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Next up on CIO Magazine's "10 Virtualization Vendors to Watch" list is Platform Computing. I saw a demo of Platform Computing's solution at iForum, and met with some of their staff at Citrix Summit. I think VM Orchestrator is an excellent add-on to a Citrix XenServer deployment for those sites that require the added capabilities of Dynamic Resource Management and Restart HA.
CIO Magazine quoted Chris Wolf of the Burton Group -
"Platform Computing has a history of expertise in grid computing and workload automation," notes Burton Group's Wolf, "and I believe several virtualization vendors will look to leverage Platform Computing's proven architecture as they build out products to compete with workload automation alternatives such as VMware's Distributed Resource Scheduler.
Platform Computing has been involved in grid computing for 15 years. Their newest virtualization offering VM Orchestrator (VMO) is a Citrix XenServer Only solution.
Here is how Platform Computing describes VM Orchestrator (VMO) on their website -
Platform VM Orchestrator (VMO) v3 is an automated, policy-driven, virtual environment manager that supports Citrix's XenServer v4 to deliver web-based virtual machine lifecycle management, multi-host dynamic resource management (DRM), resource-aware high availability (HA), and self-service virtual machine management. Built on Platform's proven grid technology, VMO is the only virtual machine management solution that meets the scale and dynamic computing requirements of the technical datacenter. The combination of Citrix's open, high performance hypervisor with Platform's proven, scalable resource management technology has provided the market with the most cost effective, integrated, enterprise-class virtualization infrastructure solution.
VMO includes the following features -
- Multi-Host Dynamic Resource Management (DRM)Create policies; optimize your virtual environment - In the demo I saw at Summit, you have the ability to set nested policies based on CPU utilization, and move either the least loaded or most loaded VM. VMO is designed to avoid the VM pinball effect that can occur with other solutions when a virtual machine moves from server to server rapidly.
- Resource Aware High Availability (HA)Mitigate risk; minimize cost - The restart HA capability with VMO allows you to specify restart on any server in the resource pool. You do not have to set up a one - one relationship for HA. You can have one server in the pool available for restart HA for any server in the pool for instance.
- Accessibility from Anywhere Launch a browser; manage your environment With VMO, you have web based management for your entire XenServer deployment. While this management does not completely replace all the configuration and setup functions of XenCenter, it does give you the ability to do day to day management from a browser on any machine.
- Self-service Virtual Machine Management Give users more control; maintain control over resources This is an interesting feature that gives you the ability to allow specific user to subscribe to specific virtual machines or templates through the web based management tool (without access to other management functions). This could be extremely useful in a XenDesktop deployment.
VMO is delivered as a virtual appliance on XenServer, so it is very simple to get installed and running.
Dan Kusnetsky of ZDnet recently did a blog post on Platform Computing that provides additionally company background -
Just who is Platform Computing?
The following bullets summarize how the company describes itself.
- The world's largest enterprise grid software vendor with more than 2,000 customers worldwide
- Privately held, self-funded company with 12 consecutive years of profitability
- Leadership team includes experienced industry leaders from IBM, Novell, Oracle, Sun and SGI
- A strong global presence with 400 employees at offices in North America, Asia Pacific and Europe and a worldwide network of resellers and partners
- The industry's largest critical mass of distributed and grid computing expertise with 140 employees dedicated to research and development
...
Platform's VMO appears to be a powerful addition to the company's portfolio of products. Like the other products Platform offers, it is likely to also require a deeper understanding of what's happening that would be required to deploy the products being offered by others. In the end, however, it's use may be justifiable because of its greater power.
Platform Computing posted a page of links to demos of VMO v3 on their site at this link. On this page is a video that specifically covers the VMO DRM load balancing policies. You can really get a good feel for the power of using a policy engine for DRM that gives you much more fine grained control on the migration of virtual machines than any other existing solution.
I did find one video by Peter Dyer (great guy) of Platform Computing on YouTube.
At iForum, David Marshall of VMBlog.com interviewed Peter Dyer on VMO.
Platform joined the Citrix Alliance Program last year, and recently completed Citrix Ready certification.
Here is the pricing for VMO -
Perpetual License
$1499 per license
Annual Support & Maintenance
(mandatory in first year)
$315 per license
Annual Subscription License
(includes Annual Support & Maintenance)
$900 per license per year
When VMO is combined with Citrix XenServer Enterprise, you get a complete server virtualization solution that includes XenMotion, Resource Pooling, Dynamic Resource Management, Pool Based Restart HA, and Web Based Management for somewhere between $4000 - $4800 per server, depending on whether you buy an annual or perpetual license (and no extra expense on management).
Next up on the list from CIO Magazine is Embotics...
Just before Christmas I made a post on CIO Magazine's "10 Virtualization Vendors to Watch" list. My first post was about Cirba and the second one covered VizionCore. I met with both companies at Summit. Cirba was a sponsor of Summit and George Pradel from VisionCore came down as well.
Unfortunately, travel in January to visit partners and Citrix Summit have kept me so busy I haven't had much time to continue this series. Here is the next company from the list with some added background -
Akorri -
Akorri's BalancePoint suite can help solve one of the toughest questions IT teams have around virtualization: How far can I push this physical server by adding on more VMs without affecting application service levels? BalancePoint's analysis tools can see across server, storage and software issues to help you plan and manage workload balancing issues.
Here is how Akorri describes their product on their website -
A true breakthrough in cross-domain data center management, BalancePoint is a new class of agent-less management software for the virtualized data center. It uses advanced analytics so IT managers and business managers can understand how well data center resources are performing. BalancePoint also helps IT optimize server and storage resource utilization. BalancePoint customers are able to reduce IT infrastructure costs, by using servers and storage more efficiently, and manage the environment with fewer people.
BalancePoint's Cross-Domain Analysis™ technology collects information from servers, storage, and infrastructure software, and automatically correlates application performance across these domains. By providing a single view across IT silos, Cross-Domain Analysis shortens troubleshooting, saves money, and helps prevent disruptive outages to business-critical applications.
