Posted by admin on October 16th, 2008
Here’s a snippet of Virtualization history for you: 10 years ago Scott Devine, Edouard Bugnion and Mendel Rosenblum filed patent #6397242, “Virtualization system including a virtual machine monitor for a Computer with segmented Architecture”
Ok so it was October 26 1998, and I’m a few days early, but you can grill me about it later =)
Anyway, enough of that go check out patent #6397242, and a snippet is below:
Abstract
In a computer that has hardware processor, and a memory, the invention provides a virtual machine monitor (VMM) and a virtual machine (VM) that has at least one virtual processor and is operatively connected to the VMM for running a sequence of VM instructions, which are either directly executable or non-directly executable. The VMM includes both a binary translation sub-system and a direct execution sub-system, as well as a sub-system that determines if VM instructions must be executed using binary translation, or if they can be executed using direct execution. Shadow descriptor tables in the VMM, corresponding to VM descriptor tables, segment tracking and memory tracing are used as factors in the decision of which execution mode to activate. The invention is particularly well-adapted for virtualizing computers in which the hardware processor has an Intel x86 architecture.
Patent number: 6397242
Filing date: Oct 26, 1998
Issue date: May 28, 2002
Inventors: Scott W. Devine, Edouard Bugnion, Mendel Rosenblum
Assignees: VMWare, Inc.
Primary Examiner: Majid Banankhah
Attorney: Jeffrey Slusher
Application number: 9/179,137
Posted by admin on October 8th, 2008
Isn’t it funny when odd things happen. Well it’s not really funny, it’s quite unfortunately really. Not all power meters are created even. The more research we (Paul and I) do, the more strangeness there is.
Anyway, rather than say what has already been said, check out Paul’s notes on “Lies, Damn Lies and Cheap Power Meters” and a snippet is below:
I have had and used an Electus power meter for about 12mths since they became available in Australia. I figured it was just like the american Kill-a-watt. Diligently collecting and comparing devices to see what they used and how much I was wasting with standby power. Dan did an early review on DansData.
ATA reported some accuracy concerns early on, and stopped selling them. The indication was this was only minor, and at low power settings.
I recently purchased the newer Solarinverters (SI) replacement from ATA and found some VERY large discrepancies between what I had seen before. Unsure as to which one to trust, I fired up the clamp meter to validate the results. The results [were not pretty].
Posted by dugie on March 3rd, 2008
Earth Hour is back again for 2008, and it’s wonderful Aussie initiative all about reducing our energy consumption, and making a difference. The following snippet from the "Earth Hour website" says it nicely:
On 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour - Earth Hour. This massive collective effort reduced Sydney’s energy consumption by 10.2%.
So wherever you are in the world, join us at 8pm on the 29th March, switch off the lights, maybe even the tv and microwave. …and if you don’t think it makes a difference, check out the photo NASA took last year during Earth Hour:
Pretty cool huh?
Posted by dugie on July 16th, 2007
I had one of those priceless ‘Master Card Moments’ today
- Provision a Virtual Machine from a template - 3.5 minutes
- Waiting for one of the Virtualization hosts to reboot - 5.5 minutes
- Snorting Fanta through your nose when you realise the comical irony - priceless
Posted by dugie on July 8th, 2007
The lads over at the blog “Documenting a virtualization project” have finished. In under 12 months they’ve consolidated 120 Virtual Machine on to 6 Hosts using VMWare ESX Server 3 and VirtualCenter 2. — this is a consolidation ratio of about 20:1
I know this is a bit off topic for my blog, but I personally find it still very relevant and interesting.
The guys are saving about $9,500 AUD per month in real estate cost/rental, (that’s $6000 EUD or $8,000 USD) — and roughly 30% of that again per month in Power ($3000 AUD).
A huge thankyou Martijnl for his time and efforts, for publishing his “notes from the field” for such a brilliant resource.
You can read more about his project wrapup in his post “End score (consolidation, power etc.) « Documenting a virtualization project“, and a snippet is below:
Our current VI consists of:
- Six cluster hosts (DL585 G2, 48GB memory per host) :: 120 Virtual Servers (consolidation 20:1)
- 1 Virtual Center Management Server
Real estate saved:
- Total rack units used for VI: 30
- Total racks used for VI: 2
- Total rack units saved: 240
- Total racks saved: 8
- Total sq. meters saved: 50 (we would have had to move into a datacenter suite twice as large to accomodate for growth)
- Total real estate cost One Time Charge saved: € 30.000 (approx.) –
- Total real estate cost Monthly Recurring Charges saved: € 6.000 (approx.)
There are also additional benefits like the massive increase in continuity, the time saved on provisioning new servers and the transparency in costs.
