CentOS 6?

I'm a big fan of CentOS project. I use it in production and I recommend it to the others as an enterprise ready Linux distro. I have to admit that I was quite disappointed by the behaviour of  project developers who weren't able to tell the community the reasons why the upcoming releases were and are so overdue. I was used to downloading CentOS  images one or two months after the current RHEL release was announced. The situation has changed with RHEL 5.6 which is available since January, 2011 but the corresponding CentOS was released not before April, 2011. It took about 3 months to release it instead of one or two as usual. By the way, the main news in RHEL 5.6 are:

• full support for EXT4 filesystem (included in previous releases as technical preview)
•  new version 9.7 of BIND nameserver supporting NSEC3 resource records in DNSSEC and new cryptographic algorithms in DNSEC and TSIG
• new version 5.3 of PHP language
• SSSD daemon centralizing identity management and authentication

More details on RHEL 5.6 are officically available here.

The similar or perhaps worse situation was around the release date of CentOS 6. As you know, RHEL 6 is available since November, 2011. I considered CentOS 6 almost dead after I read about transitions to Scientific Linux or about purchasing support from Red Hat and migrating the CentOS installations to RHEL . But according to this schedule people around CentOS seem to be working hard again and the CentOS 6 should be available at the end of May. I hope the project will continue as I don't know about better alternative to RHEL (RHEL clone) than CentOS. The question is how the whole, IMO unnecessary situation, will influence the reputation of the project.

Time to continue

After almost a whole year, I would like to awake my blog from a sleep and begin to publish articles more regularly. During the previous period I was too busy at work and I couldn't afford to take care of it as I would like. On the other hand, I had an opportunity to participate on some interesting projects and I needed to solve many unusual tasks. Everything was written down and now it is waiting for readers and comments.

I hope the new articles will be interesting and helpful for you as the previous ones.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 - what's new?

It's a few months since RHEL 5.5 was released (march, 2010). Despite this, I would like to point out the major changes and additions compared to the previous release RHEL 5.4. So what's new:

• Kickstart installation - it is possible to exclude package groups in the same way like single packages.
• KVM guests and Cluster Suite - management of KVM based virtual guests with Cluster Suite is supported.
• SPICE - RHEL 5.5 includes components of Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments which is competitor for VMware's PCoIP or Citrix's HDX.
• PCI passthrough - physical PCI devices attached to virtual guests are working better.
• Huge page support - it is extended to virtual guests with libvirt.
• Windows 7 support - new samba3x packages supporting Windows 7 are included.

For more details read the RHEL 5.5 official release notes.

VMware Workstation 7.1 enhancements

I have decided to update my current VMware workstation 7.0.1 installation I have on my desktop to the latest available release 7.1. Further follows a quick comparison of the most interesting features and enhancements between these two releases:

• WS7.1 officially support many latest versions of well-known Linux distros like RHEL/Debian/Ubuntu
• WS7.1 supports OVF1.1 via ovftool which is part of the installer
• WS7.1 has higher limits for guest's vCPUs - from 4 to 8 and guest's virtual disk - from 950GB to 2TB
• WS7.1 is capable of automatic downloads and updates of WMware Tools

Eventually, I would like to remember what new features VMware Workstation 7.0 came with:

• 32GB of guest's virtual RAM
• cross-platform license serial numbers
• pause running guest instead of suspending it or even powering it off
  
• import of Windows XP mode virtual machine
• GUI editor for virtual networks
• support for Windows 7 as guests
• support ESX hypervisor running as guest

That's not everything at all. The official release notes for VMware Workstation 7.1 and 7.0 are more comprehensive.

SLES 11 SP1 released

I have decided to write a brief summary of new features and enhancements which are available with the first service pack of Novell's SLES 11. I need to know the major differences between GA and SP1 release during my every day work and perhaps, it will help you in the same way like me. The original post about SLES11 GA is here. So, what's new?

• it is based on GNU/Linux kernel 2.6.32
• it provides web based YaST for remote management called WebYaST
• UEFI booting (useful with disks larger as 2TB) is supported on AMD64/Intel64 now
• it includes many driver updates (e.g., QLogic/Emulex HBAs, Broadcom NICs)
• it includes new XEN 4.0
• KVM hypervisor is now fully supported, good news
  
• it fully supports the latest enterprise Intel XEON 5600 and 5700 processors which are able to greatly improve performance of XEN hypervisor by decreasing latency of VMs
• finally, it contains all the latest security and bug fixes available since the release of GA

It seems there weren't so many changes included in SP1 but I think XEN 4.0 or KVM support from Novell is enough to move our GA installations to SP1. With XEN 4.0, we are able to benefit from these nifty features:

• fault tolerance
• memory overcommitment
• USB paravirtualization and VGA pass-through
  
• live snapshots and clones
• 64 vCPUs per VM
• 1TB RAM per XEN host
  

Now, it depends how fast and how successfully Novell will be able to implement and adjust these features into their management tools like YaST.

