Unless you’ve been offline for the last 24 hours, you should have noticed the frenzy of product launches yesterday. VMware launched ESX server 3i, Site Recovery Manager, and Virtual Desktop Manager. AMD released Barcelona, their native quad core processor, featuring Nested Page Tables, or Rapid Virtualization Indexing as they call it now. (I guess NPT just wasn’t snazzy enough for the marketing guys…) Intel has also launched the new Xeon 7300 series, bringing the core architecture to quad socket systems.
Microsoft tried to steal the spotlight by announcing Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 (abbreviated to MS SCVMM) just before VMworld. It actually doesnt look half bad, it only has a gigantic flaw: It can only manage MS Virtual Server. I predict they will have close to zero costumer adoption until R2 is released with Viridian, about a year from now. The announcement also came with a little twist: MS is trying to be a multivendor hypervisor management provider. SCVMM R2 will be able to manage Viridian, VMware ESX server and Xen based products. It’s going to be interesting to see just how serious MS is about this multivendor management strategy. Just be aware that MS needs to bring in several products, like SCVMM, SMS server, DPM and MOM in order to match the features of VirtualCenter. I doubt all of those will support Xen and ESX server. If we compare SCVMM with VirtualCenter for VMware Server (this is not VI3 after all) the cost is actually much higher as you can only get SCVMM by getting the new System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise License.
The big news is of course ESX server 3i. ESX server has finally grown up and can call itself an OS in its own right. A COS-less ESX has been a goal for the engineering team for several years. You have the previous generation hypervisor where you had to manually assign the HW devices between the COS and the vmkernel. In the current generation, VI3, we moved most of the vmx control processes out of the COS and gave vmkernel control of most of the HW. The COS is still used for installing, management and providing IO for slow devices like serial, parallel, and CD-ROM connections as well as KVM interface to the vmkernel. All this is now running in a protected child process called a userworld. We no longer need linux to install as 3i comes pre-installed. We no longer use linux to boot strap the system as vmkernel now starts directly from the bootloader. For management we now use the CIM interface, so you no longer need to install agents for HW monitoring. And it all fits in a 32 MB partition. That’s right. The compressed boot image is weighing in at twenty-something MB.
I attended the very exclusive Barcelona launch at the Lucasfilm compound in Presidio last night. All the major OEM’s was showing off pre-production units with 3i ready to go. Sadly I cannot talk about them, but all virtualization users really have something to look forward to. A thing was pointed out to me by one of the vendors. By getting rid of internal storage, we can save about 30-40 watts per server. It doesn’t sound much, but that gives considerable headroom for the power envelope for future upgrades. After all 15-20 watts per cpu is quite much. Combined with more efficient PSU units, considerable power saving can be made. There isn’t a DC admin on the planet that is not concerned about that.
A little observation about the Barcelona webcast; AMD put Diane Green up before Steve Ballmer. I think that is a testimony about how strategic VMware is for the HW vendors these days. Sadly I had to leave before the executive party, but a sushiholic like me just could not miss out on the exclusive Ozumo restaurant.
There is just too much to coolness in ESX server 3i to write about. And we haven’t even started talking packaging and features. All attendees at VMworld will receive a copy, so I assume the testimonials will come soon.
