Xen.org Releases Xen Type-2 Hypervisor: Xen Project KXen April 6, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in desktop virtualization.Tags: virtualization, Xen
2 comments
The initial public release of the Hosted Xen project (KXen) is now available. KXen lets you run the Xen core as a Type-2 VMM, on top of a regular operating system. This release supports 32-bit Windows XP, Vista and Win7 as the host operating system. This release uses a snapshot of the Xen core used in Citrix’s XenServer product. Future releases will be based on open source xen-3.4 and xen-unstable. This release is in the form of a snapshot of the latest working sources (kxen-preview-090323-src.tar.bz2) and an archive of binaries built from those sources (kxen-preview-090323-windows.zip).
Virtualization & Cloud Industry News [26.03.09] March 26, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in Server Virtualization, Storage Virtualization & Storage.Tags: Citrix, Datacore, SANmelody, Xen
add a comment
Xen-based hypervisors push performance limits – Citrix XenServer 5.0 Top Finisher January 21, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in I/O Virtualization, Server Virtualization.Tags: Citrix, ESX, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Novell XEN, Virtual Iron, virtualization, VMware, Xen, XenServer
add a comment
Tom Henderson and Brendan Allen of Network World Lab Alliance conducted an extensive performance testing of Citrix XenServer 5.0, Novell’s Xen 3.2 and Virtual Iron 4.4. Two other vendors — Sun and Red Hat — were invited to participate but because of varying timing problems, declined to participate.
The testing confirmed that open source Xen is a formidable challenger to the closed code VMware and Microsoft hypervisors. When the performance of business transactions running on top of the hypervisors was measured, Citrix’s XenServer 5.0 was the top finisher in nine out of 12 test runs.
Citrix VMs are tops in transaction processing, Novell’s in I/O speed.
Read the full article here.
Microsoft SVVP … Cisco, VMware October 6, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: ESX, Hyper-V, KVM, SVVP, WAAS, Xen, XenServer
add a comment
For those who do not know what Microsoft SVVP means, it stands for Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program.
Mcirosoft SVVP and Cisco Systems
Wednesday last week, Microsoft and Cisco announced the Microsoft Server on Cisco WAAS. This solution enables branch offices to be equiped with one device offering networking services and basic Microsoft services such as DHCP, DNS, Printing, AD. The appliance will be available at 10.000 USD.
Immediately a lot of comments, postings saw the light within the blogging community. The big question that remains at present is which virtualization solution Cisco will use. When reading the press release it states
“ … Cisco will embed a virtualization component within its Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) appliance family that will help customers to host Windows Server 2008 …”
This sparked the discussion wether it would be Xen, KVM, XenServer, Hyper-V or VMware. When looking at the announcement we strongly believe that VMware will not be onboard this device seen the recent ‘well understanding’ between Microsoft and VMware.
This leaves KVM, XenServer, Xen or Hyper-V. Seen the good relationship between Microsoft and the open source community, we strongly believe that KVM or Xen will not be included, altough that Cisco has indicated its ‘fondness’ of KVM. This leaves Hyper-V or XenServer.
The Citrix Branch Repeater (also a combined development between Microsoft and Citrix) offers (currently) more features than the Microsoft Server on Cisco WAAS and is almost a head-to-head competing product. Based on this simple mathematics we strongly believe that the device will run Hyper-V.
Yet the device will host a W2K8 server to offer the necessary services to the branch. So this device will be the point of entry and exit to the branch or to the WAN. What would be the need to offer the capcity to rollout multiple VMs on an appliance, that has one goal, reducing the number of servers at the branch while reducing maintenance on the branch?
Story to be continued.
Addition 7.10.8 – On a slidedeck used by Cisco when proposing the solution, it shows that it will be a Linux kernel, so there goes Hyper-V, remains: Xen and KVM
Microsoft SVVP and VMware:
A few weeks ago Microsoft announced that VMware ESX had passed the SVVP (so Microsoft Server will run fluently on ESX), however it seems to be that VMware ESX is only certified on AMD processors and not on Intel processors.
XenServer 5 has been certified with a maximum of 8 CPUs, 30GB RAM and both on AMD and Intel processors
University of Toronto releases Snowflock September 14, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Snowflock, Xen
add a comment
Snowflock lets you clone Xen VMs into dozens of identical replicas running in different hosts. Snowflock can do this in less than a second and with very low runtime overhead. With Snowflock you can, for example, perform parallel computations on the fly by scaling ”instantaneously” your computing footprint in a shared cluster.
Full documentation here.
KVM vs. Xen vs. VMware. Is it a Hypervisor War? September 11, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Citrix, KVM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, VMware, Xen
add a comment
Sun xVM Server in 2 months September 10, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Sun, Xen, xVM
add a comment
Today Sun formally presented (video recording) its upcoming Xen-based hypervisor called xVM Server, altough that everybody hoped it would be available today, Sun confirmed that the product will not be available for another two months
Xen 3.3 Hypervisor Out September 9, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Xen
add a comment
Xen.org has released a Xen 3.3 engine, the latest version of the open source hypervisor, enhanced to improve overall performance and optimized for Intel’s next generation Nehalem microarchitecture. It also of course supports other x86, IA64 and ARM platforms.
Xen 3.3 offers CPU portability to allow live relocation of VMs across different CPU feature sets, active power optimization to reduce power consumption on Xen-based servers and maximize data center power savings, and enhanced security.
Full release.
RedHat unveils new virtualization initiatives June 19, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: KVM, RedHat, Xen
add a comment
Red Hat is beefing up its virtualization strategy with a new embeddable hypervisor and management console, it announced Wednesday at the Red Hat Summit conference in Boston.
The hypervisor, compatible with Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux environments, is now in beta. In a break from other vendors, which have based their hypervisors on Xen, an IT community project hosted by Citrix Systems, Red Hat’s leverages the KVM project, which is part of the Linux kernel.