For more comprehensive contents about SLES11 SP1, check the oficial release notes at www.novell.com.

Second edition of VMware Site Recovery Manager is out

The second edition of VMware SRM, officially named as VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manger 4, was released recently. The product is responsible for automated disaster recovery of complex virtual environments. The recent version is fully compatible with VMware vSphere platform and provides these new important features:

• many-to-one failover - this means that one site is able to recover from multiple sites failures
• expanded support of storage vendors - those who provides storage replication solutions over FC, iSCSI or NFS, 12 generally. Among them belongs DELL, IBM, HP, EMC, LSI and others.

For more information on VMware SRM 4 visit the release notes and product home page.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 released

Today, it was released a next minor version of Red Hat's flagship Linux distribution RHEL 5.4. Here it is a brief summary of new features and updates:

• KVM hypervisor - Full support of Kernel-based Virtual Machine is included now. XEN support is included as well, but you can't use both XEN and KVM at the same time. Each hypervisor requires different kernel. You need to have 64b machine to run KVM. It supports RHEL 3/4/5 or Windows XP/2003/2008 as guests.
• KVM paravirtualized drivers - They are available for Windows XP/2003/2008 in package virtio-win.
• FUSE support - New version includes modules for Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) and related utilities. Support for the XFS was added as well. It icnludes updates of CIFS and EXT4 filesystems.
• Infiniband drivers - It contains some portions of prepared Open Fabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) 1.4.1.

New release of RHEL contains many other updates and enhancements which aren't mentioned here. For more details read the RHEL 5.4 official release notes.

Solaris 10 updates summary

The seventh update of Solaris 10 was released on May. It contains support of Intel Nehalem CPU and some ZFS enhancements. I added it to the summary of Solaris updates .Here it is:

1. Solaris 10 1/06 (u1) - GRUB bootloader, iSCSI initiator, fcinfo command
   
2. Solaris 10 6/06 (u2) - ZFS filesystem
3. Solaris 10 11/06 (u3) - Solaris Trusted Extensions, LDoms
4. Solaris 10 8/07 (u4) - full TCP/IP stack in zones, iSCSI target, branded zones (Linux in Solaris container), Samba AD, enhanced rcapd
5. Solaris 10 5/08 (u5) - Intel SpeedStep, AMD PowerNow!, Solaris 8/9 P2V (to Solaris 10 zones), CPU capping
   
6. Solaris 10 10/08 (u6) - ZFS boot support, many ZFS filesystem enhancements
7. Solaris 10 5/09 (u7) - performance and power management support for Intel Nehalem CPUs, support of ZFS clones when cloning zones, IPsec SMF services, SunVTS 7.0 update
   

For more details, click the particular release to read the official release notes.

RHEL 4.8 released

Yesterday, a next minor version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 was released. The new version 4.8 contains the foloowing updates and enhancements:

• optimized drivers for RHEL 4 guests running on KVM hypervizor
• SAMBA update for better interoperability with Windows world
• new kernel tunables for better performance

For details, there are official release notes published at redhat.com.

VMware vSphere 4.0 editions

Yesterday, VMware uncovered new pricing and licensing model of vSphere 4.0 platform. In my opinion, VMware is trying to strictly split up the virtualization market into two parts - SMB and enterprise. I have a feeling from the table of features below that there is growing a hole between them. The competitors should catch the chance to fill it up.

• SMB editions - ESXi Single Server, Essentials and Essentials Plus
• Enterprise editions - Standard, Advanced, Enteprise and Enterprise Plus

Here is the mentioned table of features:

New Sun Fire servers with Xeon 5500

Sun has released a new line of servers and blade modules based on Intel Xeon 5500-series processors. The new pieces are:

• Sun Fire X2270 (1RU, 1 or 2 CPUs)
  
• Sun Fire X4170 (1RU, 1 or 2 CPUs)
  
• Sun Fire X4270 (2RU, 1 or 2 CPUs, 16 2.5" disks)
  
• Sun Fire X4275 (2RU, 1 or 2 CPUs, 12 3.5" disks)
  
• Sun Blade X6270 (1 or 2 CPUs)
  
• Sun Blade X6275 (4 CPUs)

The official announcement of new servers with additional details is published at www.sun.com.

Sun VirtualBox 2.2 released

The next version of Sun's desktop hypervisor VirtualBox was released. The new version 2.2 brings the following important changes:

• OpenGL 3D acceleration for Linux/OpenSolaris guests
• OVF appliance import/export
• USB and shared folder support for OpenSolaris
• host-only networking mode
  

More details are in official changelog.

VMware ESX/ESXi 3.5 update 4 released

The fourth update of VMware ESX platform was released. It contains many hardware enhancements like support of new Intel Xeon 5500 procesors, SATA controllers or network interface cards. It supports new guests as well like SLES 11 released recently. The official release notes provide more comprehensive information.

