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Virtualization Goes Mainstream
InformationWeek is reporting that, during the same week that Microsoft announced the free price for Virtual PC, VMWare 1.0 was released for free as well. Though there were already many free options for virtualization available, these major products signal a shift in the industry. From the article: "There are many ramifications here. Obviously, the slew of products means network managers can now adopt virtual servers into their overall strategies and don't have acquisition costs providing a justification to avoid it. Other than the very-high-end VMware ESX and the midline Microsoft Virtual Server on mainstream XP platforms, virtualization is essentially free wherever you might want to use it."
Is there a VMWare that distributes tasks across a network of VMWare hosts automatically? So I can just add new hosts to a network to make all the apps run faster? And install apps on a single machine, from where VMWare redistributes the load without my direct intervention?
--
make install -not war
... virtualization is essentially free wherever you might want to use it.
Then again, first hit is always free.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The virtualization software is free, but when you're virtuallizing MS Windows, it's anything but free. You now have to pay for a license of each virtual machine. This can make the cost go up a lot. You'd probably be better off not virtualizing, and just hosting everything off of a single non virtualized server.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Virtualization is a safe and fairly easy way to try new things or see how security measures may or may not work in a controlled environment. I'm a lowly IT guy who repairs broken Windoze boxes, so I couldn't imagine how useful it is for enterprise, but for the slightly above average user, it's great to test out new ideas or operating systems. Don't get me started on Parallels on OS X, because I'll go Mac fanboy for several pages on how cool that is. I'm quite glad that virtualization is getting so much attention lately. Interest often leads to more innovation!
Since I don't claim to have any experience dealing with VMWare, and only passing experience with VirtualPC (and, previously, SoftWindows) on Mac, can someone explain to me how this is different from emulation? Is it different from emulation? I've kept one x86 workstation around my home running Win98 (and dual-boot with Slackware) for a small handful of applications and a few games. The notion of making the machine Slack-only and running Windows virtually with no performance hit from emulating is attractive, but I am quite ready for my assumption to turn out flawed. Could someone with a greater clue than I've got educate me?
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
As if most Windows users are any different.
I don't know about binaries, but couldn't you just down load the source from and compile it for the Mac? After all, Mac's dev tools are free.
I'm not knocking Macs - they work. They just have a LONG history of trying to lock everything possible up. Remember, Apple's OS could have been Windows - Bill Gates pitched licensing it to other cpu's before he went independent and did it on his own.
when you're virtuallizing MS Windows, it's anything but free. You now have to pay for a license of each virtual machine.
/. article the other day:
Not necessarily. from the
"Customers who deploy Windows Vista Enterprise have the ability to install up to four (4) copies of the operating system in a virtual machine for a single user on a single device."
Actually, most minor utilities are unnecssary (for instance, defragmentation occurs on the fly in Mac OS X). But they certainly are free. Most Windows utilites, like ones to recover files (something you have to do regularly on the WIndows side of computing) do cost money. I work in IT supporting both Mac and PC. Macs are much easier to support. Both platforms have their share of newbies and experienced users. But Windows poops out a lot more than Mac. We still have users content with their circa 2000 G4 Power Mac towers humming away. PC's equally as old suck (and have been granted community use status in the offices' common areas since no one wants them or sent to the surplus gods).
"...most wouldn't know what to do with virtualization software to begin with."
My "too proprietary" Macbook Pro boots into Windows XP, but for others virtualization will suffice:
http://www.apple.com/getamac/windows.html
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
If you want to separate services on separately patchable/administrable systems, this is still a win.
You're only buying one piece of hardware, and one support contract for that hardware.
Is how much overhead does virtualization take up? At what point do you actually need another box because of the performance hit?
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Agreed, MacOS is severely lacking in the virtualization department. As a long time user of VMWare, I can say that Parallels doesn't stack up in comparison. Lack of multiple snapshots and, well, a general lack of the snappiness I've come to expect from VMWare on Linux or Windows is missing. VMWare's lack of product for MacOS X is especially disappointing to me as a new Intel iMac owner.
In other news, I've thought that VMWare and Apple were really missing a great opportunity with respect to virtualization. Apple wants to limit the hardware that MacOS X will run in to Apple blessed hardware. This is for two reasons: 1. They want to drive sales of Mac hardware. 2. It's a pain to support lots of models of PC.
