2 posts tagged “xensource”

Read the entire article at Information Week:
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AN ENDANGERED OS?
Applications will always need an operating system to run, right? Not with BEA's WebLogic Server Virtual Edition, or WLS-VE. It replaces the conventional OS with LiquidVM, a microkernel-based Java virtual machine. In turn, the Java VM runs directly on a VMware hypervisor, without the need for Windows or Linux. "We realized the hypervisor had eaten into a lot of what an application needs from an OS," says Guy Churchward, VP and product manager of WebLogic products at BEA.
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Not only will this architecture eliminate OS management costs, Vaughn says, but he also expects to increase the number of virtual machines per physical server because of the reduced overhead of a microkernel vs. a full operating system. In addition, WLS-VE supports several of VMware's most popular features, including VMotion, which lets managers move applications from one physical machine to another without disruption.
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VMware's latest release aims to make that prediction a reality. Last month, it introduced ESX Server 3i, a 32-Mbyte hypervisor that comes integrated with hardware shipped by server vendors, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Fujitsu. These servers will boot directly into a hypervisor. XenSource also announced XenExpress OEM Edition, which will let server vendors install the Xen hypervisor. Xen, which is being acquired by Citrix Systems, says it will announce OEM partners later this year.

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In many enterprises, the default assumption is that new applications will be deployed in virtualized environments. "Customers are saying they have to justify not virtualizing new apps," says Rich Fomin, lead product manager for BMC Performance Manager.

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THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING
It's too early to declare a winner in the battle between Microsoft and VMware. But the upstart has done an admirable job of preparing the ground in its favor. Every day that Microsoft's hypervisor is absent is another day VMware's hypervisor gains easy market share. VMware has assembled a large and growing ecosystem of big and small vendors that are increasingly making VMware the linchpin of a virtualized data center.

Most important, the transition to a virtualized environment, in which the operating system is no longer the software foundation of a server infrastructure--and in some cases isn't even required to run applications--robs Microsoft of a core power base.

Virtualization won't kill the operating system, but it does shift the balance of power. The ground is too unstable to declare a new king, but one thing is clear: The throne will be a hypervisor.

I hit VMworld this year and was completely blown away.  I was already a long time VMware user and have been using ESX for almost a year now.  (There's nothing like having your virtual machine that's running Virtual Center being automatically moved from one physical ESX server to another...while it's running (via DRS/VMotion).  Completely mind blowing!)  While at VMworld there were a number of innovations VMware as well as other's announced that are starting to make it to the mainstream, well, mainstream tech press now.  Two of the coolest innovations announced are Storage VMotion and Distributed Power Management.  Check out the excerpts below and the articles themselves.  Cool stuff!

an excerpt from an article on Byte and Switch:

As part of today's ESX Server announcements, VMware also unveiled Storage VMotion, effectively adapting one of its core virtual server technologies to the storage realm. "Storage VMotion will do the same things for storage arrays as VMotion does for servers," explains Balansky. "It will enable you to migrate the virtual machine disk file from one storage array to another."

Just as VMotion lets users migrate running VMs from physical server to physical server, so the storage version can be used for maintenance work on storage arrays, according to the exec.

ESG analyst Bowker identified the launch of storage VMotion as a step in the right direction by VMware. "It would be nice to have different tiers of storage associated with VMs," he says. "Let's say that I have a virtual application that becomes very busy at the end of the month, you can migrate that to a different tier of storage as needed."

an excerpt from an articale on CNET News:
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.