As with the first two partners on this list, Virtual Strategy Magazine did a podcast on Akorri -
Podcast Summary:
Length: 9:49
- Introduction
- Tom Joyce, CEO and President of Akorri (:10)
- The focus at Akorri (:22)
- Akorri's work with Cross-Domain Performance Management (:50)
- Typical usage case for Akorri's BalancePoint product (3:07)
- How BalancePoint is different from system management tools (5:57)
- What's next at Akorri (7:23)
- For more information (8:47)
- Close
David Marshall of VMBlog.com and the Virtualization Blog on InfoWorld recently wrote a story reviewing the accolades Akorri has received -
- SearchDataCenter.com's Silver Data Center Product of the Year
- VMware's Best of VMworld Gold Award for Performance Monitoring and Optimization
- SearchStorage.com's Product of the Year Finalist
- Five Star Recommendation within CMP Channel's CRN Test center review
- CIO Magazine's 10 Virtualization Vendors to Watch in 2008
- Network World's 10 IT Management Companies to Watch
- Byte and Switch's Top 10 Startups to Watch
- One of American Venture Magazine's 2008 most promising start ups selected for vision, market leadership and technological achievements
I found a few Akorri specific videos on the web.
First, an interview with their CEO (done by TechTargetTV ) regarding their Best of VMWorld award -
I also found these white board videos in the ZDnet "At the Whiteboard" Series done by Akorri's VP of Marketing, Tom Joyce (who has apparently been promoted to CEO since these videos were made).
Managing Application Performance Across IT Domains - At the WhiteBoard Series from ZDNet
Application Service Level Management
Akorri is certainly on the radar, and I personally expect them to be engaged in our Alliance program and Citrix Ready in the near future.
Next up is Platform Computing...
A friend forwarded me an interesting link last week. Apparently the State of New York has taken a legal stand on the prohibition of publishing benchmarks in some End User License Agreements (EULA).
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo today announced that the State has reached a settlement with Blue Coat Systems, Inc. over the company's use of end user license agreements that claimed to prevent consumers from testing and criticizing Blue Coat products. Blue Coat is a leading developer of enterprise-level security hardware and software products.
...
"Companies don't have the right to pick and choose who can test their products, nor can they legally silence criticism," Cuomo said. "Companies that believe in their products should welcome the free exchange of information and opinions — not threaten legal action against critics. In this case, many customers did not even have an opportunity to soldier through a lengthy license agreement — which threatened their rights — until buying the product. That is unacceptable."
A column in PC World last week commented on this decision and another one against T-Mobile -
Another decision that should be of particular concern to PC Magazine readers was handed down recently in New York State. Blue Coat Systems had decided it could contractually forbid customers from criticizing its products. It did so by inserting an "antibenchmarking" clause into its EULA. Seems it didn't want any customers comparing its proxy servers with the competition's. The state attorney general's office filed suit, at which point Blue Coat quickly settled, paid a small fine, and removed the clause from its contracts. Amen.
I wonder what kind of EULAs we have violated by benchmarking products that come into PC Magazine Labs. Turns out we published a review of VMware Workstation without the company's approval, as required in its EULA. Yeah, sorry about that, guys.
To be fair, VMWare does permit the publishing of benchmarks. You just need their permission first -
"You may use the Software to conduct internal performance testing and benchmarking studies, the results of which you (and not unauthorized third parties) may publish or publicly disseminate; provided that VMware has reviewed and approved of the methodology, assumptions and other parameters of the study. Please contact VMware at benchmark@vmware.com to request such review."
According to the benchmarking PDF on VMWare's website, you have to get your test plan approved by VMWare prior to testing. Your results must also be approved by VMWare prior to publishing.
It will be interesting to see if these rulings against T-Mobile and Blue Coat have an effect on the policy by VMWare.
During a recent presentation I gave to one of our alliance partners, an interesting question came up during the discussion - How can a commercial software company build a business based on open source software? After the question was asked, I saw many heads nodding in agreement. On the surface, this question may appear to be difficult to answer.
An excellent way to answer this pressing question can be found in a very intriguing book called Wikinomics. There is a story in the opening chapter about GoldCorp, a gold mining company. The story of the GoldCorp Challenge highlights the power of working with a very diverse group of people to take innovation and creativity to new heights. Rob McEwen of GoldCorp used that innovation and creativity to build a very successful business.
Read this short excerpt from the opening chapter -
It was late in the afternoon, on a typically harsh Canadian winter day, as Rob McEwen, the CEO of Goldcorp Inc., stood at the head of the boardroom table confronting a room full of senior geologists. The news he was about to deliver was not good. In fact it was disastrous, and McEwen was having a hard time shielding his frustration.
The small Toronto-based gold-mining firm was struggling, besieged by strikes, lingering debts, and an exceedingly high cost of production, which had caused them to cease mining operations. Conditions in the marketplace were hardly favorable. The gold market was contracting, and most analysts assumed that the company's fifty-year-old mine in Red Lake, Ontario, was dying. Without evidence of substantial new gold deposits, the mine seemed destined for closure, and Goldcorp was likely to go down with it. Tensions were running at fever pitch. McEwen had no real experience in the extractive industries, let alone in gold mining. Nevertheless, as an adventurous young mutual fund manager he had gotten involved in a takeover battle and emerged as Goldcorp, Inc.'s majority owner. Few people in the room had much confidence that McEwen was the right person to rescue the company. But McEwen just shrugged off his critics.
He turned to his geologists and said, "We're going to find more gold on this property, and we won't leave this room tonight until we have a plan to find it." At the conclusion of the meeting he handed his geologists $10 million for further exploration and sent them packing for Northern Ontario. Most of his staff thought he was crazy but they carried out his instructions, drilling in the deepest and most remote parts of the mine. Amazingly, 2 few weeks later they arrived back at Goldcorp headquarters beaming with pride and bearing a remarkable discovery: Test drilling suggested rich deposits of new gold, as much as thirty times the amount Goldcorp was currently mining!
The discovery was surprising, and could hardly have been better timed. But after years of further exploration, and to McEwen's deep frustration, the company's geologists struggled to provide an accurate estimate of the gold's value and exact location. He desperately needed to inject the urgency of the market into the glacial processes of an old-economy industry.
In 1999, with the future still uncertain, McEwen took some time out for personal development. He wound up at an MIT conference for young presidents when coincidentally the subject of Linux came up. Perched in the lecture hall, McEwen listened intently to the remarkable story of how Linus Torvalds and a loose volunteer brigade of software developers had assembled the world-class computer operating system over the Internet. The lecturer explained how Torvalds revealed his code to the world, allowing thousands of anonymous programmers to vet it and make contributions of their own.
McEwen had an epiphany and sat back in his chair to contemplate. If Goldcorp employees couldn't find the Red Lake gold, maybe someone else could. And maybe the key to finding those people was to open up the exploration process in the same way Torvalds "open sourced" Linux.
