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Xen Demonstrates Virtualization on Future Intel VT-Enabled Chips

XenSource, the software company behind the open source Xen hypervisor for virtual machine partitioning on X86 and X64 machines, is making its first public demonstration of the Xen 3.0 hypervisor today at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

XenSource and Intel tested Xen 3.0 on a server using the future "Montecito" Itanium processors, which are Intel's first dual-core Itaniums and also the first of its chips to be equipped with its Virtualization Technology (VT), which does a lot of the instruction set virtualization work that prior VM solutions had to do before VT (and the functionally equivalent "Pacifica" features in AMD's Opteron chips) came along. VT and Pacifica are expected in production chips from Intel and AMD next year.

According to Simon Crosby, vice president of strategy and corporate development at XenSource, the demonstration involved running a legacy version of Linux (he believed it was the Linux 2.0 kernel) in one partition running alongside Windows XP SP2 in a separate partition. The demo was done on a pre-release version of Xen 3.0, which is out for community review now and is expected to be released by the Xen project leader, Ian Pratt, sometime later this summer. Crosby says that Intel contributed the code necessary for the Xen hypervisor to interface with the VT features of its future chips, and that the Xen project expects that AMD will do the same when it finishes up Pacifica. Xen is also working on an abstraction layer called VMX that will interface with both VT and Pacifica to mask the differences that Intel and AMD have taken to delivering hardware-assisted virtualization. VT and Pacifica are what allow unmodified guest operating systems to be managed by the Xen hypervisor. VT also interfaces with modified, open source operating systems that have Xen hooks in them (such as Linux, the BSD variants of Unix, and OpenSolaris), a privileged mode of operation called para-virtualization, which makes a guest operating system aware that it can be virtualized and therefore provides it with some extra goodies in terms of performance and optimization.

Open Enterprise Server Updated by Novell

Commercial Linux distributor Novell has announced Service Pack 1 for its Open Enterprise Server variant of Linux, which combines the NetWare 6.5 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (Linux 2.6) kernels and NetWare and Linux services in a single package that allows customers to run the services on the kernel of their choice. With SP1 for OES, Novell is rolling out new versions of the kernels--specifically, the NetWare 6.5 SP4 kernel and the SLES 9 SP2 kernel. In addition to the kernel enhancements, OES SP1 will include better porting tools for customers who want to move from NetWare 6.0 or Windows NT/2000/2003 to OES; this is important since there are millions of servers with NetWare 6.0 and Windows NT deployed out there in the data centers and departments of the world.

The first service pack for OES, which will be available at the end of August, has improved Novell Storage Services (NSS) performance when running atop the Linux kernel, and in fact, Novell says that the performance has reached parity with the storage protocols running on NetWare. The NetWare and Windows migration and server consolidation tools that were part of OES now have a single interface (with drag and drop capabilities), which simplifies migrations to OES. The new migration tool can also automatically convert permissions for Windows users to their Linux or NetWare counterparts. The OES SP1 update also has full support for Novell Cluster Services. OES includes the new iFolder 3.0, which is available on Linux, as well as iFolder 2.1, which comes standard in NetWare. iFolders are virtual storage areas for user data, which can be shared with other users.

Sun Wah Ships RAY ES Debian-Derived Linux Server

Sun Wah Linux, a relatively new commercial Linux distributor based in Bejing, China, has announced a server edition of Linux based on the Debian distro and aimed at the Chinese market. The operating system, known as RAYS Enterprise Server, is a kicker to the entry RAYS LX server platform from Sun Wah and the security-enhanced RAYS SS (short for Security Enhanced Server Edition, and yes, I know that this acronym should be SESE, but I didn't name the product).

RAYS ES is the strategic new product for servers for Sun Wah, and it will initially support X86 platforms as well as those running in 32-bit on X64 platforms. By the end of this year, Sun Wah says it will support 64-bit mode on X64 processors as well as IBM's 64-bit PowerPC and Power processor families. RAYS ES is priced at $849 per server, and is available immediately. Sun Wah says it hopes to ship 10,000 copies of RAYS ES this year, and hopes to be the number one Asian Linux distributor by the end of 2006.

Novell Delivers ZENworks 7 System Management, GroupWise 7 Groupware for Linux

As expected, Novell has rolled out its updated ZENworks 7 system management and GroupWise 7 groupware for the Linux platform. Novell clearly hopes that the support for Linux by these two programs will help it keep or extend its installed base of customers as well as attack new markets.

