Practical Technology

for practical people.

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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February 18, 2009
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Citrix, Microsoft, and Red Hat or Novell gang up on VMware

Citrix is about to put a world of hurt on its virtualization rival, VMware. Next week, Citrix will be announcing that it will no longer charge for its flagship virtualization program XenServer 5, and its new management program, Citrix Essentials, will support both Microsoft’s Hyper-V and XenServer.

This looks like a smart move to me. Virtualization, even high-end virtualization like XenServer is fast becoming a commodity. Off the top of my head, I can list four different virtualization programs that are open source: Sun’s VirtualBox; Citrix’s Xen; Linux’s built-in KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine); and Parallels’ OpenVZ. Heck, even VMware, which has no love for open source, was forced to release its desktop virtualization program, VMware View Open Client, as open source.

In addition, even more companies are jumping into virtualization. Networking giants Cisco and Juniper are slowly moving into network virtualization and servers may not be far behind.

With a market like this you have to do something different to try to stand out. What Citrix will be doing is giving away its high-end virtualization program in an attempt to grab market share while betting that its virtualization management programs will make the money.

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February 18, 2009
by sjvn01
15 Comments

Citrix to offer free XenServer virtualization

In a shot across VMware’s bows, Citrix will announce next week that it will be offering free licenses to its full XenServer virtualization program and new partnering with Microsoft to provide system management, Citrix Essentials, for Hyper-V and, in return, Microsoft’s System Center will support XenServer
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The virtualization wars are heating up. According to sources, Citrix Systems, the Xen virtualization company and long-time Microsoft partner, will announce on February 23rd that it will no longer charge for its flagship program, XenServer.

Citrix will not, however be open-sourcing XenServer. While Xen, the hypervisor itself, is open source, XenServer, according to Citrix, contains proprietary code that makes it much easier to setup and maintain and is a much more polished and reliable virtualization platform. In the past, XenServer 5 pricing started at a suggested retail price of $900 per server, regardless of how many CPUs or sockets were on the system. Starting soon, XenServer 5 won’t cost users a penny.

So how does Citrix plan to make money? By offering a new Citrix virtualization management product line that adds advanced virtualization management capabilities to both XenServer and Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization technology.

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