McEwen raced back to Toronto to present the idea to his head geologist. "I'd like to take all of our geology, all the data we have that goes back to 1948, and put it into a file and share it with the world," he said. "Then we'll ask the world to tell us where we're going to find the next six million ounces of gold." McEwen saw this as an opportunity to harness some of the best minds in the industry. Perhaps understandably, the in-house geologists were just a little skeptical.
Mining is an intensely secretive industry, and apart from the minerals themselves, geological data is the most precious and carefully guarded resource. It's like the Cadbury secret-it's just not something companies go around sharing. Goldcorp employees wondered whether the global community of geologists would respond to Goldcorp's call in the same way that software developers rallied around Linus Torvalds. Moreover, they worried about how the contest would reflect on them and their inability to find the illusive gold deposits.
McEwen acknowledges in retrospect that the strategy was controversial and risky. "We were attacking a fundamental assumption; you simply don't give away proprietary data," he said. "It's so fundamental," he adds, "that no one had ever questioned it." Once again, McEwen was determined to soldier on.
In March 2000, the "Goldcorp Challenge" was launched with a total of $575,000 in prize money available to participants with the best methods and estimates. Every scrap of information (some four hundred megabytes worth) about the 55,000-acre property was revealed on Goldcorp's Web site. News of the contest spread quickly around the Internet, as more than one thousand virtual prospectors from fifty countries got busy crunching the data.
Within weeks, submissions from around the world came flooding in to Goldcorp headquarters. As expected, geologists got involved. But entries came from surprising sources, including graduate students, consultants, mathematicians, and military officers, all seeking a piece of the action. "We had applied math, advanced physics, intelligent systems, computer graphics, and organic solutions to inorganic problems. There were capabilities I had never seen before in the industry," says McEwen. "When I saw the computer graphics I almost fell out of my chair." The contestants had identified 110 targets on the Red Lake property, 50 percent of which had not been previously identified by the company. Over 80 percent of the new targets yielded substantial quantities of gold. In fact, since the challenge was initiated an astounding eight million ounces of gold have been found. McEwen estimates the collaborative process shaved two to three years off their exploration time.
Today Goldcorp is reaping the fruits of its open source approach to exploration. Not only did the contest yield copious quantities of gold, it catapulted his under-performing $ 100 million company into a $9 billion juggernaut while transforming a backward mining site in Northern Ontario into one of the most innovative and profitable properties in the industry. Needless to say McEwen is one happy camper. As are his shareholders. One hundred dollars invested in the company in 1993 is worth over $3,000 today.
Perhaps the most lasting legacy of the Goldcorp Challenge is the validation of an ingenious approach to exploration in what remains a conservative and highly secretive industry. Rob McEwen bucked an industry trend by sharing the company's proprietary data and simultaneously transformed 2 lumbering exploration process into a modem distributed gold discovery engine that harnessed some of the most talented minds in the field.
McEwen saw things differently. He realized that the uniquely qualified minds to make new discoveries were probably outside the boundaries of his organization, and by sharing some intellectual property he could harness the power of collective genius and capability. In doing so he stumbled successfully into the future of innovation, business, and how wealth and just about everything else will be created. Welcome to the new world of wikinomics where collaboration on a mass scale is set to change every institution in society.
Don Tapscott, one of the authors of Wikinomics, gave a presentation to Google on his book. You can see the video of that presentation below -
As I posted earlier, the Xen Project is benefiting a great deal from the mass collaboration of developers from Intel, AMD, IBM, HP, Sun and Oracle working on this second generation hypervisor. We are able to build on top of this creativity and innovation in much the same way GoldCorp did.
Open source, wikis, blogging and other new forms of mass collaboration like MIT OpenCourseWare, Innocentive, NineSigma, and YourEncore are discussed in depth in Wikinomics. Reading this book gave me a much firmer grasp on the real power of building a business by massively collaborating with others to mine for the golden nuggets of innovation and creativity .
CIO Magazine recently did a story entitled "10 Virtualization Vendors to Watch in 2008". This story focuses on up and coming vendors who add significant value to the virtualization stack.
I am very familiar with some of these companies, and others I only have heard of in passing. I did some research on each to ensure I am up to date. I would like to share what I found on each in the blog. I will do one post on each of the ten.
The first company on the CIO Magazine list is Cirba.
1. CiRBA
CiRBA's Data Center Intelligence Software can help IT leaders analyze and visually map how to migrate and consolidate servers to a virtualized environment. For instance, CiRBA's tools help you figure out which servers and applications can coexist efficiently. The tools analyze factors such as application middleware, database configurations, required service levels and workload patterns. Then CiRBA's tools can help manage the virtualized environment.
Cirba has an interesting product for helping an IT team determine plan a new server consolidation or move to server consolidation (or both). Here is a overview from their site -
CiRBA's patent pending analysis and visualization technology provides simultaneous multi-dimensional analysis of:
- What could go together: Detailed hardware, OS, Application middleware and Database Configurations
- What should go together: Non-technical/business/resource factors such as change windows, service levels, geography and others
- What fits together: Workload patterns across CPU, Network IO, Disk IO, Memory and others
I found a flash product overview on their site - View it here.
There was a podcast earlier this year on the Virtual Strategy Magazine site with Andrew Hiller from Cirba.
Here is a summary of the discussion -
Podcast Summary:
Length: 14:34
1. Introduction
2. Benefits of CiRBA
3. The Three main pillars
4. Choosing the right strategy
5. The devils in the details
6. Monitoring and Reporting
7. Preventing Image sprawl
8. Our Customers
9. Why use CiRBA?
10. Storage Analysis
11. What Next?
12. Closing
This article from SearchServerVirtualization.com highlights the problem Cirba's Data Center Intelligence software solves -
CiRBA is announcing version 4.0 of its Data Center Intelligence (DCI) suite this week, whose new graphical visualization capabilities allow IT managers to quickly identify which servers in their environment can be virtualized on to which servers.
Capacity planning tools are especially important in very large server environments, said Andrew Hillier, CiRBA co-founder and CTO. "If you have 50 servers in a lab and virtualize them, chances are it will just work. But a lab is relatively free of constraints," he said. But if you have 2,000 servers, "virtualization is a big opportunity to make a mess."
David Marshall of VMBlog.com points out many of the accolades Cirba has received -
Expert accolades
CiRBA's unique technology has garnered significant recognition within the analyst and press community, including:
- CiRBA was named to Network World's "10 Management Companies to Watch" list in October 2006 and to the publication's 10 IT Management Companies Still Worth Watching" " list in September 2007.
- Burton Group's Senior Analyst Chris Wolf noted: "CiRBA has yet to reach the same market share as PlateSpin, but CiRBA's emergence as the dominant P2V planning tool is only a matter of time."
