Posted by Fraser Campbell
Sun, 06 May 2007 19:37:00 GMT
3 Leaf Systems recently introduced their V-8000 Virtual I/O server. The product “replaces each compute node’s storage and network I/O with a single, high speed, redundant, and fault tolerant fabric, converting each compute node into a diskless and stateless commodity server with centrally managed bandwidth”.
Not a lot of information is publicly available (whitepapers are available on request), here’s a summary of what I’ve gathered:
- all network and SAN I/O goes through central virtual I/O server
- compute nodes and VIO server are interconnected with a 10Gb fabric (infiniband or ethernet)
- consolidates 4-18 gigE network ports and 0-14 4Gb fibrechannel ports
- VIO server runs RHEL4, 64-bit
- compute nodes can run RHEL, SLES or Windows (limited versions, 32-bit and 64-bit)
- in addition to the base operating systems (above) compute nodes can further virtualize things by running virtualization software including those based on VMware, Xen, and Microsoft technology
It is recommended to run the VIO servers in redundant pairs (no kidding!).
Sounds like an interesting solution. Check out their press releases here and the product datasheet.
Posted in Misc | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Sun, 31 Dec 2006 03:40:00 GMT
Recently one of my weekly computer rags had this to say:
A recent study at the University of New Hampshire found that 38 per cent of the U.S.’s power supply was being absorbed by data centres. According to IDC, businesses will need an additional 12 million square feet of data centre space by 2009.
While not entirely on the topic of linux virtualization it is one of the prime drivers behind the virtualization trend. 38% is an astounding figure, I can only hope it is not true.
The full article making this claim is available from http://www.itbusiness.ca/ in article IBM takes on HP, Sun with blade system.
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Posted by Fraser Campbell
Fri, 11 Aug 2006 13:02:00 GMT
Just noticed the site “Virtualization Gets Real” today from Ziff Davis Media. The site is dedicated to VMware technology from what I can tell. Their claim:
Welcome to “Virtualization Gets Real” – your online resource for information about server virtualization. Here you’ll find the Technology Briefs, eSeminars and other resources you’ll need to implement virtualization solutions the right way – from choosing the right partners to providing tools to help you integrate and manage your environment.
Check it out at http://www.virtualization.ziffdavis.com/.
Posted in Misc, VMware | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Thu, 01 Jun 2006 02:12:00 GMT
Win4Lin is a product allowing Windows to be run as a virtual machine within Linux.
Yesterday, Win4Lin announced a major upgrade to version 3 of their software.
According to the press release:
Included in this release of Win4Lin Pro Desktop, in addition to performance improvements, are:
• One-Click-2-Windows™ installation—the easiest way to install Windows on a Linux Desktop
• Copy-on-write-snapshot mode which can prevent changes to the user’s virtual disk from being saved, denying viruses and other malware the ability to corrupt the user’s virtual system disk
• Full support for audio playback and recording
See full press release here.
Posted in Misc | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Tue, 30 May 2006 03:10:00 GMT
John Jerney gives an entertaining introduction to hypervisors:
Hypertext, hyperlinks, hyperthreaded processors. Before that, HyperCard and HyperTalk. And let’s not forget that the “h” in http stands for hyper. It seems that there is always something hyper in the computer world.
Well, get ready to add another hyper to your high tech lexicon. This time it is hypervisors, and I am guessing that you will start hearing a lot more about them during the course of the next year.
Like the other hypers, hypervisors are actually quite neat. ...
Read full article here.
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Posted by Fraser Campbell
Thu, 20 Apr 2006 02:08:00 GMT
Jeff Layton has written an excellent article on ClusterMonkey describing the various interconnects that are available to power your cluster communication needs.
He goes into some detail on all of the following interconnect technologies:
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Gigabit Ethernet with Level 5 NICs
- 10 Gigabit Ethernet
- Infiniband
- Infinipath
- Myrinet
- QsNet (Quadrics)
- SCI (Dolphin)
The article is titled “Cluster Interconnects: The Whole Shebang” and is located here.
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Posted by Fraser Campbell
Thu, 06 Apr 2006 03:14:00 GMT
Information Week is running an interview with Bill Hilf of Microsoft regarding their newfound cooperation with open source projects. See full article here.
There are a few comments in regard to Microsoft supporting Linux and Microsoft supporting Windows on Linux/Xen that may be of interest.
Posted in Xen, Misc | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Thu, 06 Apr 2006 00:48:00 GMT
Win4Lin is a product that allows running a complete unmodified Microsoft Windows desktop on top of a regular Linux host, not our typical Linux virtualization story.
Win4Lin today announced that their product is now available to run on 64-bit Linux. It isn’t clear from the release as to whether you need 32-bit or 64-bit Windows, either way the upgrade is sure to be welcomed by many.
I do own a license of the older releases of Win4Lin, the version I own requires some kernel patches but can run Windows very quickly – double click on Win4Lin icon to booting full Windows desktop is about 4 seconds.
Their newer versions (including this one) run using Qemu which offers full hardware virtualization. I would definitely consider the upgrade, if I still had any need to run Windows.
Continue reading for full press release …
Read more...
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Posted by Fraser Campbell
Mon, 03 Apr 2006 12:30:00 GMT
CNet is reporting that Microsoft will support Linux running under Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2.
For predominantly Windows shops this is bound to be an interesting option.
See original article here.
Update: Alessandro Perilli has some additional notes on Microsoft’s mind-bending Linux Beta program, see post here.
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Posted by Fraser Campbell
Tue, 28 Mar 2006 02:11:00 GMT
Azul Systems claims that they will be shipping 48-core Java chips in 2007. Assuming they maintain similar form factors to their current models (up to 16 sockets) this would mean 768 cores in a single 11U box.
Azul calls their computing approach “Network Attached Processing” (NAP?). It appears that they have a customized JVM which you would install on your traditional application server (AIX, HP-UX, Redhat, SuSE or Solaris). The custom JVM (see their page regarding Azul Virtual Machine) farms out java processes to the NAP transparently, it appears that most (if not all) major java application servers are supported without change.
Another interesting tidbit is that the Azul virtual machine allows 32-bit host environments to use 64-bit addressing, supporting memory heap sizes up to 96 GB - if you’re into that sort of thing.
The new 48-core chip (VEGA 2) will have 812 million transistors and should go GA in 2007. See Azul press release here.
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