If Apple and VMWare were to partner to release a free MacOS X virtual machine, it would allow Apple to get OS X into the hands of more prospective customers. (I haven't met a person who has *used* OS X for any length of time and not loved it.) Such an arrangment would also be good publicity for VMWare. VMWare already has a product that allows for some lockdown of virtual machines (VMWare ACE). Such an arrangement wouldn't violate Apple's goals with MacOS X (limited hardware support overhead, and MacOS X would be much more desireable on native hardware for OpenGL and whatnot). Such a move would certainly drive sales. All of a sudden millions of Windows users potentially get sucked up into Apple's product upgrade cycle: VMWare --> Mac hardware.
I wrote about this on my blog (blog.thoughtspot.net) a while back, but Dreamhost appears to be taking a dirt nap at the moment.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
So now you have a $2000.00 computer with windows xp reliability? I'm guessing you run windows because so much other software runs on it.
Any idea why so many software vendors write for Windows?
http://darwinports.org/
http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html
http://www.kberg.ch/q/
http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/
My advice is
1. Think first
2. Post to Slashdot
Wishful thinking, I know.
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OK. So Microsoft makes Virtual PC free. Suddenly everyone starts using virtualization software and (besides the licensing fees Microsoft will get for each copy of its OS that is virtualized) it's free and wonderful and everyone is happy that they can run all of their Operating Systems on one PC with much less hassle than before. Virtualization takes off, new uses are discovered for it, and it changes the way networks can be used. Hooray!
But eventually Microsoft stops maintaining Virtual PC (and discontinues support for it on any future operating systems) and decides to release Microsoft's new "Virtual Console" software that costs mucho bucks. Suddenly everyone that relies on Virtualization realizes that they'll either have to switch to some other virtualization software, change their software systems entirely, or simply bite the bullet and spend the money to upgrade to the new program.
This probably isn't news to anyone. In fact, it's the way things have been done since the first closed-source software program was created and sold. But I think that this is a perfect example of where Open Source software could really fit the bill and cause a paradigm shift to a better world where people aren't locked into one provider or another. If the OSS community could pull together and release a killer Virtualization app that's free as in speech perhaps people would start to see *why* software needs to be free, and perhaps they would realize it goes deeper than simply price.
I'm not trying to spread Microsoft FUD or spread the OSS gospel... but I think in scenarios like this an OSS alternative would be a no-brainer. Are there any OSS virtualization software suites in development right now (besides Wine)?
I like my women how I like my sugar.. granulated.
1. Wait...
2. EU's windows-based PCs are infected with viruses and crash causing loss of all records relating to fines against Microsoft.
3. Profit!!
Microsoft can, of course, afford to play this "free" game until the cows come home. I hope VMware can survive this. While sysadmins (okay, maybe not MSCE "sysadmins") will likely continue to choose the VMware solution, in the end we all know deployment is often affected by drive-by management decisions.
#DeleteChrome
Read your agreements closely. Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition can run in multiple instances on the same hardware for a single fee. I think we'll increasingly see VM aware licensing as the products evolve.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
OS X has a lot of free software activity. Certainly most of the well know OSS has a Mac version. You are probably thinking of the old Mac OS, which did not.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
Xen is going to blow everything out of the water when the openmosix patches get finished. KABLOOMEY to everything else, though I could see still using vmware ESX for businesses that still have to use windows.
Unless your host OS happens to be Mac OS.
Mac OS as host OS? Oh, please. Why not Amiga OS?
For OSX as a host and guest there is a solution: > http://www.kberg.ch/qemu/
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entr y=virtualization_meme_ver_3_0
"Dejanews shows a sharp increase in virtualization at the end of 2005", first posted on May 15th, 2006
Looks like I put my foot in my mouth. I was wrong. Sorry.
I've spent 10 hours over the last two days trying to get Windows XP working on Xen. I bought all the right hardware, followed all the right instructions, and hit a wall. I've found other people with the same problem (e.g. http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-users /2006-06/msg00452.html) and some of them got around it... others didn't.
:(
I've tried IRC, I've read the docs, I've even rebuilt the FC5 kernel RPMs with some patches, but nothing works.
Wake me when virtualisation on Linux is as simple as it is on OS X with Parallels. I should have saved the money I spent on the chip and the board for a new Intel Mac
Seriously, there are ports of many open source projects to Mac OS X now and most of them work great. If you ever get the chance to get your hands on a Mac, give it a try. You can pickup some of the Power-PC Macs pretty cheap lately...and all in all the platform makes for a fairly pleasant computing experience...
