July

In honor of the 4th of July celebration of Freedom (in the US), we are going to focus on “FREE”, no strings attached software and virtualization methods. There are many great Free products out there, including VMware Server, VMware Player, Virtual Server 2005, Virtual PC, and VirtualBox.

August

Being the hottest month of the year, in the northern hemisphere besides July which already has a topic, the topic of August will be “GREEN”. With virtualization leading to green computing, the month of August will cover the cost benefits, equipment benefits and operating savings of running virtualization in the corporate environment.

September

If all goes well, the acquisition of new Apple hardware will lead this month to be “APPLE” month. The topic will focus on VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop, and the barely discussed OSX Server Virtualization.

October

The month of October ends with Halloween. So the topic will be the “SCARY” part of virtualization. This is all about what happens when virtualization goes wrong, hardware dies, and how to safely backup restore and move Virtual Machines.

The best way to stay up to date with the virtualization industry is to subscribe to the RSS Feed and receive the latest headlines as soon as they get posted.

Enjoy
x86V

Parallels Workstation 2.2, the first major product released by Parallels, but greatly overshadowed by the much more widely known and used product Parallels Desktop for the Mac. Parallels Workstation in comparable to VMware Workstation, and user would find the differences minimal.

Parallels Workstation 2.2 can be downloaded directly from Parallels at: Download Free Trial Today
Build 2.2.2222 (Jan 31, 2008)
Windows EXE (19 Mb)
RPM package (21 Mb)
DEB package (21 Mb)
TGZ archive (21 Mb)

System Requirements
Processor: 400 MHz or faster processor which supports the Pentium II instruction set. 1.5 GHz or faster is recommended.

Memory: Memory to run primary OS, plus memory required for each guest operating system and its applications.

Disk Space: Software Installation - 20 MB of available hard drive space for Parallels Workstation installation. (Does not include hard drive space for guest virtual machine)

Virtual Machine Installation: Hard drive space allocation for virtual machines is dependent upon the guest operating system.

Networking: To access the Internet from your VM, the host computer and primary OS must have an Ethernet adapter

Communications: Serial or parallel port (optional)

CD-ROM: CD/DVD-ROM drive for installation (if applicable)

Floppy: 3.5” floppy drive (optional)

Display: Any SVGA video card with an 8-bit display adaptor supported by the primary OS. 16-bit color depth or higher is recommended.

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VirtualBox 1.6.2 is a growing product, produced by Innotek, a company which was recently acquired by Sun Microsystems. The platform is possibly the widest range of supported host platforms, from the Mac OS, OpenSolaris, Linux and Windows. Most other desktop virtualization products tend to only support 2 or 3 different platforms.

VirtualBox 1.6.2 can be downloaded directly from Sun at: Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6.2
Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6
VirtualBox-1.6.2-Win_amd64.msi 26.12 MB

System Requirements
* Reasonably powerful x86 hardware. Any recent Intel or AMD processor should do.

* Memory. Depending on what guest operating systems you want to run, you will need at least 512 MB of RAM (but probably more, and the more the better). Basically, you will need whatever your host operating system needs to run comfortably, plus the amount that the guest operating system needs. So, if you want to run Windows XP on Windows XP, you probably won’t enjoy the experience much with less than 1 GB of RAM. If you want to try out Windows Vista in a guest, it will refuse to install if it is given less than 512 MB RAM, so you’ll need that for the guest alone, plus the memory your operating system normally needs.

* Hard disk space. While VirtualBox itself is very lean (a typical installation will only need about 30 MB of hard disk space), the virtual machines will require fairly huge files on disk to represent their own hard disk storage. So, to install Windows XP, for example, you will need a file that will easily grow to several GB in size.

* A supported host operating system. Presently, we support Windows (primarily XP) and many Linux distributions on 32-bit hosts and on 64-bit hosts. Support for Mac OS X is currently in the works (note also the last Mac OS X Beta).

* A supported guest operating system. Besides the user manual (see below), up-to-date information is available at “Status: Guest OSes”.

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Virtual Server 2005 is based on the original work done by Connectix to build Virtual PC. It has some major drawbacks, including lack of 64bit client support. But it is FREE, and can be used to run linux in a Microsoft server environment. It had a very long beta period, and basically never reached maturity in the eyes of the industry as Microsoft moved right on to Hyper-V and cpu based hypervisor virtualization methods. This program is a great solution for a smb who maybe running older equipment but want to start a transition to a virtualized environment.

