Are you serious? Are you kidding? VMware plan to buy Redhat?

According to MSNBC, open source software supplier Red Hat is racking up growth figures that much of techdom might envy. Sales rose 32%, to $157 million, in the quarter ended May 31, and profits climbed a respectable 7%.

One possible suitor is virtualization software company VMware (VMW), which some industry executives says is on the lookout for an operating system to add to its portfolio. Former VMware CEO Diane Greene, ousted by her board in July, had set up meetings with Red Hat in part to position VMware as friendly to open source and possibly as a prelude to a buyout discussion, according to a person familiar with the conversations. Representatives of both companies declined to comment.

Read more on MSNBC.

VMware often adds features during the beta cycle. You should always keep an eye out if a certain beta release doesn’t yet include your heart’s desire. The Fusion team has just released Beta 2 of Fusion 2, and has added what looks like a whole version’s worth of features over Beta 1. Multiple snapshots, my favorite, barely even makes the highlight reel, because they’ve gone and built on top it a feature called AutoProtect, with Time Machine-like automated snapshots in case you get into trouble.

This latest public beta, a free download, builds on VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1, adding the Unity 2.0 suite of Mac-Windows integration features, new ways to protect and manage your virtual machines with multiple snapshots, and a garage full of power tools for technical professionals.

And as previously announced, VMware Fusion 2.0 will be a free downloadable upgrade for all VMware Fusion 1.x customers.

Download VMware Fusion 2 here.

Skills measured by Exam 70-652
Installing Hyper-V (14 percent)

Select and configure hardware to meet Hyper-V prerequisites.
This objective may include but is not limited to: evaluate the existing environment, disk/logical unit number (LUN), memory requirements, correct CPU/BIOS, networking/Network Interface Card (NIC)

Configure Windows Server 2008 for Hyper-V.
This objective may include but is not limited to: identify requirements, deploy Hyper-V with Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), Microsoft Assessment and Planning tool, install on Full, install on Core

Configure Hyper-V to be highly available.
This objective may include but is not limited to: failover clustering, disk structure (RAID, quorum, shared storage), network
Configuring and Optimizing Hyper-V (20 percent)

Manage and optimize the Hyper-V server.
This objective may include but is not limited to: VHD (virtual hard disk) location, snapshot location, Systems Center, Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), Authorization Manager, release key, performance monitoring of 2k8

Configure virtual networking.
This objective may include but is not limited to: Virtual Network Manager tool, SCVMM, virtual switches, VLAN tagging, external/private/internal switches

Configure remote administration.
This objective may include but is not limited to: install Hyper-V manager on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista; WMI, WinRM, firewall settings, RDP
Deploying Virtual Machines (30 percent)

Migrate a computer to Hyper-V.
This objective may include but is not limited to: from Virtual Server 2005, from third-party (Acronis), from VPC (virtual PC), from Hyper-V (import/export), Intel to AMD virtual machine state, by using SCVMM vNext (P2V and V2V), Integration Services/Virtual Machine additions, Assessment and Planning tool

Create or clone a virtual machine.
This objective may include but is not limited to: prepare guest operating system for duplication (sysprep), differencing disks, copying Virtual Hard Drive (VHD), SCVMM vNext, PXE Boot (legacy network adapter), manage the Self Service portal, Windows Deployment Services (WDS)

Create a virtual disk.
This objective may include but is not limited to: pass-through disks, fixed vs. dynamic, differencing disks, IDE vs SCSI, Virtual Hard Disk Wizard

Manage templates, profiles, and the image library by using SCVMM vNext.
This objective may include but is not limited to: ISOs, VHDs, deployment from library
Managing and Monitoring Virtual Machines (36 percent)

Monitor and optimize virtual machines.
This objective may include but is not limited to: Tool: Reliability and performance monitor, Tool: SCVMM, processor, optimize memory, network, disks

Manage virtual machine settings.
This objective may include but is not limited to: DVD/ISO, NIC, Integration Services, state of virtual machines, Hypercall adapter availability requirements, reboot/start options, BIOS, memory, Processor (Windows NT 4.0)

Manage snapshots and backups.
This objective may include but is not limited to: live backups of a VM by using VSS Data Protection Manager (DPM), backup within a virtual machine, snapshots

Configure a virtual machine for high availability.
This objective may include but is not limited to: quick migration, storage redundancy, perform a manual failover, live migration if available, networking redundancy

Interested? Check here for more information.

What is Unity mode?
VMware Workstation Integrate your favorite guest applications with your host. Open the application window, enter Unity mode, and the Workstation window is automatically minimized. The guest application windows look just like host application windows, but with color-coded borders. You can access the virtual machine’s Start menu (for Windows virtual machines) or Applications menu (for Linux virtual machines) by placing the mouse pointer over the host’s Start or Applications menu, or by using a key combination.

Click here for more about VMware Workstation 6.5.

Personally, I’m using VMware ESX 3 and VMware ESX 3.5 and I have evaluated Microsoft Hyper-V. But I have never try Citrix XenServer yet and I found VMware blog said why VMware is better here.

“The architecture for Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V puts standard device drivers in their management partitions. Those vendors claim this structure simplifies their designs compared to the VMware architecture, which locates device drivers in the hypervisor. However, because Xen and Hyper-V virtual machine operations rely on the management partition as well as the hypervisor, any crash or exploit of the management partition affects both the physical machine and all its virtual machines.”