GroupWise is a distant third in the enterprise groupware market, behind Microsoft's Exchange and IBM's Notes/Domino combo. But support for Linux--as well as a free license to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 in each GroupWise server license--may help GroupWise build up its customer base since moving to Linux is a lot less risky as a career move than moving to NetWare is. The GroupWise/NetWare combo has millions of users worldwide as well, and the advent of a Linux option for the software also means that Novell's prospects of keeping customers on GroupWise have improved. And just so you know, just because Novell has launched Project Hula to create a low-end, open source messaging server, that doesn't mean GroupWise is going away. Novell has committed to keeping it supported through at least 2015.

GroupWise 7 runs on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003, Open Enterprise Server, or NetWare 5.1, 6.0, or 6.5. (It is not available on other Linuxes--at least not formally, but you could probably get it to work if you had nothing better to do with your time.) GroupWise costs $130 per seat for the full version including the GroupWise client, or $30 per seat for the Web/wireless interface. Competitive upgrades for the full product cost $69 per seat.

ZENworks 7 is similarly an important component of Novell's strategy to grow its Linux-related software business as its NetWare business continues to decline. ZENworks 7 can manage and patch Novell's own Open Enterprise Server (the hybrid NetWare-Linux platform), NetWare (5.1, 6.0, and 6.5) and SUSE Linux as well as Microsoft's Windows and rival Red Hat's Enterprise Linux server editions; Windows desktops (98, NT4, 2000, and XP) and Linux desktops (Novell Linux Desktop only) can also be managed and patched by the program. ZENworks 7 costs $130 per managed device.

Big Linux-Based Supercomputers Pop Up Like Mushrooms

Linux Networx announced that the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) is buying a new 722-processor Linux cluster. The machine, code-named "Jacquard," is built from two-way servers that use single-core Opteron 248 processors. NERSC will use 640 of the 2.2 GHz processors to do computations, delivering a peak performance of about 3.1 treraflops.

Novell was crowing like a rooster that the Barcelona Supercomputer Center in the Spanish city of that name, which is creating a massive 42.4 teraflops supercomputer using a cluster of 2,400 two-way, 2.2 GHz, PowerPC 970 blade servers from IBM, has chosen SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 as the operating system for those blade nodes in the HPC cluster. The center has opted to lash these machines together using a Myrinet interconnect.

Rice University said last week that it would be acquiring a Cray XD1 Linux-Opteron supercomputer with 366 dual-core Opterons to do HPC work at its data center in Houston, Texas. The XD1 system, which is based on the OctigaBay design that includes specialized circuits to boost the speed of the supercomputer on number-crunching jobs and to augment the HyperTransport interconnect built into the Opteron chip, is being funded by a $2 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation.

IDC Projects IT Spending to Grow 5.9 Percent Through 2009

The prognosticators at IDC have taken a stab at predicting where the worldwide market for IT goods and services will be in 2009, and according to its most recent models, IT spending will hit $1.3 trillion by the end of that year. The growth represents a compound annual growth rate of 5.9 percent, compounded over the five years from 2004 through 2009. While this in not the high growth we saw in the dot-com era, it is better than a sharp kick in the teeth, which is what the decline in IT spending was like in 2001 and 2002.

As is always the case in the IT market, there are hot and cold spots when it comes to spending. Anne Songtao Lu, the IDC analyst in charge of monitoring worldwide vertical markets, said in a report that spending will be highest in government, manufacturing, and banking, but the highest growth in spending will be in the healthcare and the communications/media industry. In the latter vertical market, for instance, IDC reckons that IT spending will grow from $95 billion in 2005 to $128 billion by 2009, driven by heavy investment in networking gear, new PCs, peripherals, and storage.

IDC is projecting that consumer spending on IT services, peripherals, and PCs will grow in the double digits over this term, obviously pulling up the averages for spending among corporations if the two together are only hitting a compound growth rate of just under 6 percent. Because of changing regulations and compliance issues, the banking and financing industry is expected to spend big bucks, too, but IDC didn't elaborate on growth rates. The analysts also expect the telecommunications industry to upgrade their IT infrastructure as they roll out more so-called 3G (third generation) services for their telecom customers.