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Microsoft's big next-generation virtualization beast has arrived and the speculation pours forth like wine. Redmond's hypervisor based virtualization system for x64 systems, Microsoft Hyper-V, has released to manufacturing and is available for deployment into production environments. So far, the verdict is out in regards to Hyper-V's actual performance, but what about its implications for the virtualization market?

Windows-on-Mac virtualization software Parallels has joined forces with OS X shareware discounter MacHeist to offer Parallels 3 for just $49, down from $79. If you've previously purchased software...

The field of virtualization just keeps a-movin'. This time, desktop/server virtualization heavy-weight Parallels is taking server virtualization into the up-and-coming realm of SaaS. Their popular OS virtualization solution, Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, has been chosen by ProServe, one of the leading ISPs in the Netherlands, to deliver a scalable, cost-efficient Online Backup solution through a SaaS model.

Well after some googling and a little hacking myself i was able to come up with a proceedure for all the openSUSE members on how to get VMware Workstation 6.0.4 running on openSUSE 11.0.

Follow the Outline below step by step and you will be up and running in no time.
1. Download the latest VMWare Workstation 6.0.4 from here ( The rpm version of course )
2. Install VMware Workstation 6.0.4 rpm.
3. Download this patch for vmware-vmblock from here
4. Extract it with the command # tar xzvf vmware-vmblock-patch.tgz
5. Change your directory to vmware-vmblock-patch with the command # cd vmware-vmblock-patch
6. execute runme.sh with the command # ./runme.sh
7. Now you can run vmware-config.pl ( of course make sure you have your kernel-source, gcc, make and the like installed )

Enjoy!

A colleague sent me a link to this analyst paper today that takes a look at whether IBM has made good on the Linux promises it made back in 1999. I’m obviously biased, but I’m interested in hearing if anyone has thoughts on this topic.

Here’s the report: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/linux/pdfs/GCG_IBM_and_Linux-9_years_later.pdf

The opening teaser:

Anthony points out some interesting news regarding Red Hat, virtualization and in particular, KVM. IBM is also involved in building out these capabilities. If you read my site often, you know I’m already a big KVM fan.

In many organizations, the first round of virtualization choice has been made.  But as the technology progresses and improves with time (and what a difference 12 months makes), viable alternatives to that initial choice begin to become more apparent. Should you stay the course or make a change?  Hedge your bets and choose two? I won’t debate that here, but just know there are choices…

VMware has the marketshare and name recognition…  Xen has the performance and power of freedom… Hyper-V is for the Microsoft faithful…  What’s your cup of virtualization-tea??

Virtual Bridges, a leading provider of desktop and enterprise virtualization solutions for business, has launched version 5 of its Win4Lin Desktop virtualization system for running Windows on Linux. It includes performance increases it claims beats the likes of VMware Workstation and other competitors in the desktop virtualization market.

You be the judge, but I think this article makes a compelling argument that the combination of Hyper-V and Xen support (aka Microsoft and Novell) can put at least a small-to-medium dent in VMWare’s market dominance.

From the article:

If Hyper-V doesn’t convert the VMware faithful as soon as Microsoft makes its hypervisor generally available later this year, it may get a little help from its friends: Xen-based virtualization platforms.

Some like IT consultant Ardalan Dlawar believe that Microsoft will leverage support for Xen-based platforms to increase competition with VMware. “And Xen will have more third-party support and fewer compatibility issues,” according to Dlawar.

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Source: SUSE Linux Enterprise in the Americas

Gartner's Emerging Trends and Technologies Roadshow is happening right now and they are espousing their views on the 10 most disruptive technologies they believe will shape the IT landscape over the next five years. No surprise that social computing and mashups make the list. But did they forget something?

There's been a lot written about virtualization recently. However, the traditional apps like VMWare and VirtualBox have always had the problems of speed and integration into the host. Luckily, there is another option: andLinux, a full-blown Ubuntu Gutsy-based distro that has been around for quite a while.

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Microsoft has some pretty ingenious partners out there. One that is recently in the news for a really beneficial "hack" (their words), is Bamboo Solutions, a provider of SharePoint Web Parts. They have developed a way to help simplify development of SharePoint solutions called SharePoint on Vista. This solution enables developers who have Vista desktop to do SharePoint development outside the server environment.

After successfull usage of KVM on my CentOS desktop,
started installation of kvm on Ubuntu (Xubuntu 8.04) on my Core2 duo laptop:

$ sudo apt-get install kvm
..
* Your system does not have the CPU extensions
required to use KVM. Not doing anything.
# check for presence of vitualization in cpu
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T5470 @ 1.60GHz
stepping : 13
cpu MHz : 800.000
cache size : 2048 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 2
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge
mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm

Techtarget.com may be delivering this news a little too late, but it incorporates some quotes which the publisher sought from Red Hat, Xandros, Novell and some so-called ‘analyst’.

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Just to try what is new in word of virtual machines ( In my opinion it is not long now :) )

No idea why it can be best solution for any of common tasks.

Used file for filesystem, non-xen kernel (due to still having no network on -xen with my card).

Extremely slow.30 minutes to load Xubuntu Gutsy in machine.
(2-3 minutes on low-end Asus eeePC).

Host is CentOS 5.1 AMD Opteron x64 machine. Target i686 500 mb memory eeeXubuntu (Xubuntu gutsy 7.10).