Virtual Server 2005 can be downloaded directly from Microsoft at: Download details: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1
Version: 2005
Date Published: 6/11/2007
Language: English
Download Size: 40.8 MB

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I have gathered the hardware profiles of some of the most common virtualization vendors using the following test system:

Dell SC440 Poweredge server, running Windows XP 64bit, without VT Technology. I have used, with permission, Belarc Advisor to create the hardware profiles of all the virtual machines. Starting with the actual physical host machine. Here is the hardware profile of the SC440:

Over the next few days I will be releasing the profiles of some very popular virtualization platforms, including: VMware server, Parallels Workstation, Virtual PC, and VirtualBox.

100% of the time you are working with ANY virtual machine you will be remotely connected, you maybe at the physical server, logged into the local console, looking at the VMware Server Console, but it is still “REMOTE”. The images are being processed, compressed and sent to the software. The virtual machines doesn’t know that, and doesn’t care. The console software can connect from anywhere, on the same machine, across the room or even across the world.

What technologies are being used to transmit these images?
Currently the big 2 are VNC and RDP.

VNC

In computing, Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a graphical desktop sharing system which uses the RFB protocol to remotely control another computer. It transmits the keyboard and mouse events from one computer to another, relaying the graphical screen updates back in the other direction, over a network.

VNC is platform-independent — a VNC viewer on any operating system usually connects to a VNC server on any other operating system. There are clients and servers for almost all GUI operating systems and for Java. Multiple clients may connect to a VNC server at the same time. Popular uses for this technology include remote technical support and accessing files on one’s work computer from one’s home computer, or vice versa.
(source)

VNC Comments

VNC is a nice tool. It’s improved a bit over the years, but still has several flaws.
1) A VNC server is required for an OS. Many operating systems have them, but some don’t.
2) If a server is available for an OS, it has to be configured through the OS. There is no way to keep the configuration external.
3) RFB doesn’t work well over high latency connections.
4) All RFB clients and servers that I know of are only moderately adaptive to bandwidth.

NX/FreeNX are much better than VNC as far as latency and bandwidth go. Unfortunately, client and server implementations are less available than with VNC.
(source)

VNC Articles

Using a VNC Client for Remote Connections to a Virtual Machine

RDP

Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a multi-channel protocol that allows a user to connect to a computer running Microsoft Terminal Services. Clients exist for most versions of Windows (including handheld versions), and other operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Mac OS X, and PalmOS. The server listens by default on TCP port 3389.[1] Microsoft refers to the official RDP client software as either Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) or Terminal Services Client (TSC).(source)

Problems with RDP, or really problems with Microsoft:
Recently during a SP roleout Microsoft changed a flag for remote connections to XP and Vista systems, now if you where using an independant technology, like VNC, Microsoft wouldn’t have been able to ruin your afternoon.

If you install SP3 for Windows XP or SP1 for Vista, the switch for connecting to a console via a RDP session apparently changes from /console to /admin. This means that if you use the /console switch it, it will be ignored and you will only have a regular RDP session.(source)

RDP Videos

RDP Articles

Customizing the Microsoft RDP Client (Part 1)
Remote display protocols for VDI: will RDP be enough? - From BrianMadden.com
http://blogs.inside.quest.com/provision/2008/06/13/rdp-bitmap-and-flash-acceleration/

Keep Reading to See the “Future” of Remote Desktop Software
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Alternative Computing Cluster Systems

Proving anything can run linux and be networked

Categories include:

• Gaming Systems
• Set top Boxes
• Handheld Devices
• Mini-ITX Custom Systems
• Mass Market Toys

What is a Super Computer?

A supercomputer is a computer that is considered at the time of its introduction to be at the frontline in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. The term “Super Computing” was first used by New York World newspaper in 1929 to refer to large custom-built tabulators that IBM had made for Columbia University.(source)

What is a Computer Cluster?

A computer cluster is a group of coupled computers that work together closely so that in many respects they can be viewed as though they are a single computer. The components of a cluster are commonly, but not always, connected to each other through fast local area networks. Clusters are usually deployed to improve performance and/or availability over that provided by a single computer, while typically being much more cost-effective than single computers of comparable speed or availability.(source)

How Fast is a Super Computer?

Apple calls the new models “supercomputers” because they can complete 1 billion floating-point math operations per second — a level of performance known in the industry as a “gigaflop.” (source)

Keep reading to see the cluster systems.
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This tool seems to be the only advancement since the annoucement of the format. There hasn’t been any other breakthroughs, there doesn’t seem to be any great uses for the format, other then ESX server, which supports to import and export VMs.

To learn more about the format read “Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) -Virtual Machines - Virtualization - VMware” or Download the VMware PDF on OVF tool

VMWARE OPEN VIRTUAL MACHINE FORMAT TOOL, from VMware

What does this tool do? Why do you need it? and Does VMware include it in ESX?

