Posts Tagged ‘virtualization’

openSUSE 11.1 On VMware

Yesterday I decided to install the new 11.1 release of openSUSE. Since I didn’t have any spare machines laying around, I threw it on my desktop using VMware Server. The installer was much smoother and a lot more slick than past releases, but probably what impressed me the most was that once the installation was done and I was booted up into KDE, the mouse left the VMware console screen. At first I didn’t realize what was happening. I was going in and out playing with the new OS while getting a little work done. Eventually I got the system fully patched and was ready to install the VMware tools. Then all of a sudden, I realized that the tools had already been installed and my mouse had been going in and out of the console window the whole time. The openSUSE installer had detected that it was running on top of VMware and installed the tools for me. Not too shabby.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Dec 20th, 2008

VMware: A Traditional Licensing Model in a SaaS World

With our economy closing in around us, companies are investigating ways to save money and improve efficiencies. Startups that are looking for VC are struggling to find cash to front projects that involve IT projects. One way to conserve costs is to virtualize infrastructure to get the most of hardware purchases. VMware has been considered by many to be king of virtualization. However, VMware’s cost of entry is extremely high. A startup can get into the VMware ESX line with a starter pack which allows for 6 CPU’s, virtual center, and 3 years of support for $20,000. That’s actually an incredible deal when you go try to buy that software retail with machines from an OEM. Unfortunately for VMware, an organization can get into virtualization using Amazon’s EC2 service or other cloud computing provider for a much lower cost per machine. Perhaps a subscription-based model could allow for a lower point of entry for organizations into the VMware architecture? The technology is great but so far their licensing hasn’t adjusted to the way the market is moving. Even Steve Ballmer harped on VMware for its pricing model. Of course, they do offer the ESXi version of their software for free, but it doesn’t allow you to hook into a SAN or migrate guests between VMware hosts.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Nov 17th, 2008

Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac

Parallels recently released the newest version of it’s Mac Desktop virtualization product, version 4.0. After a couple days of ‘hands-on’ with the product, I have to say nice job!  It is ‘world changing’?  I’ll leave that up to you.  My thoughts, after the jump! 

In the past I have struggled running Windows Vista (Businesss) on my MacBook Pro (2 GB of RAM on a Core Duo) along side of Mac OS X Leopard.  To the point that I would not recommend it to clients and friends.  The safe bet, to this point, has been running Windows XP.  With Windows XP fading into the sunset in the next 6 months, I am happy to report that with version 4.0, I am able run Vista while still having a functioning laptop. The claim of a 50% performance increase seems to hold true from my non-scientific tests.

I was also happy to see that Parallels Desktop for Mac also supports up to 8 GB of RAM and 64-bit guest operating systems for those with 64-bit processors in their box.  Coherence has also been improved to provide a more integrated experience, especially with the Windows’s notifications.  On the more technical side of things Parallels has added support for Mac OS X Server along with command line utilities and scripting support. 

The upgrade (from version 3) was quite simple, but you will have to upgrade each of your VM’s.  Start the process and go for coffee. This process does take quite a while but does not take much user interaction. Upgrading my Windows XP installation took approximately 30 minutes.  Note that this is a ‘one-way’ upgrade, so if you are trying out version 4.0, backup your VM’s, which Parallels will prompt you to do. 

Over all, I am very happy with the upgrade thus far. Performance is improved and has ensured a continued spot for Parallels Desktop in my Applications folder.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Nov 13th, 2008

Ballmer Picks on Competitors Over.. Cost?

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently talked about Microsoft’s virtualization strategy for the next few years. In the video interview on ZDnet, Ballmer talks about democratizing virtualization.

He says that currently only 5% of servers are virtualized, and Microsoft has the key to making it more like 80%. Of course he took a shot at VMware, saying:

“If you want virtualization on 80 percent of servers instead of 5 percent of servers, you better not charge three times as much as the price of the server for the virtualization!”

Wait. What just happened here? I had to watch the video twice before I believed it. The CEO of Microsoft is going to give a lecture on over-priced software licenses? I almost fell off my chair when I heard him say that. Wow, I completely didn’t expect that. I expected some statement about how their software is better or something like that, but not that they were cheaper. Two things

1. Is Microsoft really going to bring up licensing costs as an argument for using their platform? Let’s say, for instance, that I want to upgrade my existing desktop from XP with Office 2003 to Vista Ultimate with Office 2007 Pro. Hardware upgrade costs aside, I can buy a Windows Vista Ultimate upgrade for $184.99 from Newegg. Then, I need to buy the Office 2007 upgrade. A professional version upgrade will cost me $289.99 on Newegg. That’s a total of $474.98. Now, let’s say I want to buy myself the upgrades for my Mac. I can spend $109.95 on the Leopard license from Newegg and iWork ‘08 for $68.99. Yes, we can clearly see that Microsoft is definitely in a position to brag about licensing costs. Anyway, that’s another argument for another day.

2. Is it really free? According to the documentation, in order for the clustering to work you have to use Windows Server Enterprise or Datacenter edition on the bare metal. Well, being the curious soul that I am, I decided to find the cost. You can buy an OEM copy of Enterprise edition (the cheaper version) for the low cost of $2,699.99 from Newegg. Now we’re over halfway to the cost of ESX server and with ESX you don’t have the performance and management cost of running a full-blow Windows OS underneath everything else. Plus, I can’t live-migrate my virtual machines across physical machines like Xen or VMware. I’m going to leave alone the fact that you can’t access the hypervisor features using “unsupported” OS’s, like you know.. not Windows or SUSE Linux.

In true Microsoft style, they are late to the game and feature-poor, yet they try to push their weight around and make ridiculous claims. I didn’t start this blog to become a Microsoft-basher, but they make it so difficult not to. Sadly, I’m projecting that Hyper-V will become fairly popular simply because it comes bundled within the Windows server OS, just like Internet Explorer is one of the dominating browsers simply out of convenience.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (2) : Sep 27th, 2008

Microsoft Offers Hyper-V for Free

In true Microsoft style, long after other competing products have been offering free versions of their software, Microsoft announced yesterday that the new version of its Hyper-V product will be free. Competitors VMware and Xen have been offering free virtualization software for some time now with pay-for management features. Microsoft appears to be jumping on the bandwagon. According to cnet, the new version will be released in less than 30 days. Microsoft also is reporting that the new Live Migration feature (once again, available in VMware and Xen) will be available in the new version. Live Migration was promised in the first version, but wasn’t developed in time to be released with the first version. It will allow a virtual machine to be migrated to another physical host while the virtual machine is running. The new version will be part of Server 2008 R2.

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Filed under News : Comments (1) : Sep 9th, 2008