Heading in a different direction from its main rivals, Ubuntu Linux will use
Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server both use the Xen virtualization software, a "hypervisor" layer that lets multiple operating systems run on the same computer. In contrast, the KVM software runs on top of a version of Linux, the "host" operating system that provides a foundation for other "guest" operating systems to run in a virtual mode.
"We've chosen to settle on KVM as our main virtualization focus," Soren Hansen, the Ubuntu Server Team's 26-year-old virtualization specialist, said in the Ubuntu Weekly News.
The move gives new prominence to KVM, which was initially popular with Linus Torvalds and other programmers of the Linux kernel. However, in the months since start-up Qumranet began the KVM project, the Xen programmers have made more progress in dovetailing their code more closely with the Linux kernel. KVM and Xen both are open-source packages.
KVM will be built into Ubuntu's next version, called Hardy Heron and due in April. "For the Hardy Heron release, we've really picked up the virtualization ball. Virtualization is making its way into data centers and onto developer workstations everywhere. Even 'regular' users are using it to run Ubuntu on Mac OS X all the time," Hansen said. "Virtualization has been on our agenda for a long time, but it became a top priority at UDS (Ubuntu Developer Summit) in November. We could see that demand for it was growing."
Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, will provide long-term support for Hardy Heron that lasts five years for servers and three years for PCs. Ubuntu is updated about every six months, but Hardy Heron is only the second version to get long-term support.
Xen is already built into Red Hat and Novell's Linux products, and Microsoft is on the brink of releasing its own virtualization product, called Hyper-V. However, the market leader for virtualization is EMC subsidiary VMware, which sells not only the virtualization foundation but also higher-level tools to monitor server performance and to move applications from one server to another to adjust work load.
Hansen said programmers also evaluated several other options, including Xen, Parallels' OpenVZ, KQEMU, and VirtualBox. "We found that KVM was the best fit for us right now."
Unsurprisingly, Xen fans see things differently. In particular, Simon Crosby, chief technology officer of Citrix Systems' virtualization and management division, said KVM's approach is better suited to desktop machines than to servers.
"Ubuntu is not widely deployed in enterprise data centers, where the need for a comprehensive virtual infrastructure layer independent of any guest operating system...is a requirement articulated by every customer," Crosby said in a statement. Ubuntu is widely used on desktops, so for Ubuntu programmers, "it seems natural that a hosted virtualization model makes sense to them."
Although Ubuntu didn't use the same virtualization foundation that dominant Linux seller Red Hat chose, it will use the libvirt package Red Hat created to provide a neutral management interface to Xen, KVM, or other compatible virtualization systems.
To provide an easier interface to libvirt, Ubuntu will employ software called virt-manager, Hansen said. "It allows you to set up new virtual machine, see which ones are running, and how much CPU they're consuming," he said.
Virtual Iron, a start-up trying to commercialize the open-source Xen virtualization software, has just gotten a new chief executive, and he wants to grab some of the attention lavished on rivals in the suddenly high-profile market.
The new CEO is Ed Walsh, who led Avamar Technologies, a company focusing on economizing storage by reducing duplicative data, which EMC acquired in 2004. John Thibault, who was named Virtual Iron's CEO in 2005, will remain executive chairman of the 73-employee Lowell, Mass.-based company, Virtual Iron plans to announce Monday.
Virtual Iron has been in the virtualization business for three years, getting started as Katana Technology with the idea that virtualization could let software be spread across multiple machines. That didn't work out, though, so the company shifted gears in 2006 to sell software that lets customers control software running on Xen.
Walsh knows he has his work cut out for him as he tries to give the company a higher profile. "Now's the time to put in a little sales and marketing and to hit the gas," he said.
To help that part of the business, Virtual Iron also has hired John McCarthy from EMC and McData to be senior vice president of sales.
Virtualization, which lets a single computer run multiple operating systems simultaneously, is a hot area, but the heat lies mostly with market leader and EMC subsidiary VMware, which had a successful initial public offering in August, following up last week with $65 million in net income on revenue that grew 90 percent from the year-earlier quarter to $358 million.
Also in August, Citrix Systems announced a deal to acquire Xen's primary backer, XenSource, a move it completed last week.
Meanwhile, Virtual Iron will have to reckon with other start-ups, including Qumranet, and Microsoft plans to make its serious virtualization debut in about a year.
Walsh seems to have Microsoft and XenSource more in his competitive crosshairs than VMware. He recognizes that XenSource has better recognition as a provider of Xen-based virtualization, but believes Virtual Iron's product is stronger.
"They have great marketing. The project has to catch up with their marketing," Walsh said. Virtual Iron, he said, "is the polar opposite." And Microsoft, he said, "isn't even to the table yet."