- Forrester Research Senior Analyst Evelyn Hubbert: "This is going to be something the big guys will want to have as virtualization adoption moves more aggressively into production."
I was intrigued by the demo I saw of the Cirba DCI tool, and I can certainly see that value in doing such detailed analysis before a server consolidation and virtulization project.
Next up on the list is VizionCore. I will post that info later this week.
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.
In my blog post from the Xen Summit, I promised to follow up on the Xen Summit once the presentations were posted. Those presentations are now available on Xen.org. Here is a list of the presentations -
Introductory Comments and Xen Status/Roadmaps
Ian Pratt (Citrix, Cambridge), Project Status and Organization
Keir Fraser (Citrix, Cambridge), Roadmap and Releases
Xen Community: A Sampling of Status and Roadmaps
Todd Clayton (Sun), OpenSolaris, Xen and the xVM Project
Clyde Griffin (Novell), Novell Xen Roadmap
Jeremy Fitzhardinge (Citrix, Cambridge), Linux parvirtops status
Aron Griffix (HP), IA64 Update
Add One-half Xen and Stir Briskly
Mick Jordan (Sun), JavaGuest
Gerd Hoffman (Red Hat), Introducing Xenner (Abstract Only Available)
John Zulauf (Intel), Xen Extensions to Enable Modular/3P Device Emulation for HVM
Daniel Berrange(Red Hat), Directions for development & integration of Xen and QEMU
CPUs updates, scheduling, mobile
Tom Woller (AMD), AMD Update
Jun Nakajima (Intel), Intel Update
Scott Rixner (Rice University), Scheduling Pitfalls for I/O-intensive Guests
Sang-bum Suh, Secure Xen on ARM
Xen Networking
Greg Law (SolarFlare), The Convergence of Storage and Server Virtualization
Jose Renato Santos (HP), Netchannel2: Improving Xen Networking Performance
David Edmondson (Sun), OpenSolaris xVM Network Architecture
Xen Memory and Storage
Grzegorz Milos (Cambridge), Memory CoW in Xen
Hitoshi Matsumoto (Fujitsu), SCSI Support Status
Dutch T. Meyer (University of British Columbia), Parallax, A VM Storage Infrastruture
Xen Security
Vedvyas Shanbhogue(Intel), VIS:Virtualization-based Integrity Services
Derek Murray (University of Cambridge), Improving Xen security through domain-zero disaggregation
Joseph Cihula (Intel), Trusted Boot - Verifying the Xen Launch
Xen Deployment
Roman Marxer (Google) - A Xen Based High Availability Cluster)
Dave Lively (Virtual Iron), Running Xen Diskless
Brendan Cully (University of British Columbia), High Speed Checkpointing for High Availability
Donald Dugger (Intel), Updating Xen for the Client Environment
Padmashree K Apparao(Intel), Characterization and Analysis of a Server Consolidation Benchmark
Frank Martin (Oracle), Virtualization of Enterprise DataCenters Using Xen
As you can see from this list, there is wide industry participation in the Xen hypervisor open source project. In this Xen Summit alone there were six presentations from Intel, three presentations from Sun and Red Hat, and two from HP and three from Citrix. In the Spring 2007 Xen Summit, there were eight presentations by IBM, three presentations by HP, two presentations by AMD, three by Red Hat, and seven by XenSource/Citrix. The Xen Open Source hypervisor is pulling in the creativity, innovation, knowledge and experience of a wide range of industry heavyweights. This effort is completely focused on building a highly scalable, stable and a powerful 64 bit virtualization engine.
I will be blogging about some of the individual presentations form the Fall 2007 Xen Summit later.
Rick Vanover of SearchServerVirtualization.com wrote a post called "Why You Must Evaluate Citrix XenServer" -
after attending a summary of the recent Citrix iForum it became clear that XenServer will pose a significant challenge in all areas to the VMware offering asthe resources of Citrix are integrated to the XenServer platform as the products mature.
Rick later writes -
it may be a good idea to determine the differences from the management side between VMware ESX and Citrix XenServer Enterprise edition. There are some differences, and as the next release of XenServer that has had the Citrix touch on the whole build, there should be some exciting new features that will surely give VMware a challenge for the best enterprise virtualization product. Regardless, we all win, as a better suite of products will be made available to the enterprise
You can download Citrix XenServer Express Edition for free here.
Here is a graphic that shows the capabilities between the different versions of XenServer -
With XenServer Express, you can start your evaluation quickly and easily.
If you want an overview of XenServer before you start your evaluation, check out this XenServer Mini-Product Training post.
Doug Brown of DABCC.com put together a Citrix XenServer overview video as part of his new DABCC TV. Doug goes through rthe virtualization capabilities of the Xen Hypervisor and Citrix XenServer with Chas Setchell of 2Virtualize.com . I will be bloggin more about this video later.
Between the Thanksgiving holiday and the migration to the new blog site on Citrix.com, I have fallen a bit behind on posting iForum videos with alliance partners. Here is the next one - DataCore Software. I haven't yet had any personal experience with DataCore Software, but I have heard very good things about it. It is ironic that I haven't, since their headquarters is about a block from the Citrix HQ in Ft. Lauderdale.
Virtual Strategy Magazine does this interview with George Teixeira, the CEO and Co-Founder of DataCore. George says during the interview "One of the big things we've got is a low cost entry point $1000 SAN that allows them to basically take any pc and transform it into a storage server to support XenDesktop and XenServer as well the Citrix platform." A $1000 SAN definitely piques my interest.
I found this video on their website that covers their overall solution.
I also found this podcast from David Marshall of Infoworld that covers DataCore (and DevonIT) from iForum.
According to this white paper from the Taneja Group "DataCore is the Perfect Compliment to Virtualized Server Infrastructure". I am going to work on getting some more technical info directly from DataCore and post it to the blog.
I would like to hear from any users of DataCore Software to get their opinion and hands on experiences with the software.
The webinar entitled Making the Business Case for Virtualization It Not Just For Server Consolidation Anymoreis today at 12 noon EST.
UPDATE: If you missed the webinar, you can still watch the recording of the entire presentation at the link. Click on the link above, go through the short registration, and the click on the link to view the archived webinar.
After my previous post on the XenServer 4 Mini-Product training , I have received some questions on the differences between XenEnterprise v3 and XenServer Enterprise v4.
Here is some background info on the differences between XenEnterprise v3 and XenServer Enterprise v4.
What New In Citrix XenServer v4?