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Now you can run same spyware multiple times at the same time.
The Core Duos have hardware virtualization, as do AMD's AM2 based Athlon 64s. So the Core 2 Duos aren't the first.
I have personally used Linux with Xen to run Windows XP on my Macbook Pro. The Macbook Pro has a Core Duo in it. Windows won't run in Xen without hardware virtualization, or a hacked copy that was never released.
Havoc Penington, the bane of my Linux desktop.
What if you're just running small business server edition? They have needs (probably moreso) for virtualization also. What about home users. Is it permitted for them. Am I allowed to install windows XP home on a seperate partition (for dual-booting) and install it in a virtual machine for quick access to windows when I need it?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The low-end versions of Vmware do run on top of linux or Windows, but VMWare ESX runs on it's own proprietary micro-kernel with linux running right on top of it as the management interface. As a result, ESX has much lower overhead than the other versions which run on top of other OS's. With ESX 2.5, the linux part is bolted on pretty tightly and can't be assigned resources like virtual machines, whereas, the new version (3.0) of VMware is more independent of the linux management interface. 3.0 runs the linux part as a virtual machine, which can be allocated resources just like all of the other virtual machines.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
There are virtually many virtual ramifications here. Obviously, the virtual slew of virtual products means virtual network managers can now virtually adopt virtual servers into their overall virtual strategies and don't have virtually any virtual acquisition costs providing a virtual justification to virtually avoid it. Other than the virtually very-high-end virtual VMware ESX and the virtual midline Microsoft Virtual Server on virtual mainstream XP virtual platforms, virtualization is essentially virtually free wherever you might want to virtually use it. What the virtually fuck are we virtually talking about ??????????????
I tested VMWare Server a few days ago.
...etc.) would work on a virtualized Windows machine inside Linux or not. This is my next test.
I installed it under Windows XP, on a Pentium 4 HT 3.0 Ghz, 1 GB machine. It did not ask for a reboot (good thing).
Then just for fun, I installed Kubuntu 6.06 in it. It works, but you feel it is slow. So, it would not be something that I would run regularly.
I was hoping to run VMWare on Linux, and having Windows inside a VM for testing stuff. Not sure if Voice applications (e.g. Yahoo Messenger, MSN,
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
The speculation on what may be the licensing terms of one edition of the future software is nice and fine, but it is just speculation.
Not really microsoft offers the same 4 license for Windows Server 2003 R2 which exist NOW. Essentially MS is offering 4 virtual license with all future operating systems in their Enterprise versions.
For those that don't want to carry their laptop from home to work and back again (not using on on the road), virtualization is a great option. I created a win'98 image with all kind of useful stuff and carried it to university and back home on a USB flash drive. When I get to a PC with VMWare installed, I load my environment and have everything configured, along with the latest copy of my files. Also great for demonstrating how your software works on a PC you don't own. You'll get your complete and familiar environment.
External HDDs also work well, but they won't fit inside a shirt pocket.
The best part about SVS is the ability to run mulitple version of the same product at thee same time. For example Office 97 and Office 2003 if you have specific work applications. Or the beta of Firefox along with the released version of Firefox without corrupting anything. Its a great product.
Funny, I always thought that when things used to cost money and now they're giving them away, that's called market failure.
Water falls from the sky and we still pay for it. How badly is virtualization tanking that they need to charge less than water?
The key to this is the fact that Xen is about to go mainstream: more specifically, Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 is about to be released, which will be the first Enterprise Linux with Xen included.
You lose the license to deploy any application software on the W2K3 server running the virtualization software (VMware | Microsoft Virtual Server) though - unless it is related to it's management. Overall it is a gain - Microsoft policy being "one function - one server"... IMHO it is easier to manage four simply configured virtual servers than one running everything.
(when I got Microsoft Virtual server SP1 some times ago, I downloaded the relevant license documentation and even spent some times reading it).
On that W2K3 server I have now a few virtual machines configured - an OpenBSD 3.9 firewall, dual-homed on the physical i/f of the server and the virtual internal network, acting as a firewall for the rest of the virtual machines, which are only on the virtual network. It's kinda neat... in a S&M sort of way... The rest is a bunch of NetBSD/FreeBSD/W2Kserver/WXP machines - very convenient for testing stuff (the disk benchmarks were not so good, so take your pick).
I've noticed that VMWare is still charging for their Workstation product, even as they're giving away VMWare Server. From the website, it seems that they have a more or less identical set of features. (They approach the products from quite different perspectives, so it's hard to compare them.)
