Hypervisor

LAS VEGAS--VMware's forthcoming ESX Server 4.0 hypervisor update will allow users to change the amount of RAM allocated to virtual machines without rebooting them, VMworld 2008 attendees here heard Tuesday.

In addition, the new hypervisor will enable businesses to configure virtual machines with eight virtual CPUs and a maximum of 256GB RAM, VMware product manager Carter Shanklin said in a technical briefing at the Las Vegas conference. The current version of ESX Server supports a maximum of 64GB RAM and four CPUs per virtual machine.

Although there have been several rumors about ESX 4.0 published by bloggers, … Read more

Mr. Virtualization (aka ESG analyst Mark Bowker) called me Monday from the big Microsoft virtualization gala. From his description it was vintage Microsoft: company senior managers, partners, demos, and multimedia presentations. I kind of wish I was there for the demonstration of Buddy Guy's virtual guitar playing on a Gibson Flying V. (You had to be there.)

Microsoft's Bobs (Kelly and Muglia) kicked off the day with keynote presentations around customer case studies and Microsoft's technology vision. But what's most interesting to me is what Microsoft didn't say. According to Bowker, Microsoft hardly mentioned its recently released hypervisor (Hyper-V). … Read more

I just came across this post by Rich Miller, pointing to the XenAccess, a potentially valuable open-source project that aims to bring VMsafe-esque capabilities to the Xen project.

Hatched at Georgia Tech in 2007, the project hasn't been moving very fast, but perhaps its time has come? That depends on the importance of VMsafe, to some extent. As for VMsafe:

VMware VMsafe is a new security technology for virtualized environments that can help to protect your virtual infrastructure in ways previously not possible with physical machines.

VMsafe provides a unique capability for virtualized environments through an application program … Read more

VMWare plans to spend more than $100 million over the next two years to expand its presence in India, the virtualization software maker said Monday.

The company said it will build a new 82,000-square-foot research and development facility in Bangalore. In addition, the company plans to double its employee headcount in India to more than 1,000 people by 2010.

VMWare, a unit of storage maker EMC, is seen as the leader in the market for virtualization software. But competitors are working to close the gap.

Microsoft last week made available for download a test version of its Hyper-V hypervisor … Read more

Parallels on Monday added some higher-end features to its Virtuozzo software, that subdivides a single server operating system into several semi-independent virtual partitions.

With the release of version 4.0 of Virtuozzo Containers, the company also finalized its planned name change from SWsoft to Parallels. The company's newer name refers to a second virtualization product line that lets several separate operating systems run on a single machine, most notably Windows on Apple computers; Parallels also sells management software to control the different virtualization technologies.

Virtuozzo Containers 4.0, which costs $2,500 for a dual-processor server, includes several higher-end … Read more

If market-leading VMware, open-source incumbent Xen, and Microsoft's upcoming Hyper-V aren't enough choices, another one is on the way: Parallels Server.

SWsoft, which is in the process of renaming itself Parallels, released its first beta version of the server virtualization software Wednesday. SWsoft itself has chiefly focused on commercializing higher-level virtualization software called Virtuozzo that lets a single version of an operating system be subdivided into semi-independent containers. However, the company's Parallels division has come to prominence by letting a single computer--most notably an Intel-based Apple machine--run Windows.

That Parallels technology is now available as a hypervisor … Read more

For the second time in a week, Microsoft said a version of its software is ready sooner than expected. On Thursday, the software maker made available a beta version of its Hyper-V hypervisor technology, a release that had been scheduled for early next year.

Microsoft didn't change its timing for the final release of the technology, which is due to ship within 180 days of the release of Windows Server 2008. (That product is slated to be wrapped up ahead of its formal launch on February 27.)

"We're hoping that getting it out and providing a nice … Read more

VMware announced details of its forthcoming Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 on Monday, including an experimental feature to shut down servers if they're not necessary.

The feature, called Distributed Power Management, monitors how hard servers are working and moves virtual machines to new machines to let unneeded servers be shut down. When workload picks up again, the servers are powered up again, according to the publicly traded EMC subsidiary.

Virtual Infrastructure includes two main components. First is ESX Server, the underlying hypervisor that lets a single physical computer run multiple operating systems simultaneously in compartments called virtual machines. Second is … Read more