Walsh does have a strategy to work around VMware's dominance: partnerships with software companies on whose toes VMware is stepping. "They're racing so hard to grow this, they're going to gore the oxen of a lot of the ecosystem," he said.
Citrix completed its $500 million acquisition of XenSource, the primary sponsor of the open-source Xen virtualization software, the company said Monday at its iForum conference in Las Vegas.
XenSource will become the core of the company's new virtualization and management division, and XenSource Chief Executive Peter Levine will report directly to Citrix CEO Mark Templeton. Xen co-founder Ian Pratt will continue to lead the Xen project and now is a Citrix employee, the company said.
Xen, like competing virtualization packages from companies including , SWsoft, Qumranet and Microsoft, lets a single computer run multiple operating systems simultaneously. The idea caught on initially as a way to consolidate the work of multiple inefficient servers, but now it's the foundation for more fluidly adaptable data centers that can respond to changing work demands or hardware failures. For that market, Citrix will sell a product now called Citrix XenServer, formerly known as XenEnterprise.
Citrix chiefly sells software that lets remote desktops or thin clients tap into desktop software actually running on a server. That approach dovetails neatly with virtualization as a way to run the desktop software on a server, and indeed Citrix said it will release its Citrix XenDesktop software in the first half of 2008. A free preview edition should be available for download on October 29 from the company's Web site, Citrix said.
For most of the world, Novell's NetWare operating system may have faded to footnote status, but Novell continues to grind away at its plan to modernize the software.
The new NetWare, called Open Enterprise Server, is an attempt to rebuild the operating system's services atop Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). Version 1.0 essentially was a bundle that included both operating systems, but with OES 2.0, which Novell announced on Monday, the two operating systems got a lot closer.
The reason for the proximity: Xen virtualization software, which lets the same physical server run multiple operating systems simultaneously. For more than a year now, SLES has included the open-source Xen virtualization software, and now NetWare can use it too.
In OES 2.0, NetWare has been updated with technology called paravirtualization, in which the operating system is adapted to explicitly work with the underlying virtualization software. One primary advantage of this approach is that Novell just has to ensure that Novell works with Xen's virtual foundation; it no longer must support the unceasing parade of new hardware directly within NetWare.
In another modernization move, Novell has endowed NetWare its first support for 64-bit x86 processors through the OES 2.0 release. And a feature called Dynamic Storage Technology lets administrators set policies to automatically move disused data to slower but cheaper storage such as tape.
OES 2.0 costs $203 for a one-user license. Maintenance charges are $53 for one year, $92 for two, and $127 for three.
SAN FRANCISCO--Sun Microsystems, a longtime participant in the Xen open-source hypervisor project, has named its Solaris-based offshoot xVM, short for x86 Virtual Machine.
"Because Xen is trademarked, we don't want to call the code we've implemented Xen," said Marc Hamilton, Sun's vice president of Solaris marketing, on Wednesday. It works only on computers with x86 chips such as Intel's Xeon; those with Sun's newer UltraSparc processors use an equivalent technology called logical domains, or LDoms.
Virtualization, blossoming as a technology foundation for x86 servers, lets a single computer run multiple operating systems simultaneously to increase data center efficiency and flexibility. It's a decades-old technology, but it's now spreading like wildfire across the x86 server world. Most of the flames are coming from newly public VMware, which held its
Xen governs how virtual machines get access to hardware resources, typically relying on Linux for technology used to actually communicate with that hardware. xVM, though, is a variation that uses Sun's Solaris operating system instead. Hamilton boasted on his blog last week that Sun's variant shows some performance improvements over Linux-based Xen.
xVM is a part of the open-source incarnation of Solaris, OpenSolaris, but has yet to be moved to the slower-moving and fully supported Solaris geared for production use. But it could be arriving in production environments soon in one form called an appliance.
VMware has touted virtual appliances as a way to neatly package operating systems with higher-level software. Sun sees the same potential but takes it a step further, with hardware thrown into the mix, Hamilton said.
"We expect that (xVM) will first show up in the form of virtual appliances in the next 12 months," Hamilton said. "There is a lot of complexity to running any virtual environment."
xVM will be fully integrated into Solaris with the first release of Project Indiana, the Linux-like incarnation of OpenSolaris led by Debian Linux founder Ian Murdock. The first version of Indiana is due about March 2008, Hamilton said.
One prominent feature of Indiana is packaging software designed to make it easier to download and install new software or updates to existing packages. The software, called Universal Packaging System (UPS), resembles the apt-get software used in Debian and Debian offshoots such as Ubuntu.
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