Can anyone knowledgeable tell me what the difference between the Workstation and Server is? (I'm currently a happy owner of an older version of Workstation and want to know if I should upgrade Workstation or switch to Server.)
Many thanks.
I've been using VMware server for Ubuntu 6.06 and Windows Vista beta 2. It has a certain cool factor to it, and Ubuntu runs fast enough that you could run at least 2 applications, such as Firefox and GAIM, but for actual work on a CPU without VT support, it's extremely painful. And without graphics hardware virtualization (which ATI and Nvidia better integrate soon in their GPUs), running even a GUI like Vista Standard is slow and cumbersome.
Let's not kid ourselves. The "single fee" deal just means they partially factor in the cost of the additional licenses into the overhead cost. You're paying for it if you use the VM licenses or not. I think we'll see exactly what that means when pricing for Vista Enterprice edition is announced.
External HDDs also work well, but they won't fit inside a shirt pocket.
Sure they will. I have a Transcend StoreJet and it's really tiny and light. In fact, it's a bigger hassle to carry the cable than the drive.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
So the real comparison with the new "free" VMWare should be against VS 2005, and not against Virtual PC which is just a desktop emulation app.
Not saying one is better than the other -- just compare the same type of fruit when making your own decisions. The article is badly written or it's writer didn't understand what he was writing about.
Quoth he
"It's all academic anyway..."
I see a flaw in that logic. If people can run OSX flawlessy using VMWare on any computer, why would they buy Mac hardware? If it runs under VMWare, but not flawlessly, they may think it's an OS problem and still not buy Mac hardware.
Since hardware is Apple's money-maker, not OSX, it's a lose-lose situation.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
It seems like Microsoft considered VMWare enough of a threat to try to use the "Free" weapon against them (Virtual Server), and VMWare retaliated in kind without even flinching (VMWare Server). This caused Microsoft to one-up them again by releasing the Virtual PC 2004 (desktop line) version and all future versions of the standard desktop VPC for free.
Funny thing is.. it looks like the licensing and featureset for the free version of VMWare makes it pretty much unattractive for a large corp to use anything but the high-end pay edition; I'm not sure how Microsoft's setup compares. I haven't had a chance to look yet.
If the host OS is Server 2003 Enterprise, then you get up to four VM licenses for free. It also doesn't matter if the infrastructure is Virtual Server or VMware (or anything else). We consdolidated a few servers and saved nearly $20K in licensing.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
WOW! this is most stupid troll I ever read on /.
"Steve Jobs invented the world" -- Bill W. GATES
Yes, WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is not virtualization software. But you have to be pretty ignorant to call it a "hack". Making the Windows GUI APIs work under Linux takes some fairly sophisticated programming. You can't just say, "oh, the app wants me to create a Windows frame, I'll create a GTK frame instead." You have to do event handling, implement a lot of screen widgetry, and a lot of other stuff that's non-trivial.
You're also being a little dim if you think Xen is the reason Virtual PC is free. Xen does not run under Windows. Virtual PC runs only under Windows. Also, Xen does not run guest OSs "out of the box" — you have to have a special port.
Nor does Xen have anything to do with VMWare being free — because it's not. Yes, VMWare Server is free, but VMWare workstation is still $189.
OpenMosix is lacking manpower. The 2.6 rewrite is taking forever and along with that, the AMD64 stuff. Who knows if migSHM will be back? The last release of OM was for 2.4.26 in December, 2004. Perhaps VMware is the way to go, at least this year. OM for 2.4 works pretty well, but who wants to run 2.4 as i386 on the latest hot AMD64 cluster? I am designing one at the moment and the whole mission is to spend hard on the servers and to maximize bang for the buck. Load balancing is key. I would rather use OM than VM with the hit of duplicate OS memory. At the moment, I am planning to use a round-robin or manual approach to starting processes and pray the law of averages works. If I start 10000 processes on four servers will the CPU/IO hogs land on different machines? Cannot remember my perms and combs so I may do a monte carlo simulation...
A problem is an opportunity http://mrpogson.com
Are there any virtualisation things which let the guest OS have direct access to parts of the hardware, eg so that I can run copy-protected games inside a windows VM inside linux? (at least, the ones which rely on the CD containing special data in non-standard areas)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Yes, you are. As long as it is installed on one physical machine to be used by no more than one user, you're fine.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
"Let's not kid ourselves. The "single fee" deal just means they partially factor in the cost of the additional licenses into the overhead cost. You're paying for it if you use the VM licenses or not. I think we'll see exactly what that means when pricing for Vista Enterprice edition is announced."
