I like that AMD likes xVM

Sun just announced a really cool new set of servers that support the new Quad-core Operteron CPUs.  Here's a little article that talks about the servers (I love that I mentions xVM Server and xVM Ops Center too!).  These servers are really cool.  Do I sound too much like an amateur gear head?  Maybe, but I do find it amazing that you can put 256 GIGABYTES of RAM in a rackmount server now.  I remember my first 5 MEGABYTE hard disk that was almost as big as a server!

Also, in case you missed it, a couple weeks back AMD announced that they were going to be investing in tuning for xVM.  Very cool to have big partners like that!

Posted at 05:00AM May 14, 2008 by Steve Wilson in Virtualization  |  Comments[0]

All Things Virtual

A great article over at Dr. Dobbs that includes an interview with our own Vijay Sarathy.  Worth a read to understand the foll scope of what we're doing in xVM-land.  Check it out.

Posted at 08:41AM May 13, 2008 by Steve Wilson in Virtualization  |  Comments[0]

My Weekend with xVM VirtualBox 1.6

I did a quick install of xVM VirtualBox 1.6 a bit more than a week ago.  Then I got sucked into the JavaOne vortex, so it wasn't until Saturday that I got some really quality time to play with it.  So, I sat down on my Dell home PC (at XPS 400 if you must know) and set about trying some new things.

The first thing I decided to do was install the new OpenSolaris.  It was very smooth, and is even slicker than the Developer Preview 2 I'd done previously with VirtualBox 1.5.  One of the things I noticed after I booted from the Live CD image was that I was only using one CPU core doing the install (no surprised that this is a single threaded process).  So, I decided to get really greedy and created a second VM and installed the newest Ubuntu 8.0.4 release at the same time.  Here's a little picture of what it looks like (click the image for a full size link).

Installing OpenSolaris and Linux simultaneously on top of Windows XP -- how crazy is that?!?  The scary thing is, that it works like a dream.  The really scary thing is that I'm a relative newbie at using VirtualBox and I'm barely UNIX literate (having spent my early career developing on Mac and mostly using Windows these days for my work computers).  While a Solaris install may once have been only for certified Solaris system admins, that doesn't need to be the case anymore.

Now, there were a couple of little gotchas where I needed help (but Google was very helpful at finding me some pages).  The first thing I needed help with was getting the OpenSolaris networking going inside VirtualBox.  It turns out I had to change the default VirtualBox network adapter Intel Pro/1000MT from PC Net-Fast III and I was on my way.  Second thing I needed help with was installing the OpenSolaris guest additions.  The "guest additions" are software bits that you install into the guest OS that allows it to integrate with VirtualBox very tightly.  VirtualBox makes this easy by providing a menu item to automount a phantom CD-ROM to the desktop of the guest with all the software you need, but you must use a few commands to get it installed (any Solaris admin would know what to do -- I'm not a Solaris admin).  Fortunately, there is a nice little entry someone put together comp-sos web site that walks you through the whole thing.  Very Nicely Constructed!  xVM pubs team should take note!

Doing the Ubuntu install was also very straight forward.  I know the VirtualBox team has been working wth Ubuntu for a long time, and it shows.  Again, the only thing that stumped me was the details on installing the guest additions.  However, I quickly found this article that made it all clear.

Kudos to the VirtualBox and OpenSolaris teams.  Two major releases that work great together!

Posted at 05:00AM May 12, 2008 by Steve Wilson in Virtualization  |  Comments[0]

Twitter

OK, I had dinner with Ken Wallich (aka Mr. JavaFX) the other night during JavaOne.  He (perhaps unknowingly) convinced me to try out Twitter.  Twitter is a "microblogging" service.  If you don't know what that is then you'll just have to sign up and find out.  If any of you want to keep up with what I'm doing, feel free to follow along.  I'm VirtualSteve on twitter now.  See you all there.

Posted at 10:07PM May 09, 2008 by Steve Wilson in New Media  |  Comments[0]

Check Out the New Open xVM Site

Just in time for CommunityOne, we've put up a new and improved version of the openxvm.org website.  xVM is made up of parts drawn from many open source communities, and Open xVM is designed to act as the hub for Sun's open source virtualization and management strategy.  This site is going to start evolving and growning very quickly now that we have the basics in place.  Go check it out and let us know what you think.