“The Xen and Microsoft architectures rely on routing all virtual machine I/O to generic drivers installed in the Linux or Windows OS in the hypervisor’s management partition. These generic drivers can be overtaxed easily by the activity of multiple virtual machines – exactly the situation a true bare-metal hypervisor, such as ESXi, can avoid.
Hyper-V and Xen both use generic drivers that are not optimized for multiple virtual machine workloads.”

“Products like Xen and Microsoft Hyper-V lack an integrated cluster file system. As a result, storage provisioning is much more complex. For example, to enable independent migration and failover of virtual machines with Microsoft Hyper-V, one storage LUN must be dedicated to each virtual machine. That quickly becomes a storage administration nightmare when new VMs are provisioned. VMware Infrastructure 3 and VMFS enable the storage of multiple virtual machines on a single LUN while preserving the ability to independently migrate or failover any VM.”

In fact, I do agreed with VMware. I like simplicity of VMware Infrastructure Client, I like Virtual Center Centralized management, I like Update Manager and etc.

Look at the screen about the comparison!

Comparative Hypervisor Sizes (including management OS)

As the numbers show, ESXi has a far smaller footprint than competing hypervisors from vendors that like to label ESX as “monolithic.”

Wow! 1461 days uptime! So far, My running VMware guest does not have more than 365 days yet.

Check here for more information.

How about you? What do you think?

Microsoft, which eats its own dog food since the Virtual Server 2005 era, just announced the complete migration of both MSDN and TechNet, two of the most popular web sites in the world, on virtual machines.

Microsoft kept the back-end database on physical boxes, but moved 100% of its IIS7 frond-ends on Hyper-V RC0 VMs with 4 virtual CPUs and 10GB RAM. The virtualization hosts (no mention of the brand obviously) are powered by 2 Intel quad-core CPUs and 32GB RAM (2GB are reserved for the Windows Server 2008 parent partition).

The performance report after this migration is very interesting:

• Hyper-V CPU overhead (as measured by the parent partition utilization) was 5% to 6% with linear progression as the number of requests increased.
• CPU over subscription (three four-processor VMs on an eight-processor physical server) resulted in 3% lower overall performance per physical server based on overall requests per second per 1 percent CPU.
• Requests per second per 1% CPU performance of MSDN over the previous physical server platform improved. This demonstrates to us the viability of efficient consolidation from dedicated older physical servers to shared virtualized platforms.
• Physical MSDN handled 21% more requests per second per 1% CPU than virtualized MSDN.

Since this data would be much more meaningful knowing some details about the guest OS workloads (which are not published), virtualization.info reached Microsoft and received the following numbers:

• the MSDN front-end serves more than 3 million page views per day
• the TechNet front-end serves more than 1 million page views per day

Read the whole report here.

The session features a discussion of the virtualization technology roadmap and an outline of Microsoft’s vision for how these technologies will combine with future capabilities in processors, chipsets, and I/O devices to enable unprecedented flexibility by the Windows Server platforms.

Presented by Mike Neil

Length: 51 minutes 59 seconds

Note: you’re require Microsoft SilverLight to vew the video.

To watch the above video please visit: Virtualization in Windows Server

What’s New

New features and enhancements in the VMware Server 2.0 Beta 2 release:

• Updated VMware Infrastructure (VI) Web Access management interface: With the faster performance, improved stability and broader range of configuration options, the VI Web Access management interface provides a simple, flexible, intuitive and productive management experience. In addition, embedded help files are context sensitive based on the task being performed.
• Independent virtual machine console: With the new VMware Remote Console, you can access your virtual machine consoles independent of the VI Web Access management interface plus resize the virtual machine console windows as needed.
• Support for USB 2.0 devices: Transfer data at faster data rates from USB 2.0 devices.
• Multi-tiered permissions: Configure different levels of permissions to access virtual machines in different ways, including browsing, interacting, configuring and administering virtual machines.
• New hardware editors: Edit and add devices such as USB 2.0 devices and legacy devices such as floppy drives, serial and parallel ports.
• Automatically start your virtual machines: Select which virtual machines that you want to automatically start when VMware Server starts. In addition, there is also an option to boot the virtual machine directly into the BIOS Setup Screen.
• Link to Virtual Appliance Marketplace: Access thousands of pre-built, pre-configured, ready-to-run enterprise applications packaged with an operating system inside a virtual machine. This speeds up time to value and simplifies software development, distribution, and management.

Existing VMware Server 2.0 Beta features

• New operating system support: The broadest operating system support of any host-based virtualization platform currently available, including support for Windows Vista Business Edition and Ultimate Edition (guest only), Windows Server 2008, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Ubuntu 7.10 in 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
• More scalable virtual machines:Support for up to 8 GB of RAM (up from 3.6 GB in Server 1.0) per virtual machine, 10 virtual network interface cards and up to two virtual SMP (vSMP) processors per virtual machine.
• 64-bit guest operating system support:Use 64-bit guest operating systems on 64-bit hardware to enable more scalable and higher performing computing solutions.
• Support for Virtual Machine Interface (VMI): This feature enables transparent paravirtualization, in which a single binary version of the operating system can run either on native hardware or in paravirtualized mode to improve performance in specific Linux environments.
• Support for VIX API 1.5: This feature provides a programming interface for automating virtual machine and guest operations.

Join the three million people who have already downloaded VMware Server and participate in the latest Beta version by registering with VMware.

Go to the VMware Server 2.0 Beta 2 Community and post your questions, problems, experience and suggestions to the above discussion at your convenience.

Technical Support
Technical support is available through the Support Request (SR) system. Go to Support and click on Create Support Request.

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