On a side note, Martijnl has rolled out VDI for 50 Desktops. Rather than listen to all all the other site bagging/hyping up VDI, you read more about his experiences in his VDI posts: Mumbai is connected, First connection and Operational and stable
Posted by dugie on July 6th, 2007
About bloody time: EPG Data set free, “Massive blow to free-to-air TV - Business - Business - theage.com.au“:
THE longstanding walls protecting free-to-air TV continue to crumble, with the announcement that the commercial networks will make their jealously guarded electronic program guides available to all manufacturers.
More localised content on TechTalk Blogs with “An EPG for Australia at Last-” and “Free TV Australia announces plans for Industry Supported EPG“
Posted by dugie on June 24th, 2007
Yup, I’ve moved. If you’re reading this, feedburner has “done it’s thang” and VirtualServer.tv is now WindowsVirtualization.com
I’ve a few more things to do before the move is complete. So I’ll post back soon!
Posted by admin on June 20th, 2007
A brief architecture overview of Viridian (WSV), VMware ESX, and XEN
Massimo ReFerre from IBM has recently blogged the technical differences between Viridian (WSV), VMware ESX, and XEN.
A few others have blogged this already, but yesterday it ended up in the TechNet Server Virtualization Forums, so I thought it deserved reblogging here. You can read the full article in his post “A brief architecture overview of VMware ESX, XEN and MS Viridian“, and a snippet is below:
It is my feeling that there has been a bit of confusion lately around how hypervisors are being positioned by the various vendors. I am specifically referring to the three major technologies that seem to be the most relevant strategically going forward:
- VMware ESX is the VMware flagship hypervisor product: it’s the basis for the Virtual Infrastructure version 3 framework.
- MS Viridian is the next generation hypervisor that Microsoft is going to use in the Longhorn time frame and that is currently being developed. It’s basically the successor of Microsoft Virtual Server.
- Xen is an opensource hypervisor that is being integrated by a number of players which include RedHat, Suse, XenSource and Virtual Iron.
….
Back to the point there are really two set of thoughts currently in the industry (I warned you it’s still up in the air). The first thought is that these new hardware assists hardware (especially in future implementations) has diminished the need of paravirtualizing the guest. These hw implementations will be so efficient and optimized that there will be no need to optimize the guest OS as well and even a standard OS (i.e. non paravirtualized) will perform close to native speed. The other thought is that, other than the efficiency and optimization provided by these low level hardware instructions there is room to improve performance by paravirtualizing the Guest OS in areas where Intel-VT and AMD-V would have little effect. This second thought is backed by the fact that given points #1 and #2 above there would be no more supportability issues as Suse, RedHat and Microsoft are going to provide their own fully supported paravirtualized versions of their own OS kernels.
….as I said at the beginning of this third section, this is still pretty much up in the air and these have been speculations on possible future situations that might be proven wrong
The post is a mix of technical and personal commentary, and if time permits is worth a read.
Posted by admin on June 19th, 2007
This made me giggle, and of course Rodney Buike had to be part of it.
Head on over to the Canadian IT Professionals blog and read the post “A humorous look at Energize IT“, a small snippet is below:
Beep beep beep beep…“What happened doctor?”
“They call it severe cranial sensory overload.”
“What caused it?
Beep beep beep beep…
“He went to a huge Microsoft Event. ‘Energize IT 2007′. Then at the very last minute, during a small camera interview with Rick Claus, his brain exploded”
“Oh my God. Is it severe?”
“Are you daft?! I just said his brain effectively exploded. Good grief.”
“Oh I see. But is there any way to save him?”
“Only one. We’ll have to upload his brain contents to a Virtual Machine within a Windows Server Virtualization environment. Run a virus scan, pull out the extra information his brain couldn’t handle. Then it’ll require a re-indexing to re-link his security abilities. He’s going to also need a 5 day cooling off period to calm down his hyperactivity levels as well.”
“HUH?!”
“Don’t ask me to explain the details, It’ll need a geek, a real geek to implement this.”
Those guys have *all the fun :)
Posted by admin on June 18th, 2007
I’ve nearly finished reading several virtualization books:
The two in bold are Microsoft virtualization related texts and I think are definitely worth a book review here on VirtualServer.tv *
Anyway, I’m the type of guy that bends products to perform all sorts of unnatural acts, and thus realise my needs in a book will be different from the next bloke. But I do enjoy reviewing the books, — only I’m not so crash hot, I mean polished at the writing reviews.
But you can read them for yourself in a day or two when I finish writing both the reviews.
* side note: the web site VirtualServer.tv really is in the process of moving to a new domain name: WindowsVirtualization.com
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