What does the tool do?
The tool does the conversion between VMX (with VMDK) to OVF or the other way around.
Why do you need it?
This allows people who have OVF systems to convert to VMX for VMware player, server or fusion systems.
Does VMware include this functionality in ESX?
VMware includes a similar functionality in ESX 3.5, listed under their release notes:

Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF)—The Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) is a virtual machine distribution format that supports sharing of virtual machines between products and organizations. VMware Infrastructure Client version 2.5 allows you to import and generate virtual machines in OVF format through the File > Virtual Appliance > Import/Export menu items. (source)

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Virtualization White Papers

Virtualization Overview (PDF), provided by White papers on server consolidation, blade servers, software testing and more: VMware - VMware

Value Proposition of Open Source Virtualization (PDF) provided by White Papers and Case Studies: Intel

Performance Evaluation of Virtualization Technologies for Server Consolidation (PDF) provided by Technical Reports: HP Labs

Virtualization through Consolidation Solution Brief (PDF) provided by Virtualization - Resources: Sun

Server Optimization and Integration Services - VMware server virtualization (PDF) provided by Server optimization and integration services: IBM

Virtualization Videos

VMware

Downloadable Version of VMware Server 1.0 Training download here

The downloadable version of the VMware Server 1.0 training currently posted on the VMware eLearning YouTube and Blip.TV channels is now available! You may download the course for free.

Virtualization Software

Cross Platform Based

VirtualBox OSE download here

VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software.

VMware Player download here

Run virtual machines on your Windows or Linux PC with VMware Player 2.0. This free desktop virtualization software application makes it easy to operate any virtual machine created by VMware Workstation, VMware Server or VMware ESX, as well as Microsoft virtual machines and Symantec LiveState Recovery disks.

Microsoft Windows Based

Virtual PC 2007 download here

Use Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 to run multiple operating systems at the same time on the same physical computer. Switch between virtual machines with the click of a button. Use virtual machines to run legacy applications, provide support, train users, and enhance quality assurance.

Linux Based

OpenVZ download here

OpenVZ is container-based virtualization for Linux. OpenVZ creates multiple secure, isolated containers (otherwise known as VEs or VPSs) on a single physical server enabling better server utilization and ensuring that applications do not conflict.

Qemu download here

QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer. When used as a machine emulator, QEMU can run OSes and programs made for one machine (e.g. an ARM board) on a different machine (e.g. your own PC). By using dynamic translation, it achieves very good performances.

Virtual Machine Software

Microsoft Windows Based

VMX Builder download here

VMX Builder is an application for creating vmx (VMware virtual machine configuration) and vmdk (VMware virtual hard disk) files. Caution! This is still in Beta test!

Linux Based

Virtual Machine Manager download here

The “Virtual Machine Manager” application (virt-manager for short package name) is a desktop user interface for managing virtual machines. It presents a summary view of running domains, their live performance & resource utilization statistics. The detailed view graphs performance & utilization over time.

Ubuntu-VM-Builder download here

This is the Ubuntu VM builder script which automates the process of creating a ready to use VM based on Ubuntu. You can pass command line options to add extra packages, remove packages, choose which version of Ubuntu, which mirror etc. On recent hardware with plenty of RAM, tmpdir in /dev/shm, and a local mirror, you can bootstrap a vm in less than a minute.

Open-VM-Tools download here

VMware is announcing the release of large portions of VMware Tools for Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD guests under GPL and GPL-compatible licenses. VMware is also announcing the creation of the Open Virtual Machine Tools (”open-vm-tools”) project on Sourceforge.net.

If you have enjoyed reading this, or found any of these resources useful don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed so you will be instantly informed as soon as a new post is published.

Enjoy,
Bradford Knowlton

Ubuntu-VM-Builder

Caution, security warning:
These are default settings for a new virtual machine, you will want to change them immediately or better idea would be to set them during build, for more information keep reading after the break.
Default fullname: Ubuntu
Default username: ubuntu
Default password: ubuntu

Here is some quick information on what Ubuntu-VM-builder is:

ubuntu-vm-builder provides a method to quickly create a clean testing environment, a way to automate the virtual machine installation process, and for software developers, the ability to integrate the creation of a virtual machine into the build process of an application. If using a local mirror the virtual machine creation process can take less than two minutes from start to finish. (source)

Step 1. To install Ubuntu-VM-Builder on your linux workstation, requires 8.04 or greater

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-vm-builder

ubuntu-vm-builder Depends on:
Depends: debootstrap
Depends: kpartx
Depends: parted
Depends: qemu

These will automatically be installed by apt-get during the installation, no other installation is required.

Step 2. To build a virtual machine, first move into the directory where you will want the vm folder to be created
mkdir ~/virtual-machines
cd ~/virtual-machines

Step 3. Run Ubuntu-vm-builder, with the required flags and options
sudo ubuntu-vm-builder kvm hardy

For more flags, options and some examples keep reading.
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