires 2/28/2006, so hurry if you're planning on getting one.
$10 OFF $175 or more in ALL Stores at Buy.com! New Customers. Exp 2/28!

They have the 4 port model (ESP-4 MI) for $445.99 and the 2 port model (ESP-2 MI) for $281.99.

I'm not sure that this is 100% accurate all of the time. Maybe if the virtual machines are given raw access to the luns... but still, the file system that the virtual disk (vmdk)files are kept on are a file system that windows can't read (vmfs)... I'm not really sure what this guy's talking about. Maybe someone could help me out here... It almost sounds like a bomb throwing... since these same problems exist in a non-vm environment too. Seems like more of just a SAN issue.

Targeted at embedded apps, this departure from the Netburst architecture marks an interesting twist in the road.

Indications are that the first chips will ship at speeds of up to 2GHz, and will represent a four-fold increase in performance/watt over existing single-core Xeons. The primary target for these new chips will be embedded apps.

Here's a good article about AMD & Intel helping move virtualization ahead. It even talks a little about hosting the corporate desktop in a virtual infrastructure:

Another use for virtualization of the desktop is to enhance mobility: A user could place a PC image onto a USB storage device and take it along to be uploaded into another PC when needed. "Mobility is a huge benefit of desktop [virtualization]," Raghuram said.

Mediocrity reigns at Microsoft again... Rumor has it that the next version of Microsoft's Virtual Server platform will not support 64Bit guest operating systems. The MSVS product will support running on a 64Bit host, though. While that should give some performance boost, it lags far behind VMWare's new free offering in that VMWare Server will support 64Bit OSs... not even experimentally as with VMware Workstation, but true support.

Interesting read:

When I speak of virtualization, I don't mean the kind of virtualization that makes Rosetta so slow because it has to do costly PowerPC to Intel x86 CPU emulation. I'm speaking of the type of virtualization that's never been available to Apple before but is now because of the new Intel CPUs. The new form of emulation is a thin translation layer that minimizes resource overhead and there are many possibilities.

Industry experts now believe virtualization will be built into every layer of IT within the next five years.

I've been saying that for the last year or so... but it became clear that I was right when I heard at VMWorld 2005 that Microsoft will be including their Virtual Server technology in their next server platform. Once that happens, everyone who runs their software will get a taste of what virtualization is all about. Then they'll look for the best way to pull it off. I can see that using MS's stuff will be good for the light user, but IT organizations wanting real server consolidation will have to look elsewhere. This is based on my experience w/ MSVS2005EE... and my opinion that it won't really change that much between now and when it is included w/ the OS. They will be happy with mediocrity. But alas, it will be everywhere and more and more people will get a taste of the good-life. Once they know it is good, they will look elsewhere for a serious solution.

Last week I posted my "LiveCD Virtual Machine" which allows people to run LiveCDs on their PCs without having to reboot. While this is nicer than having to reboot to play with a new operating system, it doesn't give a REAL view to the user of what that OS is like. There are limitations, you can't save your files or your settings between reboots, you can't persistently install new software and on some live cds you can't even install any new software.

Live CDs are not only imperfect from an end user's point of view, but they are also a lot of work for the developers. Imagine how much time and effort is put into making an OS boot and run from a CD. All this could be avoided if developers moved from making live cds to runnable virtual machines. The tools are now free. They are available for windows or Linux. And they work! Users can run an OS on their PC without interrupting their normal work, they can save files in their VMs, when they reboot their virtual machine, their settings are saved... and the developer can put out a new virtual machine with little or no effort.

VMware is listing lots of these pre-built virtual machines for people to download on their community virtual machine site. Check them out... learn about other OS's without having to reboot!
If you find some of these Virtual Machines useful, let the developers know. Let them know how you prefer to download a VM over a LiveCD. Let the world know how cool virtualization is!

PS: This does not apply to all LiveCDs, so please don't flame me. There are some whose reason for existence is that they run off a CD... Like disaster recovery stuff, etc.

Good article about another industry getting its feet wet with virtualization. I've worked in an industry that was heavy into telemetry and with all the back-end systems, virtualization makes perfect sense.

VMware says they're still on track for the February 16 start date of the VMware ESX 3.0 / Virtual Center 2.0 beta program. If you're on their email list you have access to a couple webinars... and tomorrow they suppose to be posting one with in-depth details of ESX3/VC2. Woo Hoo!