SLES 11 released

Good news for SLES fans. The next major release of the product was released today. Together with SLES 11 was released enterprise-ready desktop SLED 11. Other two new products were announced as well:

• SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension - the products integrates clustering filesystem OCFS2, cluster-aware volume manger cLVM2, distributed replicated block device DRBD and Pacemaker Cluster Stack with OpenAIS messaging and member layer. Included DRBD version 8 supports active-active replication.
  
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension - the product provides open-source cross-platform .NET framework.

What other benefits does SLES 11 bring? As you could see above, it is more modular. Some features were bundled into separate products. The next follow:

• it is based on GNU/Linux kernel 2.6.27
• in addition to AppArmor, it is SELinux ready
• it provides OFED 1.4 (more about it here)
  
• package management is based on fast update stack ZYpp
• SLES 11 is greener - it supports tickless idle which is able to leave CPU in saving stake longer or it provides more granular power profiles
• it supports swapping over NFS for diskless clients
• it supports partitioning multiprocessor machine by CPUset System
  
• virtualization layer is based on Xen 3.3
• it is optimised for hypervisors VMware ESX, MS Hyper-V and Xen
  
• default filesystem is EXT3
• it supports kexec, kdump or SystemTap
• it contains many other enhancements of asynchronous I/O, MPIO, NFS or iSCSI

The official product documentation isn't available yet. The release notes are here.

VMware ESX 4.0 aka vSphere 4.0 platform

The next major release of VMware ESX platform is being prepared. The platform newly called as vSphere 4.0 is going to be based on six stones which provide:

1. vCompute - virtualization layer, hypervisor, live migration
   
2. vStorage - storage management, replication
   
3. vNetwork - network management, distributed switch, Cisco Nexus switch
   
4. Availability - clustering, data protection
   
5. Security - VMsafe APIs, vShield Zones
   
6. Scalability - dynamic resource management, distributed power management
   

Furthermore, the new platform will support virtual machines with 8 virtual CPUs and 256 GB of virtual memory.

The second most important part of virtual environment is centralized management. Today, we know it as VMware VirtualCenter Server. In the future, it should be called vCenter Suite. The good news, it will be available for Linux servers as well so no more Windows licenses are required.

XenServer 5 license key

As you know, XenServer Enterprise Edition was realased for free. The license key for enterprise features and installation media are available from the download page. The new free XenServer will be released at March 25. The provided license provides high availability and StorageLink features from incoming Citrix Essentials for XenServer as well. The update to new version will be possible.

XenServer is free

It's unbelievable! Citrix decided to release their XEN based hypervisor and complete virtualization solution named XenServer for free a few hours ago (official announcement is here). The product was available in three editions until recently - Express, Standard, Enterprise and Platinum. The differences are outlined in the following table:

The Express edition was free of charge so far but it was missing some fundamental enterprise features like resource pools, live migration or central management console XenCenter. These features are paid. Or better, they were paid.

From now, we have only one edition of XenServer including features of enterprise edition. Everything is free and you can download it. Cool! You don't have to spend any money on virtual machines live migration, resource pools or central management stuff. What happens if we compare it with VMware ESXi? In my opinion, it seems the king might be dead. And the new king might be coming.

What do you think of it? What will be the answer from VMware? I think it is smart way how to show us that XEN based hypervisors are enterprise ready and how to spread it more. In connection with current economical situation they have the real chance to success.

Let me have final question. Who will need Microsoft Hyper-V now? If XenServer is free and because it is more mature and robust than Hyper-V what will be its new position? Today, the winner is Citrix. Tomorrow, the oponents might surprise us. But don't miss the opportunity today. Download XenServer and spread it!

VMware vCenter Converter 4.0 was released

The previous version of Converter was at 3.0.3 for a long time. The new standalone version is much similar to the one included in Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 (VI 3.5).

Before it, there were available two editions - Starter and Enterprise where the second one is part of VI 3.5. Here are the additional features of Enterprise edition compared to Starter:

• it supports multiple migration jobs
• it supports cold migration
  
• it is part of VI3.5 only (particularly VirtualCenter server)

What new brings us latest revision? It is free of charge, it has larger set of supported operating systems as source or it allows you to select the target virtual disks. Newly, it can migrate sources with RedHat, SUSE or UBUNTU Linux. Furthermore, it is able to power off the source after migration finishes. The more comprehensive comparison of the version 4.0 and the version included in VI3.5 is presented by this picture.

Sun xVM Server postponed

While management system Ops Center 2.0 was released recently, it seems Sun has some issues with their XEN based hypervisor. According to this article published by french magazine LeMagIT it is going to be released in second quarter 2009.

VirtualCenter for Linux

It seems VirtualCenter Server for GNU/Linux is being prepared and might be released with the next version of Virtual Infrastructure or its successor called VMware vSphere 4.0. It's going to be presented at the incoming virtualisation event VMworld Europe 2009. The official abstract of technical session covering this topic is published at VMworld Europe 2009 website.