Application Development Trends (http://www.adtmag.com) published an article called "Server Virtualization is hot in 2006". It is a general article about virtualization.

However, what caught my attention was the last paragraph:

"Not surprisingly, Forrester found, North American companies are ahead of the curve in terms of adopting server virtualization solutions, with EU firms second overall. In spite of VMware’s pioneering track record and dominance in North America, Microsoft not only leads in the EU, it is a favorite among large enterprise customers."

I guess we have some more education to do. As a consultant, I would never even think of suggesting to consolidate servers with Microsoft's Virtual Server. And that has nothing to do with Microsoft's name because I would also not recommend VMware Server (formerly GSX) as a consolidation platform. For me, those two products are good for test and development and that is where I draw the line. Enterprise customers especially should look at VMware ESX as the consolidation platform of choice.

Enterprise customers want a stable, high performance virtualization solution, supported by a respected vendor, with features for high availability, dynamic resource scheduling, disaster recovery and more. Especially ESX 3.0, with features such as DAS, DRS, consolidated backup and improved network and storage handling will fulfill these requirements. Combine the basic feature set of ESX with add-ons from vendors like vizioncore (http://www.vizioncore.com) and others, and you really have the best of the best when it comes to virtualization.

In an earlier post, I wrote about using a Linux-based iSCSI target. The software I used was iSCSI Enterprise Target. In that post, the method to create an extra disk was to shut down the virtual machine, add a VMware virtual disk, boot the machine, modify /etc/ietd.conf and then restart ietd.

Although the above method will deliver the best performance, you might want to offer iSCSI disks using files instead of block devices. To do this, first create such a file with dd. For example:

dd if=/dev/zero of=./disk-image count=204800

This creates a 100MB file in the current directory. Now, update /etc/ietd.conf with the following line (under some defined target):

Lun # Path=/some-directory/disk-image

Now restart ietd with:

/etc/init.d/iscsi-target restart

If you now configure your iSCSI initiator to connect to the target, you should see a new disk.

Enjoy!

For those of you who have read my previous posts about clustering in VMware with iSCSI, you know I have used Windows implementations of iSCSI target software. In the first post, Creating a cluster in VMware Workstation using iSCSI, I talked about StarWind and StarPort. In a second post, Update: MSCS cluster in VMware using iSCSI, I recommended to replace StarPort with Microsoft’s iSCSI software initiator, which is fully supported in a clustering scenario. In those earlier posts, I used StarWind. An alternative to StarWind is WinTarget, from String Bean Software. String Bean Software has recently been acquired by Microsoft. Both solutions work well but I wanted to implement an iSCSI target with non-commercial software. The iSCSI target server needed to be portable and not consume too much memory. To implement this iSCSI target server, I used iSCSI Enterprise Target (IET). IET requires Linux. The next sections describe how to implement and use this solution.   more »

In an earlier post, I blogged about P2V with VMware's P2V Assistant. Although the P2V Assistant works well, there are some drawbacks. The Knoppix boot cd, for example, needs to recognize your hardware for a successful P2V conversion. If the boot cd does not recognize your network card or disks, you are in trouble. The virtual machine creation process is also manual. This means you have to create the virtual machine yourself and attached the cloned disks manually.

There are several solutions on the market that make the P2V process much simpler. One of those solutions is the one from Leostream. Their solution for P2V is called P > V Direct.  At the time of this writing, the product version is 2.0.

A full description of the features of P > V Direct can be found at their website, but I would like to focus on a couple of advantages this product has over VMware's P2V Assistant.

First of all, the P2V solution consists of two components: P > V Direct and the Host Agent. P > V Direct is run on the (running) source system that needs to be converted. The host agent is installed on the virtualization server. VMware ESX server is supported with a Linux host agent.

Because P > V Direct runs directly on the running source system, there are no issues with unsupported hardware. There is no dependency on a boot cd that requires drivers for your hardware. Because the P > V Direct software clones the disks of a running system, you should turn off database applications. The copy is sector-based, so faster.

P > V Direct works together with the Host Agent. For example, it tells the host agent to automatically create a virtual machine with parameters you specify in P > V Direct (memory, disks). The disks are cloned by P > V Direct directly to the target virtual machine. Everything is fully automated.

The whole P2V process is so simple that anyone can do it without any specific training required. Because their pricing model is also simple and affordable, it is in reach for most of our customers, even small to medium companies.

Take a look in the tutorials section for a simple, step-by-step tutorial about how to use Leostream P > V Direct in a simple scenario.

As already predicted last week by virtualization.info, Microsoft now offers Virtual Server 2005 R2 for free. Although both VMware Server and Virtual Server 2005 R2 are now free, I still recommend customers to use VMware Server. VMWare Server has more features (for example, 64–bit guests), is faster, and has a better management interface (web and gui). Since many companies evolve from VMware Server (or GSX) to VMware ESX, the upgrade path is also much simpler.

Take a look at http://www.helperapps.com/, the home of DDChanger. DDChanger (soon at version 1.2) allows you to change disk device drivers in offline Windows installations. The tool supports a wide range of disk controllers (fc, scsi, …).

Seems to be a useful tool for P2V, P2P, V2P and V2V. It is not possible to get a trial version so it is hard to say how good it really is. That’s a shame because for consultants like myself it is crucial to easily get trials of any product. I think I will drop them an e-mail anyway and nicely ask for a trial.