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One of the most requested features from Service Providers and Enterprises is IP Address Management (IPAM). I can't tell you how many times I have listened to customers ask for a platform that manages IP Addresses effectively on a large scale, even to the point of managing disparate classes and subnets. What happens when two companies merge, do you munge spreadsheets or do you have this software yet? It's not only the software that is unique but that it runs as a XenServer VM in Para-Virtualized mode, meaning it is high-performance. Even better is these run in linux. 
Nixu Software specializes in software designed for DNS, DHCP and IP address management. To run Nixu Products in a virtual machine environment, simply download the ISO installation media from their website and boot up a new virtual machine. The installation media auto-installs the entire server stack.
Unlike traditional computing appliances that require specific hardware to run on, Nixu Products provide a quick and cost-efficient way to migrate and consolidate core network services such as DNS and DHCP to virtualized computing environments. By streamlining tedious network and system management routines, Nixu Products offer exceptional availability and ROI.
Here are some of the Highlights of using NIXU DNS and DHCP in a XenServer VM:
- Centralized IP Address Management
- Merge/Join IP Blocks
- Split IP Blocks
- Subnets in use – report
- Subnets free – report
- Addresses in use – report
- Addresses free – report
- Runs in XenServer as a VM, optimized for Para-Virtualization
- Supports pv-ops
- Supports IPv6
- Uses secure communication between secondary name servers, using keys
- Role based administration
- Assign subnets to administrative domains
- Supports BIND syntax
- For the BIND junkies
- Has a configuration checker
- Automated installation and maintenance reducing management overhead
- Centralized management of all nameservers
- Hardened design for security
WATCH this video tip:
Download the Nixu / XenServer Integration Guide.
Read about Nixu Software here.
Read about Citrix XenServer 5.0 here.
Download Citrix XenServer 5.0 here.
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Citrix is all about virtualization. They have a suite of tools that enable IT departments to virtualize almost everything. Citrix is a Microsoft Certified Partner and, to some extent, a competitor. How does this Partner Competitor relationship work? Microsoft is very interested in virtualization technologies and with the advent of our hypervisor technology, HyperV, and application virtualization software, SoftGrid, you can bet that we'll compete hard with other virtualization vendors.
Here, we meet Simon Crosby, formerly of XenSource now working for Citrix (Citrix purchased XenSource). We discuss the relationship between Microsoft and Citrix, the complexities of building scalable, sercure, reliable and performant virtualization technologies and the future of virtualization. It's a very interesting conversation and Simon is quite the conversationalist. Enjoy.
In the last part of Choosing an Automated Deployment Strategy for XenApp I will discuss installing XenApp via images.
Just got word that SCVMM has been updated and released to support RC1 release of Hyper-V!
http://blogs.technet.com/aralves/archive/2008/06/10/scvmm-2008-beta-hotfix-for-hyper-v-rc1.aspx
Two things I'm going to do; then post by this weekend:
- Upgrade inplace Hyper-V RC0 to RC1, SCVMM (Betav1) to (Betav2), and the effects on the XenDesktop components...
- How will the DDC behave? Will I have to reinstall the DDC if the SCVMM component has been upgraded?
- We know we have to update the hypervisor and the paravirtualization drivers, but just what doI need to do to update everything? I'm hoping for an "autoupgrade" of the drivers. That's the holy grail with virtualizing guests, in my opinion. Anybody listening?
- Fresh reinstall of Server Core (it's so much sexier and less to manage than the full install), comparing notes to the RC0 setup, and see if there are any Delta changes. I would imagine there would be zero...but we will see.
See you this weekend!
I'm not sure where or when this conversation took place, but PC World had an interview with Simon Crosby, the CTO of the Virtualization and Management Division at Citrix, about future plans to build on Hyper-V. It was an interesting read, and I think that it helps reinforce a point of view in that no one company is going to have a hold on the virtualization market, it is going to have to be about interoperability, as we have only just begun to mold whatever form this market may become.
Continue at Source: Citrix CTO Mum on Plans to Build on Microsoft's Hyper-V
So I was tinkering around with Hyper-V, and thought I'd give this a go.
