The Open Virtualization Format (OVF) was recently released as version 1.0 by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). What is OVF you may ask? OVF is a set of standards that enable interoperability through the creation of systems management standards for virtualized environments. This doesn’t replace formats such as VHD or VMDK. OVF is more of an abstraction layer. This really benefits vendors that make virtual appliances. Now, vendors can concentrate on making a virtual appliance that conforms to the OVF standard and rest assured that their virtual appliance will run on a myriad of hypervisors like ESX, Hyper-V, and Xen/XenServer.
Key benefits of the OVF standard include:
Portable virtual machine (VM) packaging
Optimization for secure distribution
Simplified installation and deployment
Support for both single VM and multi-VM configurations
Want to learn more about Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 (AppVirt) (formerly SoftGrid)? Then watching this video by John Sheehan is a great start. In this video, John takes you on a deep dive of the App-V technology including the Dynamic Suiting component which allows virtual application “bubbles” to communicate with each other. “Administrators wanting to consolidate virtual environments, and enable faster, easier administration, can use the product’s Dynamic Suite Composition, which sequences and manages packages for middleware applications separately from the main application. It shrinks potential package size by eliminating redundant packaging of middleware, allowing, for instance, multiple web applications to communicate with the same single instance of a virtualized .NET Framework or Java Runtime Environment (JRE).”
Over at the VMware Communities site, a new free tool has popped up called vcb Management Console. This tools is basically a front end GUI for VMware consolidated backup and the Windows scheduler (AT). This tools allows you to backup virtual machines manually, browse VMs, register VMs and perform automated scheduled backups of VMs via a GUI - no need to remember all the vcb commands.
During VMworld 2009, Brian Madden presented a session titled “VDI versus Terminal Services”. In the session, Brian discusses when to Terminal Services and when to use VDI. I think one of the main bullet points of the presentation is that both Terminal Services and VDI are forms of Server Based Computing (SBC). Which form of SBC to use really comes down to the applications. You can watch the video for free at Brian’s site. It is very informative and Brian is a great presenter.
Tim Mangan writes a lot of cools tools. Tim’s latest tool is called HyperV_Mon. The purpose of HyperV_Mon is to give you a better understanding of performance on your hardware, root partition, and guests on Microsoft Hyper-V in a graphical manner. As Tim puts it “…you can’t trust the Windows Task Manager from inside the VMs to tell you squat. Basically, the virtualization layer pulls the rug out from under the guest OS when it comes to CPU and the guest is clueless and assumes that whatever was paused just ate CPU the whole time.”
There are 2 main types of hypervisors - bare metal and hosted. Hosted hypervisors (like VMware Workstation/Server, Microsoft Virtual PC/Server, Parallels Workstation, etc.) require a host OS. Hosted hypervisors are more of an application you install on an OS and rely on the OS as a layer of access to hardware. It looks like Citrix is trying to enter the hosted hypervisor space with a product called XenWorkstation. There aren’t many details about XenWorkstation, but virtualization.info is reporting that it may be released soon and will run on Windows and Mac OS X hosts.
No doubt about it, hardware virtualization is a hot topic. Adding fuel to the fire on this hot topic is the comparison of the hardware virtualization vendors - mainly VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft. I think it goes without saying that VMware has the most robust set of features, but what about performance? Which hypervisor performs the best? Is VMware worth the price since Hyper-V and XenServer are free (OK, Hyper-V is technically $28.00 USD if you do not have a Microsoft Agreement)? That question is hot too! A great resource to answer this question is Project Virtual Reality Check. But, there is a new study by Virtualization Review that attempts to answer this question as well. Virtualization Review “… put the three challengers through a battery of tests to find out how they perform a variety of virtualization functions.” Their tests includes test objectives, descriptions of the test environments, comparison parameters, and results.
Be sure to read the entire article because it is pretty insightful. But, the conclusion in their words is “There was no overall winner here…but some general conclusions can be drawn. For CPU- and memory-intensive applications, XenServer and Hyper-V are attractive and have proven their mettle. For a large number of light to moderate workloads-or if you decide that memory overcommit, for example, is important-ESX may be the answer. What is entirely clear, however, is that all three hypervisors are legitimate virtualization platforms, and that no single company has a monopoly on virtualization any longer.”
VMware has created a new management interface for mobile devices. I haven’t figured out if this is a good thing or a bad thing yet, because the line between office life and home life just got blurred a little more. Joking aside, this VMware vCenter Mobile Access looks pretty cool. There is a cool video and introduction at the VMTN blog (although I have to admit the music to the video is a little, um, comedic I guess). The video shows you how to search for VMs, look at alerts, vMotion VMs, work with Scheduled Tasks, and more - all from a BlackBerry.
Who likes to do documentation? I, for one, don’t consider it one of my favorite things. However, I do find good documentation to be an invaluable resource at times. So, when a tool comes along to help in a documentation endeavor, it is worth a look. Vkernel recently released a free VMware ESX tool to document your environment called SnapshotMyVM. SnapshotMyVM gathers information like the VM name, Guest OS, Host hardware specs, VM resource configuration, etc.
