VMTN Blog

VMware's Richard Garsthagen: VMware introduces ESX 3i

The real cool thing I like about ESX 3i is that it has support for SATA disks!! meaning it runs on your notebook Jippie!!!! I have successfully tested ESX 3i on my older Dell laptop and it works awesome on my IBM x60. The IBM has a really good SATA controller, that by default is not even supported by Windows XP, but ESX 3i has no problem what so ever with it   Also the notebook NICs seem no problem for ESX 3i.

Gordon Haff: Embedding Hypervisors

Expect all this activity to kick off another round of “Where does the hypervisor live?” Microsoft, in particular, is still determined to own the entire software stack from the VMM to the application. As a result, they’re still promoting Viridian—however delayed. It’s a misdirected quest. Although a VMM intermediates between the hardware and the operating system—and usurps some low-level functions—it hardly replaces the OS. The APIs and libraries of the OS are still the “application contract” that underpins the software that users actually care about. And Microsoft sells a lot of that higher-level software as well. In other words, it’s hard to see why Microsoft really needs to own the VMM any more than it needs to own a server’s BIOS firmware or hardware. In fact, software that abstracts messy hardware details from Windows would simplify Microsoft development in a number of ways by reducing myriad complexifying hardware dependencies. And, in any case, playing King Canute seems an increasingly pointless exercise as the tide of embedded hypervisors starts to wash in.

Drue Reeves: ROM-based Hypervisors: The New Data Center Operating System

Write down September 11, 2007 on your calendar as a landmark day for virtualization.  ...By shipping the hypervisor on bootable flash within the server, it fundamentally changes the way we buy applications, operating systems and hardware platforms. In this scenario, the hypervisor becomes the operating system, while traditional operating systems become application run-time environments. Thus, in the future, we won't buy servers with traditional OSes pre-installed on the hardware platform. Customers will buy servers that are virtualization-ready, customizing their purchase with wide variety of pre-configured VHDs that bundle the application and the operating system as a solution. You may hear these bundles called "application blades", "software blades" or "virtual appliances". Whatever you call them, they represent a new way IHVs will deliver OSV and ISV solutions.

Joe Hernick: Honey, I Shrunk the Hypervisor

So be on the lookout for the new thin hypervisor from your favorite hardware vendor. Saying that this will change the landscape in an already quickly shifting market is an understatement. If you haven't started a virtualization project in your enterprise, an embedded hypervisor that requires no installation and yields a short order infrastructure deployment should making it that much harder to stay away.

The Inquirer quoting VMware's Steve Jackson: VMware's ESX Server 3i does support AMD's nested paging tables

To clarify the situation with regards to VMware’s support for AMD’s Barcelona chipset, I would like to say that I made an error in describing the level of support that is present for Nested Paging Tables, or Rapid Virtualisation Indexing as AMD is now calling this feature, within VMware’s product line-up and particularly within VMware ESX Server 3i. ESX Server 3i does support the new feature, and customers will automatically benefit from support for RVI when they buy any server with the Barcelona chipset and ESX Server 3i installed. ESX Server 3i is shipping later in the year as part of servers from the likes of Dell, IBM, HP and Fujitsu Siemens as well as other hardware vendors.