Server Core installation was completely new to me, and I was thinking it would be fairly "simple". I was right, but kinda not right. I'm not used to CLI commands, so I had to do some hunting around for a bit. I found some great articles, and unsupported tools that really accelerated setting this system up. Maybe this will help you get XenDesktop up and functional with the latest releases of Hyper-V, and if you choose to, use Server Core.
EDIT: Please note that Citrix does not yet officially support XenDesktop on Hyper-V and SCVMM 2008. We expect to within a release time frame surrounding MS' official release of SCVMM.
GUS PINTO: It's noticeable the steady growth of conversations around virtualization within organizations and in the Internet today, more specifically around server and desktop virtualization.
Microsoft is readying up Hyper-V, and a lot of technologies to allow these technologies to actually happen for the large enterprise. It's going into market in partnership with Citrix and its Xen Hypervisor.
I guess the question is, what is your true feeling about virtualization in the enterprise on the server and desktop base? Is this just really hype or is this something you guys truly believe is going to happen?
RAY OZZIE: No, it's absolutely fundamental. It is absolutely going to happen.
I would say you have to take desktops separately. The logic behind virtualization on the desktop is completely separate from what it would be on the server, and in some ways it's different within the on-premises world versus the cloud. So, I'll just touch upon those independently.
Before I do that, though, let me just say that from a TS perspective, Terminal Server based deployment will always be more efficient than virtualization. It was a designed-in, multi-tenant model within the OS. So, if there are applications and solutions that fit the TS model, that's just a terrific model to use, and I would encourage organizations to use that model.
Within the enterprise, virtualization, the simplest and most straightforward way is to just make the best use of the datacenter resources that you can from a consolidation perspective. This is we are absolutely taking it seriously.
There are two phases of that consolidation. Phase one is bringing things together, meaning if you have a scale-up cluster or a scale-up, some expensive configuration of hardware, how can you package much usage on that piece of hardware as you can? The other one is then movement of images amongst the different machines within the back-end. You'll see investments progressively from us in both of those realms.
Taken to the extreme within the cloud, virtualization is absolutely critical. Virtualization is key to making the best use and securely isolating properties from multiple customers that might not use even a full inexpensive CPU, and moving them geographically or whatever to provide resilience and robustness. So, it is something that's extremely important.
On the client I'll only say that the uses of it, the way that the Mac uses it to run Windows and stuff, it's clever. Parallels, they're very clever technologies.
The way that you'll see us take advantage of it over time more and more on the client is our mechanisms around ensuring compatibility. App compat is a very, very challenging thing, and you want to continue to make progress with the operating system. We look to it as another tool in the toolbox to try to help in the compat world without -- enabling innovation while still enabling assurance of compatibility.
~snip~
I will be posting the Video with Q&A shortly.
Gus Pinto - Technology Evangelist
Microsoft MVP | gus.pinto@citrix.com
Microsoft and Citrix are hosting a killer virtualization seminar in The City on the 21st of April.
I highly recommend all of you tech dudes in the bay area to get in the loop and learn more about Virtualization technologies today and the road ahead.
Here's the schedule for the day:
| 8:30 - 9:00 | Breakfast and Registration |
| 9:00 - 9:05 | Welcome and Introductions |
| 9:05 - 10:20 | Collaboration in Virtualization - The Microsoft Vision [Peter Meister] |
| 10:20 - 11:35 | Citrix Virtualization Vision and Industry Insights [Simon Crosby] |
| 11:35 - 11:45 | Break |
| 11:45 - 12:20 | An inside look at Hyper-V and Virtualization Licensing [Manjnath Ajjampur] |
| 12:20 - 12:45 | Q & A and Raffle |
Oh yeah, I almost forgot that attendees could win an 80 GB Zune!