XenMotion
Seamlessly move virtual machines between servers without downtime.
XenCenter
Unified virtualization management interface, including server, storage, and networking.
Native 64 bit Hypervisor
Scalability and support for enterprise applications
Resource Pools
Efficient configuration, allocation, and authentication for virtualization resources.
XenAPI
Integration with existing management investments, infrastructure and processes.
Here is some background on upgrading to XenServer Enterprise v4 - Upgrading to Citrix XenServer v4
I upgrade from your 3.2 products to your 4.0 product?
Yes, you can upgrade a 3.2 system to 4.0. Simply insert the 4.0 installation CD in your system and boot. When you run the installation process, it will discover your existing 3.2 installation and ask if you want to upgrade it.
Can I upgrade from your 3.1 products to your 4.0 product?
Yes, you can upgrade a 3.1 system to 4.0, but not directly. First you must upgrade your 3.1 system to the latest 3.x release, which is version 3.2. Insert the 3.2 installation CD in your system and boot. When you run the installation process for 3.2, it will discover your existing 3.1 installation and ask if you want to upgrade it. Once your system has been upgraded to 3.2, you can upgrade to the 4.0 release following the instructions in the 3.2 to 4.0 upgrade process.
Can I upgrade from your 3.0 product right to 4.0?
No, you will need to move your 3.0 virtual machines over to a 3.1 system. Once you are on the 3.1 version, you can upgrade the same system to 3.2, leaving your virtual machines and their settings intact. You can then upgrade from 3.2 to the 4.0 release.
Can the XenCenter client connect to XenSource 3.x servers?
No, the XenCenter client cannot connect to older XenSource 3.x servers.
Moving Between XenServer v4 Editions -
Moving Between XenServer v4 Products
Is there an upgrade path from XenExpress to XenServer?
Yes, you can take an existing XenExpress install and simply add a new license key which turns that instance into a XenServer instance.
Is there an upgrade path from XenExpress to XenEnterprise?
Yes, you can take an existing XenExpress install and simply add a new license key which turns that instance into a XenEnterprise instance.
Is there an upgrade path from XenServer to XenEnterprise?
Yes, you can take an existing XenServer install and simply add a new license key which turns that instance into a XenEnterprise instance.
Can virtual machines exported from XenExpress, XenServer, or XenEnterprise be moved between the product offerings?
Yes, virtual machines from any of our three commercial products are compatible with each other.
New in Citrix XenServer v4 Recorded Demo -
Here is a link to a recorded webinar by Peter Blum that covers the new features in XenServer v4.
Finally, here is some info on how to convert existing virtual machine built with a different hypervisor to a Xen virtual machine.
VM Conversion from other hypervisors and virtual machine monitors
Can you convert a virtual machine from other virtualization products to your products?
Yes, XenSource provides a free VM conversion tool that allows you to convert existing VMWare and Microsoft VMs to the XenSource import format. You can download the VM conversion tool from the link below.
http://tx.downloads.xensource.com/products/v2xva/index.php
You can also use products from Leostream and Platespin to convert other vendor virtual machines to be usable on a XenSource server.
Can you convert a virtual machine from Open Source Xen to your products?
There is currently no automated mechanism to move VMs from open source Xen to the XenSource commercial products. In a future release the OVA (open virtual appliance) format will allow VMs to be moved between different Xen environments.
Peter Blum from the Citrix XenServer team put together a short (37 minutes) product training for XenServer and recorded it using Camtasia. Below the info on the video, I have posted some info on the hardware support for Citrix XenServer (Processors, memory, storage, network) as well as the virtual machine limitations.
In this video, Peter covers the following topics -
1.Setting up Xen Enterprise and Xen Center.
2.Creating resource pool.
3.Attaching the remote storage.
4.Creating VM
5.Using some of the features in the product.
You can watch (and listen) to this mini product training here.
After you watch the XenServer training video, you may to read about the specific new features in XenServer v4 in this post
.
If you would like to go through a quick install yourself, you can download XenServer Express Edition for free. Once you have the code downloaded, it takes about 10 minutes to Xen
Here are some background requirements for installing Citrix XenServer -
Hardware Support
Do I need a system with a 64bit x86 processor to run your software?
Yes, our products require a 64bit x86 processor.
Can I run your server software on a system with a 32bit processor?
No, our virtualization server software cannot be run on a 32bit processor based system. You can however run the Linux P2V capture tool and our XenCenter Management Client on a 32bit system.
Do I need a system with hardware virtualization support for running Linux operating systems?
You can currently run all of our supported Linux guests on a 64bit x86 system without the need for hardware virtualization support.
NOTE In previous releases a system with hardware virtualization support was required to do the initial installation of the latest Linux releases. This is no longer the case.
Do I need a system with hardware virtualization support for running Windows operating systems?
Yes, to run Windows operating systems you will need a 64bit x86 CPU based system that supports Intel VT or AMD-V hardware virtualization technology in the CPU and BIOS.
What is required to run Windows virtual machines?
To run Windows operating systems you will need a system with a 64bit x86 system that supports AMD-V or Intel VT hardware virtualization technology in the CPU and BIOS.
Which Intel VT processors do you recommend for running Citrix XenServer products?
We recommend the following Intel VT CPUs:
* Intel Xeon 51xx series processors (Dual-Core)
* Intel Xeon 53xx series processors (Quad-Core)
* Intel Xeon 71xx series processors (Dual-Core)
* Intel Xeon 30xx series processors (Dual-Core)
* Intel Xeon 32xx series processors (Quad-Core)
Can I use other Intel VT processors with the Citrix XenServer products?
Yes, other 64bit Intel processors including the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors contain VT technology and should work with the Citrix XenServer products. You can find a list of 64bit VT-enabled processors on the Intel website. Also be sure to check with your system vendor to make sure you BIOS supports Intel VT.
Which AMD-V processors do you recommend for running the Citrix XenServer products?
We recommend the followingAMD-V CPUs:
* AMD Opteron 12xx series processors
* AMD Opteron 22xx series processors
* AMD Opteron 82xx series processors
Can I use other AMD-V processors with the Citrix XenServer products?
Yes, many other 64bit AMD processors contain the AMD-V technology and should work with our products. You can find a list of AMD-V-enabled processors on the AMD website. Also be sure to check with your system vendor to make sure you BIOS supports AMD-V.
AMD Sempron processors do not currently contain AMD-V technology.
Can your products run on a 64bit Intel VT or AMD-V laptop system?
Yes, the products can be run on 64bit laptops for demonstration purposes, but we recommend running on a server system for production use.
