Practical Technology

for practical people.

February 23, 2009
by sjvn01
2 Comments

It’s Novell, Microsoft & Citrix vs. VMware with free XenServer

Now that Red Hat has shown its KVM cards in the great virtualization Texas Hold’em poker game, you can safely bet that Novell will soon be joining up with Microsoft and Citrix to try to shove VMware out of the game with Citrix’s free XenServer.

I saw this virtualization shoot-out coming, and I’m not surprised to see Novell on the Microsoft and Citrix side. I’m a little puzzled that Red Hat, after its recent Microsoft partnership, has decided to use KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) to support Windows Server instead of the ready-to-go XenServer. After some thought, though, I think it’s both that Red Hat wants to steer clear of getting entangled with Microsoft and that the Raleigh, NC-based company wants to deliver its own independent top-to-bottom enterprise operating system stack.

So, exactly what will the XenServer trio end up doing? Well, first, of course, XenServer is an outstanding virtualization program and virtualization manager in its own right. With a price-tag of zero, Citrix hopes to be in an ideal position to blow out VMware’s market lead, while making money from its new management tools, Citrix Essentials.

As virtualization analyst Dan Kusnetzky said, since "Citrix realized some time ago that hypervisor technology was quickly becoming a commodity … and that this commodization process would pit the Xen community against VMware, Microsoft and the KVM," the best thing Citrix could do would be to "1) lead the charge towards offering full production-class hypervisors available freely and 2) develop a cross-platform, independent management layer that would allow the entire virtualized environment to be orchestrated and managed using a single set of tools."

This seems like a smart bet to me. I’ve said for a while now that virtualization is easy, and that the real trick is how you manage VM (virtual machines). By enabling users to manage both Xen and Microsoft’s Hyper-V VMs, Citrix should be well placed to move into enterprise virtualization’s next stage.

As for Microsoft, they get a better way to manage Hyper-V. I happen to like Hyper-V. Yes, that’s me, the Linux guy saying something nice about a Microsoft product. Remember this day. They don’t come very often. Seriously, Hyper-V is pretty darn fast not just on testbeds but in the field. However, and it’s a big however, it really lacks serious management tools. Citrix should be able to nicely fill in that gap for Microsoft.

Novell, of course, gets the benefits of XenServer for its SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) without spending a dime. Since Red Hat won’t be selling RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) with KVM until the late summer, Novell may have a chance to get their enterprise Linux with an improved virtualization stack before Red Hat does.

The only real loser in this is VMware. Despite being the king of virtualization, VMware has been slipping for some time now. I really don’t know how much longer VMware can stay in this no-limits virtualization poker game.

A version of this story first appeared in ComputerWorld.

February 23, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Red Hat returns to the Linux desktop

Red Hat used to be in the desktop business along with all the other Linux distributors. Then, they left. As Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat’s CEO, explained Red Hat’s desktop approach to me last year, “There are companies that sell hundreds of products for millions of dollars and there are companies that sell millions of products for hundreds of dollars. Guess which kind of company Red Hat is?”

Now, however, Red Hat is switching from Xen to KVM for virtualization. As part of that switchover, Red Hat will be using not only KVM, but the SolidICE/SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments) desktop virtualization and management software suite to introduce a new server-based desktop virtualization system.

Does this mean that Red Hat will be getting back into the Linux desktop business? That’s the question I posed to Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens, in a phone call after the Red Hat/KVM press conference, and he told me that, “Yes. Red Hat will indeed be pushing the Linux desktop again.”

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February 23, 2009
by sjvn01
3 Comments

Red Hat makes KVM its Linux virtualization of choice

Despite Red Hat’s surprising announcement last week that it would be partnering with Microsoft on virtualization, on February 23rd, Red Hat’s announced that it would be switching its virtualization strategy from a mix of virtualization programs, including the Microsoft-friendly Xen, to focusing on Linux’s baked-in KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine)

KVM, as Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens admitted during a press call, is still a work in progress. But, Stevens assured the audience, by working with IBM and Intel, Red Hat will be able to deliver its full Red Hat Virtualization portfolio within the next 12-months. The first fruits of this switch will appear in RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) 5.4, which is due out in August 2009.

This is the first concrete steps in Red Hat’s virtualization plans, which came after the company’s September 2008 acquisition of Qumranet Inc. That deal brought KVM, SolidICE/SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments) desktop virtualization software suite and virtualization management technologies to Red Hat.
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February 20, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Who’s buddying up closer with Microsoft: Novell or Red Hat?

I know for a fact that either Novell or Red Hat, or perhaps both, will be announcing next week that they’ll be shifting their server virtualization offerings from Xen to XenServer. What I don’t know is what, if anything, either one of them may be doing beyond that to further their virtualization partnerships with Microsoft.

One or the other, however, is going to make a major move. This has been building for some time. Novell, of course, has long had a partnership with Microsoft.

On the other hand, Red Hat has just partnered, for the first time ever, with Microsoft to co-ordinate their virtualization efforts.

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February 19, 2009
by sjvn01
2 Comments

Linux comes to Windows users’ rescue

I recently got a note out of the blue from another technology journalist. He wrote, “I know I’m often critical of Linux, but I’m SOOOOO GLAD I installed Ubuntu on my laptop. I installed some patches to Vista and now Vista won’t boot, not even in Safe mode. Uggh!”

He continued, “So now I’ve booted the computer up to Ubuntu and can start figuring out what’s wrong. Meanwhile, I discovered a great tool called Unison and I’ve mounted my Windows drive and I am using Unison to back up everything to a 300-gig external hard drive before I start tearing Windows apart… just in case. I guess I have my afternoon’s plans made.”

Unison, for those that don’t know it, is a handy little file system synchronization program that runs on Windows, Linux, and most versions of Unix. It combines the features of both a configuration management system and a synchronization program. It will also do its magic across networks. So, for example, besides letting my friend do a backup from a dead Windows file system to an external drive, he could have transferred his files to say one of my servers.

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February 19, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Take Windows 7 for a spin with VirtualBox

Everyone likes to try new and shiny technology toys like the Windows 7 beta, but when the price is having to replace your existing operating system, that’s too much for most people. That’s when being able to use a virtualization program can come in darn handy.

To test out how well Windows 7 works on a virtualized system, I decided to use Sun’s VirtualBox software. While there are, of course, other virtualization programs out there, such as VMware’s Workstation and Parallels Desktop, VirtualBox has two significant advantages over the others. First, it’s free. Second, you can use it as a host for other operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris.

In my case, I decided to use VirtualBox to run Windows 7 on two Dell Inspiron 530S systems, one running Windows XP Pro SP3 and the other running MEPIS 7 Linux. Each PC came with a 2.2-GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor with an 800-MHz front-side bus, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB SATA drive and an Integrated Intel 3100 Graphics Media Accelerator. While not powerful systems, these proved to have more than enough CPU power to run both their native operating system and Windows 7.

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