Simon Crosby, the Chief Technology Officer of the Virtualization and Management Division of Citrix, recently did a podcast with Virtual Strategy Magazine called "10 Minutes to Xen". Here is a list of the topics discussed -
Podcast Summary:
- Introduction
- Simon Crosby, Founder and CTO, XenSource (:05)
- Busy integrating XenSource into Citrix (:13)
- Virtualization Management Division delivering entire solutions (:37)
- XenServer optimized to run Presentation Server (1:00)
- XenServer OEM component of Citrix XenDesktop - VDI Broker (1:15)
- XenServer and Provisioning Server (1:37)
- How Microsoft's partnership with Citrix will affect XenSource when Viridian hypervisor is released (4:15)
- How VDI will affect server virtualization side of XenSource (6:44)
- Sales activity since acquisition by Citrix (7:58)
- What's Next: Citrix Summit08 coming soon and Citrix XenServer in beta (9:42)
- Close
For those of you running Citrix Presentation Server, Simon mentions in this podcast that the plan for the next release of Citrix XenServer is to included some CPS specific optimizations. I am gathering more background info on this topic, and will post on more on these CPS optimizations later.
http://www.virtual-strategy.com/article/articleview/2439/1/73/
This week, Simon also did an interview with Information Week entitled "Virtualization's Crusader". Here are a few excerpts -
Enter Simon Crosby. Once a tenured professor at Cambridge University, he's traded the ethereal heights of academia for the cutthroat arena of high tech, driven by the belief that "virtualization has got to be everywhere," he says.
As former CTO of XenSource and now CTO of Citrix Systems' virtualization and management division, Crosby has raised the profile of the open source Xen hypervisor as a viable competitor to market leader VMware, while advocating for the hypervisor-any hypervisor-to replace the OS as the key interface between applications and hardware.
...
IW:With Citrix's acquisition of XenSource earlier this year, XenSource has the resources of Citrix behind it. How relevant is the Xen project open source hypervisor being developed by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory?
Crosby:It's more relevant that before. Xen was about a core thesis of a business model-if the hypervisor is ubiquitous, there's a huge opportunity for the software industry to deliver value-added software for the dynamism and manageability of enterprise IT. Multiple vendors can take Xen and bring it to market. So the strategic nature has turned it into open source as reference standard for implementation.
IW:In a recent blog post you said that at the time XenSource was acquired, your foremost concern was that Citrix would respect the Xen community and strengthen the project. How do you keep Citrix from having undue influence on the Xen project?
Crosby: We've moved the Xen project into a separate .org. It has an oversight committee composed of all the major contributors.
IW: Who's on the committee?
Crosby:The key vendors there are IP, HP, Intel, Red Hat, Novel, Sun and ourselves. It's those who are delivering the hypervisor to the market and who are interested in a careful description of what is and is not Xen. Those companies establish policies and procedures and oversight of the code base by fiat.
Read more here
Simon also did a recent interview with DataMation
Here are a few excepts -
Q: The XenSource applications are based on open source. In terms of the virtualization market, what are the pluses or minuses of an open source approach?
Open source is an extremely valuable tool for innovation. One of the key things about the Xen code base is that it can be delivered to market by multiple vendors, and will be.
... So the day that the first Intel VT CPU ships, we have the support. The day the hardware virtualization [launches] we have the support. So we've become the industry's first and best support for an enhanced hardware experience.
And at the same time, we've been very anxious to make sure that Xen as an engine was open sourced, but that multiple different vendors could have economic business models built around that. So we commoditize the "engine" - it's the code base that everyone agrees should be commoditized - and then it has much broader applicability.
So, for example, Xen runs on [certain] PDAs, and Samsung is doing work with those as a product prototype. But it also runs on supercomputers from SGI. That way, we don't have just one 'car' - there's everything from Porches to Minis. So you don't limit its applicability.
For further background on the Xen open source hypervisor and the industry wide participation in that project, see my earlier posts here and here .
*Q: What about the relationship between the Xen hypervisor and Microsoft's Viridian? How will that work?*
Microsoft implements the Viridian hypervisor as an add-in operating system component. The architecture of Viridian is very similar to Xen, but it is Microsoft-built - entirely.