What additional cost? Microsoft does not have any additional cost. You could install thousands of instances of vista, and they would still not have any additional costs....
True. However, Mac OS X in a VM would probably seem quite slow due to all the eye candy. Given that, would it really be a good advertisement of OS X for Apple, and drive sales, or would it put people off OS X?
Is that snapshot system is just awesome. I manage lab images using it, makes PITA software installs safe. Snapshot, try it, roll back if it doesn't work. You can shanphot at every step of the way to roll back to different locations and try different things.
Also what makes it all possible is their cool P2V tool. I build a system with the OS and drivers it needs, then I use P2V to take it and reconfigure it for a VM. However, P2V doesn't damage the orignal configuration. So when I take a Ghost image of the virtal machine and push it back out to the physical hardware, it works just as it did orignally. It's really made maintinence of the labs much easier and means that when someone wants to do a class that is going to require a fully customized image, not just a software install, we can make it happen fast, and then revert things when we are done.
Thus far, I haven't seen any other vendors, comercial or OSS, that offer the tools to make all that happen.
Take a host running a 32-bit OS, either Windows (yuck) or Linux. Boot a virtual machine into a 64-bit OS. It works!
For anybody who knows anything about how x86-64 CPUs work, this is obviously an insane hack. They must be switching into long mode to run the 64-bit OS, then switching back to deal with the host.
Going the other way, 32-bit on 64-bit, is also insane. Every IRQ means switching back into long mode, out of what may even be real mode or virtual x86 mode. Woah...
> I haven't met a person who has *used* OS X for any length of time and not loved it
:) It has no native support for workspaces (and none of the avaialble solutions are elegant); aqua is bloaty; finder is awful and buggy as well; under mac os some unix tasks such as setting up groups are far more painful than under linux/solaris/bsd (I think you have to use this nicl utility that is quite a step removed from the 'everything is a file or configured through one' philosophy); there are long-term problems with terminal support under console mode; the last time I looked the package management systems were less mature than for other platforms; the hotkey support is inferior to Windows (or to gnome when it's not broken as it is in ubuntu 6.06); there is no responsive GUI mail tool that does IMAP properly (thunderbird is quite unresponsive); there's no ability to support meta+tab to switch between windows as in other popular operating systems (and none of the third party utilities I've tried work properly). I have an ibook for WebObjects, AudioHijack, Indesign, and the painless-unix-and-wireless-and-media-codecs-on-a-l aptop factor but I far prefer gnome and a linux||bsd||solaris command-line.
[raises hand]
I'm here.
Believe with me, my saplings.
Load VM Ware on the latest/greatest G4 HP Proliant box - running Quad Xeon's and like 8GB of RAM then just for kicks - in a VMWare session install and then run Windows 3.1!
Anyone who can remmeber this dark age of computing - and can remember how long that POS OS took to load will get a huge kick out watching it run like this.
You say go and BAM! Instant Windows 3.1 - You won't even see that stupid flash screen it used to load
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
There are plenty of howtos out there of how to get XP running in Xen. They were very helpful, but I did struggle for a few days to get it working.
The first hurdle was I was using noapic with the Xen kernel when I didn't need to. The reason I used it was that I have to use it for consistent booting with a normal kernel. The second problem I ran into is that Fedora's copy of the Xen kernel is broken for booting XP. Setup would boot, but would always hang at "Setup is starting Windows". Finally I took the suggestion I found online of using the raw upstream version. Then I fought with making a initrd until I remembered mkinitrd. Then it worked.
Then the mouse didn't work well, and the graphics were poor. People said the best method was to actually remote desktop into the XP in Xen. At that point I decided Xen needed a lot more work before I would want to run XP in it. So I went back to VMware Workstation. It was nice to see hardware virtualization working though.
Havoc Penington, the bane of my Linux desktop.
Running a 32-bit app on a 64-bit OS is easy. The processor does the switch easily and automatically, just by loading a code segment with the long-mode bit set correctly. This is nearly free.
VMWare is doing witchcraft. All sorts of screwy data structures must change. There is the GDT, the IDT, numerous control registers... It's so insane that neither Windows nor Linux is able to support 16-bit apps on a 64-bit kernel. (because 64-bit can not service 16-bit, and thus you'd need to become 32-bit in order to get into 16-bit)