Can your products run on a 64bit Intel VT or AMD-V desktop system?
Yes, the products can be run on 64bit desktop systems, but we recommend running on a server system for production use.
What does the AMD-V and Intel VT technology do?
The hardware virtualization technology from AMD and Intel allow Xen to efficiently handle certain virtualization-unsafe x86 instructions that a virtual machine may call during its normal course of operation. In first-generation virtualization systems, complex software layers must watch all executing machine code to rewrite unsafe x86 instructions on the fly. The Intel VT and AMD-V technology intercept these unsafe instructions and pass control to the Xen hypervisor to return a valid response to the virtual machine without a complex and performance-hindering layer of software.
You should check with your system supplier to determine if your system has Intel VT technology. Generally, systems with Intel VT will have an option to turn on Intel Virtualization Technology in the BIOS under Processor, CPU, or Advanced Configuration menus.
In addition, the first part of the Citrix XenServer product installer performs a check on your system that alerts you if Intel VT technology is not detected before making and changes to your server.
How can I tell if my AMD based system has AMD-V Technology?
You should check with your system supplier to determine if you system has AMD-V technology. A good rule of thumb is that AMD processors that support DDR2 memory have the AMD-V technology.
In addition, the first part of the Citrix XenServer product installer performs a check on your system that alerts you if AMD-V technology is not detected.
Do your products support dual-core or higher core processors?
Yes our products support multi-core processors, including quad-core processors from both AMD and Intel.
Memory Support
Do your products support memory sharing between VMs?
Xen and the Citrix XenServer family of products do not currently support memory sharing. Sharing memory between virtual machines imposes a performance penalty on VM memory operations. Generally you don see much savings from memory sharing in other products, since the operating system and applications don use most of the memory on a system. The data and file caches which are unique per VM use most of the memory which can be shared.
Do your commercial products support memory ballooning?
The core Xen technology currently supports memory ballooning and this capability will be included in our commercial products in a future release.
What is the maximum amount of memory that your products can use on a physical server system?
XenServer Enterprise is based on the 64bit version of Xen, which allows it to use up to 128GB of physical memory.
XenServer is also based on the 64bit version of Xen which allows it to use up to 128GB of physical memory.
What types of local storage can be used with your products?
All three Citrix XenServer products support IDE/PATA, Serial ATA (SATA), SCSI, and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)
What types of non-shared remote storage can be used with your products?
The following forms of non-shared remote storage can be used:
* Hardware FC: Connections to storage area networks via fiber channel HBA from Emulex and QLogic.
*
Hardware iSCSI: iSCSI storage connections made with a hardware iSCSI adapter
The following forms of -shared remote storage can be used:
* Software iSCSI: iSCSI storage connections made with our built in software iSCSI initiator
*
NFS: NFS storage connections made with our built in NFS client.
What products support shared remote storage?
Shared remote storage is only available in our XenServer Enterprise product.
What products support non-shared remote storage and local storage?
All of the Citrix XenServer Family of Products support non-shared remote storage and local storage.
What is the difference between remote storage that is shared and non-shared?
Non-shared remote storage (such as FC SAN or an iSCSI SAN via hardware iSCSI adapters) can be used with our product, but will act like locally attached disk. When virtual machines are stored on non-shared remote storage, they cannot be live relocated between systems, they also cannot be automatically placed on other servers when they are started. With non-shared storage, the VMs on that storage can only be seen by one virtualization server.
Shared remote storage (such as connections to an iSCSI SAN via our built in software initiator or our NFS client) allow a VM to be accessed by multiple virtualization servers. This allows for VMs to be XenMotioned between systems. It also allows for automatic placement of virtual machines as they are started.
Do your products support software iSCSI?
Yes, we include a software iSCSI initiator with the product. We use the open-iSCSI initiator. Our Software iSCSI initiator can be used for remote connections to shared remote storage.
Do your products support hardware iSCSI adapters?
Yes, we support using the QLogic 405X series of iSCSI HBAs for remote connections to non-shared remote storage.
Do your products support NFS based storage?
Yes, XenServer Enterprise supports NFS based shared remote storage.
Can I use a regular software NFS share from a general purpose server with your XenServer Enterprise product for remote shared storage?
While you can use a regular NFS share from a general purpose server, we highly recommend using a hardware NFS appliance for proper levels of performance. We recommend that a hardware NFS appliance with high speed non-volatile caching be used (for example, Network Appliance Filers).
Can I boot your products from an iSCSI based SAN?
We don currently support booting the product from an iSCSI-based SAN.
Can I boot your products from a fiber channel SAN?
Yes, the products support boot from SAN with Emulex and QLogic HBAs that have boot from SAN capabilities.
Do your products support multipathing for fiber channel SAN?
Our products do not currently support multipathing for fiber channel SANs. Dynamic Multipathing support is planned for a future release.
Do your products support shared storage between systems?
XenServer Enterprise includes shared storage technology for Software iSCSI and NFS.
Does your products support using raw disk?
Yes, our products use LVM technology to create a storage repository which contains one or more disks or LUNs. This storage repository is then split up automatically to create virtual disk drives for the XenVMs. Note that the virtual machine will see a virtual disk drive, not the raw disk.
Do the Citrix XenServer products support virtual disk formats such as VHD?
When using remote shared NFS storage, XenServer Enterprise will storage virtual hard disks in the Microsoft VHD format. We also have a converter tool that allows you to convert a VHD (Microsoft Format) or VMDK (VMWare format) VM to our VM import format.
Does your product support software RAID?
Yes, the product allows the use of the Linux mdadm tools to create software RAID volumes. A technote on setting up software RAID can be found in the Citrix XenServer Knowledge Base. We generally recommend that you use a true hardware RAID solution for the best system performance.
Does your product support hardware RAID?
Yes, the product supports using standard hardware RAID controllers that are included with OEM systems. We also recommend 3Ware and Areca controllers for 3rd party RAID controllers. You can find a complete list of adapters on our online HCL. Our HCL can be found at http://hcl.xensource.com
Does your product support HostRAID or FakeRAID hardware/software RAID solutions?
No, our product does not currently support using lower end hardware/software HostRAID or FakeRAID solutions. We recommend using true hardware RAID controllers with our products.
Do your products support thin clones of existing virtual machines?
Yes, XenServer Enterprise, when using remote NFS shared storage or local storage with VHD-based VMs, supports thin-cloning of an existing VM template. Thin cloning allows you to create copies from a virtual machine template with minimal disk space usage. The original VM template is used as a base read-only disk, and any copies you create from this template will only require disk space to store differences in your newly created virtual machine.