And so the way to think about Viridian with Windows Server 2008 is pretty much like Red Hat does with Xen, or Novell does with Xen, or now Sun is doing with Xen with Solaris 10. So it's a hypervisor included with the OS, which is basically the Xen architecture, but written by Microsoft. We have a partnership with Microsoft to make sure that Viridian interoperates with the world.
In fact, the partnership with Microsoft is extremely strong, and getting stronger. They're important in the context of Citrix, and very important in the context of the integrated hypervisor, the embedded hypervisor, which will be shipped by Dell as of the beginning of next year...
I have received a lot of questions about the relationship between Microsoft, XenSource, and Viridian. The two companies announced several agreement well before the Citrix acquisition of XenSource. Here are some excepts from the Microsoft press release from July of 2006-
Microsoft Corp. and XenSource Inc. today announced they will cooperate on the development of technology to provide interoperability between Xen™-enabled Linux and the new Microsoft® Windows® hypervisor technology-based Windows Server® virtualization. With the resulting technology, the next version of Windows Server, code-named "Longhorn," will provide customers with a flexible and powerful virtualization solution across their hardware infrastructure and operating system environments for cost-saving consolidation of Windows, Linux and Xen-enabled Linux distributions.
"Microsoft's commitment to customers is to build bridges across the industry with solutions that are interoperable by design," said Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. "Our work with XenSource, a recognized leader in open source virtualization technology, reflects that commitment and Microsoft's ongoing efforts to bring virtualization solutions to the mainstream and help customers progress toward self-managing dynamic systems."
"We are pleased to collaborate with Microsoft as a development partner and to deliver interoperable virtualization solutions," said Peter Levine, president and CEO of XenSource. "Xen-enabled guests will run seamlessly on XenEnterprise now, and, as a result of this agreement, Xen-enabled Linux guests will also run on Windows Server virtualization. XenSource will also deliver additional products based on the collaboratively developed technology, further expanding the value of the relationship."
Here is a bit from the original XenSource published FAQ on the Microsoft agreement from July 2006 -
Microsoft and XenSource to Develop Interoperability for Windows Server Longhorn Virtualization
What exactly is being done between Microsoft and XenSource?
Microsoft and XenSource have signed an agreement to collaboratively develop and deliver virtualization
technology enabling interoperability between Xen-enabled systems and Windows Server "Longhorn"
virtualization. Specifically, select Xen-enabled guest operating systems, including Linux, will be able to run
virtualized on Windows Server "Longhorn" Virtualization and will be supported by Microsoft.
Does XenSource have additional plans based on the developed code?
XenSource intends to build and sell additional future products based on the collaboratively developed code.
XenSource will deliver additional value-added products that apply equally well to virtualized Linux or Windows
operating systems hosted on both Windows Server virtualization and XenEnterprise. Additionally, XenSource
will ensure interoperability of Windows Server guests running on XenEnterprise.
*Q: If there's a hypothetical IT buyer out there who's considering both VMware and XenSource, what would you say to direct them?*
...
I think VMware has fantastic products, they have their reputation, but there's no reason to be paying through your nose to do virtualization. We have fantastic products, and they will be delivered in a much cheaper, much more useful form factor when they're just included with every server.
It would be reasonable to say that we as XenSource, as a small company, have the enterprise cred, and the legs to stand on. We're a very strategic company. We now have 24/7 worldwide support, we have all of the scale, all of the resources, all of the partnerships, and all of the features that VMware has. So there's no reason not to consider us as a platform of choice.
The Xen open source hypervisor project is a vibrant growing community with a new Advisory Board with wide industry participation. Citrix XenServer benefits from the creativity and innovation of this effort.
The Microsoft Hyper-V release is built on a structure very similar to that of the Xen hypervisor. This architecture gives Microsoft a strong architectural standing for the future, and gives Citrix the opportunity to take all the lessons we have learned from supporting that architecture and apply those lessons to building valuable management products on top of Hyper-V. This is very similar to the current relation Citrix has with Microsoft in respect to Terminal Services and Citrix Presentation Server. Citrix can draw upon our many years of experience of building value on top of a Microsoft platform and working closely with Microsoft to do it.