Posted by Fraser Campbell
Sat, 06 Jan 2007 18:35:00 GMT
Yesterday project ConVirt released version 0.6. I haven’t discussed this project before, here the introduction from their webpage:
Project ConVirt is an active, open source project concieved with the goal of tackling the administrative and infrastructure management challenges that adoption of virtualization platforms presents to the traditional datacenter. The XenMan administrative console is project ConVirt’s first release.
XenMan is an intuitive, graphical management tool aimed at operational lifecycle management for the Xen virtualization platform. XenMan is built on the firm design philosophy that ease-of-use and sophistication can, and should, co-exist in a single management tool. So, XenMan should hopefully prove valuable to both seasoned Xen Administrators as well as those just seeking an introduction to Xen Virtualization.
With XenMan’s secure, multi-node administration, performance management and provisioning capabilities, administrators can safely manage their entire environment from a single, centralized console. Most common administrative tasks like starting, stopping, monitoring and provisioning virtual machines (Guest OS’s) typically involve just a few mouse clicks with XenMan; as do server management operations like scanning OS configurations or acquiescing individual servers for maintainance.
For more details see ConVirt’s homepage.
Posted in ConVirt, Xen | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Sat, 30 Dec 2006 05:18:00 GMT
From the Xen development team …
We’re pleased to announce the official release of xen 3.0.4!
This is largely an opportunistic stabilising release for HVM guests, due to the large amount of work in that area of the code since 3.0.3. These enhancements have in particular improved support for SMP and ACPI Linux and Windows operating systems.
Other highlights of this release include:
- support for kexec/kdump of Xen and domain 0;
- graphical framebuffer support for paravirtualised guests;
- preview support for the new XenAPI management interfaces;
- enhanced support for IA64 (IPF) and Power systems.
Since 3.0.4 is an interim release, certain features such as HVM save/restore will now be part of Xen 3.0.5 which we expect to release in early 2007.
You can get the source using mercurial from:
http://xenbits.xensource.com/xen-3.0.4-testing.hg
Source and binary tarballs, and RPMs, will be made available from:
http://www.xensource.com/downloads
Posted in Xen | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Mon, 25 Dec 2006 00:20:00 GMT
From project homepage:
MLN (Manage Large Networks) is a virtual machine administration tool designed to build and run virtual machine networks based on Xen and User-Mode Linux. It is ideal for creating virtual network labs for education, testing, hosting or simply playing around with Linux.
The mln-help and mln-devel lists don’t look very busy but it could still be a useful tool. Take a look at
http://mln.sourceforge.net/index.php. I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has tried it out.
Posted in Xen, User Mode Linux | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Fri, 10 Nov 2006 04:00:00 GMT
Xensource announced availability of XenEnterprise 3.1 beta and “paid pilot” programs on November 6th. The release is based on the updated Xen 3.0.3.
Major touted features are:
- Packaged & Supported Xen Virtualization
- Easy Installation & GUI Interface
- Blazing Fast Performance for both * Windows & Linux Guests
- Powerful Management Console
- Affordable Annual and Perpetual Licensing Available
- 24/7 Support
See full press release at http://www.xensource.com/news/pr110606xe.html.
Posted in Xen, XenSource | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Fri, 10 Nov 2006 03:31:00 GMT
Yesterday Red Hat offered a press release regarding virtualization in RHEL 5. Red Hat says:
“Customers care about open interoperability and certification for running joint Red Hat and VMware environments,” said Brian Stevens, CTO at Red Hat. “With this relationship, the two virtualization platforms that Red Hat Enterprise Linux will support are the VMware platform and the Red Hat Integrated Virtualization platform that will be available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. The wide adoption of open source is a result of the commitment to interoperability. Support for our joint customers is just one more example of the efficacy of true open source development.”
Red Hat Integrated Virtualization platform means Xen of course, combined with Red Hat’s libvirt and virtualization manager.
The release further states that “Red Hat has already certified VMware Infrastructure as both a certified software application and a certified virtual hardware platform for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”.
See full press release at http://www.redhat.com/about/news/prarchive/2006/vmware.html.
Posted in Xen, Redhat / Fedora, VMware | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Sun, 29 Oct 2006 17:44:00 GMT
Since I just started a new contract a few weeks ago, I thought it was time to resurrect my Xen on laptop efforts. As I mentioned before (here) my laptop is a Dell Inspiron 6400, and there are a few issues with it:
- no open source driver video driver integrated with X.org and kernel due to ATI being scared of open source
- on-board network uses the Broadcom b44 driver which has (or at least had) issues when loaded under Xen
I’m no graphics buff so the first issue isn’t a big one for me (1024×768 is fine) but the network card issue is a showstopper. So if you’re looking at running Xen on a laptop I don’t think that Dell is a good solution (at least not my Dell), I had much better success with an HP laptop (sorry I don’t recall the model).
I have seen one person reporting that their b44 network driver was functional under Xen but so far I have not been able to reproduce that so I am unconvinced.
