Category: Bitbud Blog

Red Hat virtualization set to launch on September 1st

For those of you that haven’t yet implemented virtualization, I’d recommend waiting a few more weeks to see RedHat’s implementation. Reported by LeMagIT, a Red Hat executive confirmed that September 1st will be the launch date for General Availability of Red Hat’s virtualization portfolio. As I blogged about last week, there is already a private ...Read More

Red Hat's Virtualization Platform goes Beta

Red Hat goes to Beta with it’s KVM based Virtualization platform.  KVM is a module for Linux that turns the Linux kernel into a Hypervisor.  It is already used in many deployments around the world.  I am currently a heavy implementer of it, utilizing the Proxmox Linux distribution, which is a complete Linux installation customized ...Read More

Intel's latest aquistion to affect Sony, BMW, and Dell/ Equalogic

I always find industry aquisitions interesting, especially when you consider how they can impact the products we use on a regular basis. Last week it was annonced that Intel would be aquiring Wind River for nearly $900 million.  In case you didn’t know Wind River is an embedded application/ OS provider for a long list ...Read More

SAN for All – Installing the iSCSI Target Framework (tgt)

I previously blogged about using the iSCSI Enterprise Target on Ubuntu.  However, the IET isn’t the only iSCSI Target service available on Linux.  There are several others, including the SCSI Target Framework, which is now my iSCSI target of choice.  The tgt is a ‘framework’.  It was designed to work with multiple SCSI type devices ...Read More

New XenServer Release – Even more features to consider as a compelling alternative to VMWare

Along with the long list of features that Citrix’s XenServer already provides for free, the recently announced new XenServer 5.5 adds to the list of reasons you should switch (Beta is available now, release is expected June 19).  Installing the current version will give you more features today, with additional improvements coming with the release ...Read More

VMFS Open Source driver

Fluid Ops released a GPL-ed “driver” that allows you to mount a VMFS file system.  It mounts it as read-only, but could be quite useful, especially if you need to access VMFS based data, but have no ESX servers around. It is hosted on Google code: http://code.google.com/p/vmfs/

Red Hat is set to change the virtualization landscape

Reminiscent of what Firefox has done to the browser, Red Hat announced today its line-up of virtualization technologies, which is set to make a commodity of virtualization.  It is worth the time to watch the short video from two of its executives: Red Hat’s Virtualization Strategy A key quote from the short video: “Fundamentally… a ...Read More

Virtualized Windows Server SMP fix on AMD

When running a virtualized Windows Server with SMP (multi-processor) on hardware that has an AMD processor, you may notice a strange issue with timing. It is easy to recognize; open a Command Prompt, and ping an IP address (I ping-ed a local peer). You will get strange response times, such as -61000, 2100, etc. The ...Read More

Running out of excuses – Microsoft certification coming for KVM

Red Hat today announced that they will be joining the certification program for running Microsoft OS’s on Red Hat’s hypervisor, KVM.  You can read more at this link. (additionally Microsoft will be joining Red Hat’s certification program to certify Hyper-V for running  RHEL) Now, I personally don’t need this to know that KVM is the ...Read More

KVM Virtualization Unleashed

Its funny to see how such a small change in a complex system can make such a huge difference. A tiny little update to the Proxmox virtualization platform was pushed through yesterday.  A new configuration option ‘args’ has been made available.  You can now pass any KVM configuration command option to to your guests.  You ...Read More