Thin cloning also allows you to create new VMs very quickly. Since you don need to copy and virtual disk drives, new VMs can be created in only seconds.
Do your products support fast cloning of existing virtual machines?
Yes, XenServer Enterprise, when using remote NFS shared storage or local storage with VHD-based VMs, supports fast cloning of existing virtual machine templates. The original VM template is used as a base read-only disk, and any copies you create from this template will only require a small virtual disk drive to track changes. This allows XenServer Enterprise to create new VMs in only seconds.
Do your products provide disk snapshot support?
Virtual disk snapshotting will be provided in a future release.
Do your products support AoE (ATA over Ethernet)?
No, our products do not currently support AoE based storage.
Networking Support
Do your products support virtual networks that only operate between VMs?
Yes, administrators can create virtual networks that connect VMs running on the same physical system together over an internal virtual network.
Do your products support multiple physical networks?
Yes, administrator can create multiple physical networks that attach to NICs on the physical system.
Can VMs connect to multiple networks?
Yes, VMs are able to connect to multiple virtual and physical networks.
Do your products support single VLANs to a physical NIC?
Yes, the networking system allows the use of VLANs that connect to physical network interfaces on the physical box. In this setup one VLAN is connected to each physical NIC on the box.
Do your products support multiple VLANs to a physical NIC?
Yes, when using XenServer Enterprise the networking system allows splitting multiple VLANs on a single physical link into multiple virtual network switches.
Do your virtual networks pass all packets to all VMs?
No, our virtual networks act like a layer 2 switch. The virtual machines will only see traffic designated for that virtual machine.
Can I put the virtual NICs and networks into promiscuous mode?
Yes, you can put a virtual NIC into promiscuous mode to see all traffic on a virtual switch. Please search our knowledge base for the details.
Do your products support bonding or teaming of physical NICs?
This feature is planned for a future release.
Product Limits
What is the maximum amount of memory that your products can use on a system?
XenServer Enterprise is based on the 64bit version of Xen which allows it to use up to 128GB of physical memory.
XenServer Standard is also based on the 64bit version of Xen which allows it to use up to 128GB of physical memory.
XenServer Express is also based on the 64bit version of Xen but is limited to using up to 4GB of physical memory.
How many processors can your products use?
XenServer Enterprise can use up to 32 physical CPU sockets with up to 32 CPU cores.
XenServer Standard can use up to 32 physical CPU sockets with up to 32 CPU cores.
XenServer Express can use up to 2 physical CPU sockets with up to 8 CPU cores.
XenServer Enterprise and XenServer Standard support running up to 50 virtual machines per server at the same time. Keep in mind that the actual maximum number of VMs that can be run per server is generally bound by the amount of memory on the box and the memory requirements for your virtual machines.
XenServer Express supports running up to 4 virtual machines at the same time.
How many virtual machines can be created on your products?
We don currently limit the number of virtual machines that can be created on our products. We do have limits on the number of simultaneous virtual machines that can be active and running at the same time.
How many physical NICs do your products support?
All three products support up to 4 physical network interfaces.
How many virtual machines can run per server on your products?
XenServer Enterprise and XenServer Standard support running up to 50 virtual machines per server at the same time.
XenServer Express supports running up to 4 virtual machines per server at the same time.
How many virtual CPUs can you allocate to a virtual machine?
Linux and Windows VMs can use up to 8 virtual CPUs.
How much memory can you allocate to a virtual machine?
XenServer Enterprise and XenServer Standard allow that
a Linux VM can use up to 32GB of memory
a Windows VM can use up to 32GB
XenExpress allows a VM to use up to 4GB of memory
How many virtual disk drives can be allocated to a virtual machine?
A virtual machine can be allocated up to 7 virtual disk drives. This number also includes a virtual DVD-ROM device.
How many virtual disk drives can be allocated to a virtual machine?
A virtual machine can be allocated up to 7 virtual network interfaces.
I found a link that provides a list of all the actual systems, storage, components, and drivers that have been tested with XenServer. You can find it at this link -[ Hardware Compatibility for Citrix XenServer|http://hcl.xensource.com/] .
I will post more technical background info on the Citrix XenServer product line over the next few days. If you there is some specific information you would like to see, please post it in the comments.
After my earlier blog post on the Best of VMWorld solution for high availability offered by Marathon Technologies, I have received numerous questions about the solution offered by Marathon Technologies specifically for XenServer. Jerry Melnick, the CTO of Marathon, graciously agreed to provide some background info on Marathon Technologies and answer a few other questions.
Barry Flanagan: Many Citrix customers may not be familiar with Marathon Technologies. Can you give us a brief history?
Jerry Melnick: Marathon was founded in 1993 by engineers responsible for developing Digital VAX FT fault tolerant systems. The team used this experience to develop the first software and networking technology that allowed multiple Wintel servers to operate as a single fault tolerant system. In 2003 the company migrated its technology to a software-only product that works with standard off-the-shelf Intel/AMD servers, unmodified Windows and standard, unmodified Windows applications.
Barry Flanagan: Your website describes everRun as Availability Software. What are the three things people show know about how your software solves the problem of unplanned downtime?
Jerry Melnick: First, we don say lightly. Our everRun software keeps critical applications available in industries where downtime equals big bucks, including process manufacturing, gaming, media and broadcasting, financial services and federal markets. We have over 1500 global customers including five of the top ten pharmaceutical manufacturers, four of the top five television networks in the US and over 1000 mid-market companies.
Second, we developed what we call our ComputeThru technology that keeps essential applications running through both network and disk I/O failures. That means they rarely, if ever, experience lost data, lost revenue, or lost productivity due to common system or network failures. And now we working closely with the Citrix to bring our proven availability software to virtual machines. Unlike existing availability solutions that add cost and complexity to the virtual environment, everRun VM is simple and reliable.
Third, everRun provides a much more simplified approach to server availability, whether they physical servers or virtual servers. It completely automates setup, configuration, fault detection and policy management. Automated setup and configuration eliminates the manual configuration other availability solutions require.
Barry Flanagan: Do you have any real world examples of companies who use your solutions?
Jerry Melnick: The world largest commodities exchange uses our software to ensure their pricing board information and order confirmation messages are always available, Wellcome Trust, the organization responsible for the sequencing of one-third of the human genome, uses everRun to guarantee high-availability of genomic data for its research users. And MAN AG, one of the Europe biggest and best truck manufacturers, uses everRun software to make sure all their employees in offices around Germany have continuous access to key applications and data. The division we work with is also a big Citrix customer. You can read about how they use everRun and Citrix software on our site.