In the meantime rather than trying to find corrections for the network driver I decided to try different network cards. The Inspiron has no cardbus slots so the only option is ExpressCard, here in Ontario it seems most computer stores haven’t even heard of ExpressCard. Finally, in my local small computer store the guy suggested to try USB ethernet instead (I hadn’t even considered that).
I plugged in the USB network card and much to my surprise it was immediately recognized, they allowed me to connect to the Internet from the store to ensure that it was functional. The USB ethernet dongle is completely devoid of any identification so I cannot say with certainty the manufacturer. When plugged in my kernel automatically loads the asix driver and identifies it as ASIX AX88772 USB 2.0 Ethernet.
Since my first article about running Xen on Ubuntu I have upgraded my desktops to the newer version of ubuntu (the just released Kubuntu 6.10).
Ubuntu 6.10 includes Xen kernels and the Xen hypervisor already built and installable (no need for source builds anymore). In my case I installed the following packages:
- libc6-xen
- libxen3.0
- python-xen3.0
- xen-doc-2.6.17
- xen-docs-3.0
- xen-hypervisor-3.0-i386
- xen-image-xen0-2.6.17-6-generic-xen0
- xen-ioemu-3.0
- xen-restricted-modules-2.6.17-6-generic-xen0
- xen-tools
- xen-utils-3.0
I’ve been using this on my laptop for 3 days now, running a few instances of RHEL3 and one instance of Windows XP Home SP2. I haven’t observed any instability or issues (either with virtual machines or domain0). I am using Domain 0 as my main desktop, eventually it would be nice to have domain0 as a very thin layer and run my desktop from a domU but it’s not a big deal (for a personal laptop system of course).
Now if Microsoft could just fix their software so that I don’t have to call them to reactivate Windows every time I boot my legally licensed Windows XP under different hardware (native, versus Xen, versus QEMU) ... one copy of XP Home, one computer, thanks guys wonderful customer experience. Thankfully for myself Windows is an afterthought, I only need it occasionally to verify correct function of web sites under Internet Explorer.
Posted in Xen, Ubuntu | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Tue, 10 Oct 2006 02:38:00 GMT
It looks like Virtual Iron 3.0 might finally be out of beta. If you go to VI’s download page you will be able to request your licence keys and download.
See download page at http://www.virtualiron.com/products/download_Virtual_Iron.cfm.
There has been no announcement as yet (that I have seen) but it’s there and can be downloaded.
Posted in Xen, Virtual Iron | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Thu, 28 Sep 2006 23:26:00 GMT
There are a few webcasts coming up with Virtual Iron that might be of interest.
First up is The New Economics of Virtualization on October 3rd, co-hosted with Intel. "Attendees will learn about":
- Leveraging new technologies like Xen and Intel VT
- Using virtualization to create more flexible infrastructure and
deliver computing capacity on demand
- Reducing the time it takes to provision and redeploy servers and
applications from days/weeks to minutes
- Supporting unmodified 32 and 64-bit Windows and Linux operating
systems on a single virtualization platform
- Running enterprise-class applications on virtual infrastructure
- Centrally managing virtual computers and physical servers
Next up is Reducing Cost and Increasing Agility with Virtualization on October 18th, this one is co-hosted by Platespin. Attendees will “learn how you can leverage Virtual Iron and PlateSpin to manage an end-to-end server consolidation project from assessment and planning through to deployment into a Virtual Iron infrastructure environment.”.
Posted in Xen, Virtual Iron | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Mon, 11 Sep 2006 21:51:00 GMT
Red Hat has announced that LRed Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Beta 1 is available for public consumption. Red Hat is “particularly interested in your feedback on the Xen technology.”.
See mailing list announcement from Red Hat here for details on how you might access the beta.
Posted in Xen, Redhat / Fedora | no comments
Posted by Fraser Campbell
Fri, 18 Aug 2006 12:18:00 GMT
From Red Hat, Novell Spar Over Xen’s Readiness:
Red Hat executives said the Xen code in the Raleigh, N.C., Linux distributor’s upcoming RHEL 5 works, but they won’t advise enterprise customers and ISVs to deploy it until unfinished business around the API set, interoperability interfaces and Xen’s integration with the Linux kernel are resolved.
An interesting perspective but it still smacks of we’re not ready so Xen isn’t ready. Nothing has stopped Red Hat in the past from patching kernel functionality in that they thought their customers wanted.
Also, from the same article:
At LinuxWorld, XenSource and Virtual Iron said they plan to ship their respective XenEnterprise and Virtual Iron platforms in the next few weeks. They indicated that Xen is ready.
Cnet’s
news.com has this quote regarding XenEnterprise from XenSource:
“It’s going to be generally available next week,” Levine said in a speech here at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. The major goal of the software is to make the Xen open-source virtualization software easy to use, an idea reflected in the company’s “10 minutes to Xen” tagline.
Very interesting, generally available means not-BETA in my book. See original article XenSource’s first product due next week for more details.
Posted in Xen, Virtual Iron, Novell / SuSE, Redhat / Fedora | no comments