Posted at 07:37AM May 05, 2008 by Steve Wilson in Virtualization  |  Comments[0]

xVM VirtualBox 1.6 Released!

Just in time for CommunityOne xVM VirtualBox is out.  The world's most popular, open source desktop virtulization engine has just released a major new revision.  I just downloaded it from virtualbox.org and got it up and running really quickly.  Here's a quick list of just  a few of the 2,000 improvements in the newest release:

• Solaris and Mac versions no longer in beta
  
• Guest Additions for Solaris
• Seamless windowing for Solaris and Linux guests
• SATA support for up to 32 hard disks per VM (first product in the industry to do SATA!)
• PAE support for guests (memory model required by some server OSes)
• Significant improvements to scalability

Posted at 07:58PM May 02, 2008 by Steve Wilson in Virtualization  |  Comments[0]

xVM in eWeek

eWeek just published an interview I did with them a while back.  I actually did this back just before we announced the innotek acquisition, but wound up doing an update of it with the writer before it got published.  That seemed to mess up their publishing calendar and then took a while to get back to the top of the queue for publication.  Anyway, I think it came out really well.  Go on over and check it out.

Posted at 09:34PM Apr 25, 2008 by Steve Wilson in Virtualization  |  Comments[1]

xVM Server UI Sneak Peak

You've been hearing a lot about xVM Server that's due out this summer.  Many people who follow Solaris are familiar with the work going on at OpenSolaris around the Xen hypervisor.  However, a lot of people don't realize there is a lot more to xVM Server than just that.  When you install the true xVM Server it will not be as if you're installing Solaris.  Instead, xVM Server turns the computer into a dedicated virtualization Software Appliance with a top-of-the-line, easy-to-use interface you attach to over a standard https connection.

The UI that is served up by xVM Server's embedded web server is coming along really quickly now as the team picks up speed using the new AJAX toolkit they selected.  The screen shot posted below is actually representative of the UI for xVM Server, and also for Ops Center 2.0 (both due in the summer).  It's not complete yet, but gives you a sense what things will look like. 

The most impressive thing about this interface can't be seen from a static screen shot.  The new UI architecture the team is using does way more processing on the client than the Ops Center 1 interface.  This means way fewer trips to the server and provides for near instantaneous feedback on most actions.   I'll keep you all posted on progress here and let you know when the first download is available!  Stay tuned.

Posted at 08:44AM Apr 11, 2008 by Steve Wilson in Virtualization  |  Comments[6]

Open Service Tags now under GPL 3

In April of 2007 we announced a new concept in IT asset tracking.  We called it Sun Service Tags.  These small software assets offer the capability to discover and introspect hardware and software assets.  About a month later we introduced Sun Inventory.  A free, hosted service that allows individuals and teams to track and manage their IT assets.

Since this introduction less than a year ago, we've seen an explosion in these use of this technology.  Product teams from across Sun have started to take advantage of this technology and it's now built into most of Sun's hardware and software products.  In addition, customers have started to use it.  We now have almost 300,000 individual assets registered into the Sun Inventory system!

Now we're ready to take the next step with this technology.  We'd like to see companies outside of Sun start to take advantage of it.  We did ports of Sun Service Tags to operating systems like Microsoft Windows and RedHat Linux, so that people can track those assets in the Inventory system.  However, we think this can go much farther.  Thus, we've decided to free the source code to these little technological gems.  Now, as part of the Open xVM community, you'll find a sub-project called Open Service Tags.  Complete source code is available there under a GPL v3 license.  Go check it out and participate!

Posted at 01:42PM Apr 07, 2008 by Steve Wilson in DataCenter  | 

Checked out xVM Blog lately?

Have you checked out the xVM Blog lately?  I linked to it here just after it opened, but I recently took a trip over there and realized how much had been added.  You should especially check out the recent string of module introductions.  I'm excited to see things ramping up there.  Go check it out now.

Posted at 08:34PM Mar 11, 2008 by Steve Wilson in Virtualization  |  Comments[1]