Barry Flanagan: Do you have any numbers on the cost of downtime for specific industries?
Jerry Melnick: Here are some industry figures for key applications. Your mileage may vary.
Application Downtime Cost Per Hour
ERP 780,000
Supply Chain Management 660,000
E-Commerce 600,000
Internet Banking 420,000
Customer Service Center 220,000
Electronic Funds Transfer 210,000
Messaging/Email 60,000
Hospital Information System (avg. three hospital IDN with 1400 beds) 60,000
Hospital Information System (avg. single hospital with 500 beds) 15,840
We have an ROI calculator on our web site that can help you determine what downtime on your physical servers is costing your organization
Barry Flanagan: The November 28th webinar listed on your site talks about the Best of VMWorld approach to protecting virtual machines. How did Marathon win a Best of VMWorld award when the product is designed exclusively for Citrix XenServer?
Jerry Melnick: At VMworld, Mendel Rosenblum, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at VMware, highlighted hardware fault tolerance as one of the company three key technology initiatives. But according to Mendel, their solution is still in early development and won be out in the foreseeable future. On the other hand, we demonstrated everRun VM at the show, and we ship the industry first fault tolerant-class virtual machine software in Q1 of next year.
Barry Flanagan: What is different about this webinar? Why should someone working with virtualization technologies attend?
Jerry Melnick: Well, if you didn see the everRun VM showcase at VMworld or iForum, I be explaining how it works. IDC virtualization guru, John Humphreys, will share some real world numbers on virtualization savings based on customer surveys they conducted. And it a great opportunity to hear Simon Crosby (CTO of the Virtualization and Management Division of Citrix) talk about the new economics of server virtualization.
Barry Flanagan: What will an attendee learn from attending this webinar? Are there any takeaways?
Jerry Melnick: John will give you good guidance on how to evaluate and structure your virtualization business case for your management. We be providing attendees with a first chance to use a brand new virtualization and availability ROI calculator that will help make your case. And of course Simon will be thought-provoking as always.
UPDATE: I received pricing info back from Jerry and his team. The final pricing is not yet determined, but here is the TENTATIVE pricing info.
Marathon everRun VM integrated bundle (Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition v4 + everRun VM)
Dual socket: $4500 Quad socket: $9000
Marathon everRun VM only (for upgrading existing XenServer installations)
Dual socket: $2000 Quad socket: $4000
As stated above, this pricing is not yet written in stone.
Thanks to Jerry Melnick for answering our Seven Questions. There will be an opportunity to ask Jerry, John Humpreys and Simon Crosby more questions at the end of the webinar.
The next partner from the XenSource Pavillion at iForum I would like to highlight is PlateSpin.
Virtual Strategy Magazine also did a video interview with PlateSpin at iForum. In this video Paul Sheridan of PlateSpin covers PowerRecon and PowerConvert.
PowerConvert is described as a migration tool. On the surface, it looks like a simple P2V tool. if you dig down deeper, you quickly find PowerConvert can do a lot more. here is a list I found of all the different types of migrations this tool supports.
P2V
- V2P
- V2V
- P2P
It can do this over the LAN or WAN, and can even do live incrementation migration at the file and block level. According to the product page on their website, this can happen while the server is live and running. I am extremely impressed with the capabilities of PowerConvert. This looks to be an incredibly useful tool for those who are moving to server virtualization. I would love to hear from any readers who have personal experience using PowerRecon in your own environment.
The other product is PowerRecon. I have to admit, the name of this product when I first heard it had me thinking of monitoring voltage on server power supplies. Here is a list of what the product actually does - automates the collection of server inventory, workload and resource utilization data and gives you the ability to do forecasting and trending of workloads. In light of that explanation, the product names makes a bit more sense. The next question for me was, wwhat does this have to do with server virtualization? Since a big part of the dirving force for server virtualization is under utilization of current server resurces, it makes a lot of sense to have a tool to know what the current levels of cpu utilization are for your server farm. The Virtual Infrastructure edition does the same thing for VM power by VMWare. I do not know yet if a XenServer Edition is forthcoming, but I will ask.
PlateSpin recently did a webinar on PowerRecon. Here is the link:
http://www.platespin.com/downloads/downloaddetails.aspx?fid=370
If you have experience using Platespin products, please post your experiences in the comments.
I have found several more partners videos to highlight. I will get to those over the next several days.
One booth I visited in the XenSource Pavilion is Marathon Technologies. I can recall recommending their high availability solution to a number of customers back in the late 90 when I was still an independent consultant. Back then, the solution was hardware and software based. Now, Marathon solution is a completely software based high availability solution and runs on industry standard hardware. Marathon announced a new XenSource specific solution at VMWorld, and won Best of VMWorld for New Technolgoies . John Bara from XenSource (now part of the Virtualization Management Group at Citrix) said this about Marathon:
By integrating everRun with XenEnterprise, Marathon is enabling customers of any size to get simple, enterprise-grade virtualization solutions with FT-class application availability, said John Bara, vice president of marketing at XenSource. is another example of how XenSource is working with partners to ensure XenEnterprise seamlessly integrates as the virtualization platform for a wide-range of high-performance, best-in-class solutions._
In the demo I saw, the v-Available everRun solution from Marathon was able to handle a failure of a hard drive one side of the link and a network card on the other side and continue running. Unlike many other virtualization HA solutions, Marathon solution does not restart the VM after a failure on one side of the link. The Marathon is always running and can handle the failure of a single component of either side, or an entire VM on one side without any downtime. It makes for a very impressive demo.
That demo was of two servers on a LAN. The solutions also works over a WAN. I am still trying to get more info from Marathon Technologies to nail down what are the specific WAN requirements for this new offering. According to the Marathon FAQ the Split Site solution ( a different product) requires 10 ms of latency or less. Assuming has the same requirement, you cannot replicate a VM from a datacenter on the east coast to one on the west coast. According to a few docs I found on the Marathon website, the limit is 100 miles.
Here is a video I found on YouTube of an interview done by Virtual Strategy Magazine.
There was a virtualization webinar last week with Marathon CTO Jerry Melnick, the CTO of Citrix Virtualization Management Group Simon Crosby, and Chris Wolf from the Burton Group. Here is the webinar link .
Marathon has an excellent High Availability solution for virtual machines running on Citrix XenServer. If HA is requirement for you, check it out.
I have several more partner solutions to blog abut as I get time.