Posts tagged with Hyper-V
New Efficiencies with AMD and Microsoft – How Silicon and Software Make Virtualization Happen
Posted by Margaret Lewis in 4:12 PM
Loading ...Last week I was in San Francisco at the kick-off of the Microsoft New Efficiency Launch where Steve Ballmer showcased the new releases of three key products used by the businesses around the world: Windows® 7, Window Server® 2008 R2, and Exchange 2010. AMD is a sponsor of this launch and we are excited about the excellent alignment of AMD OpteronTM processor-based servers and AMD Business Class technology-based clients.
If you look at the products Microsoft is launching you see a lot of features designed to help businesses streamline and optimize their IT infrastructure. One point of interest at the launch event was the strong focus on virtualization with both Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.
Enterprise customers at the San Francisco event were talking about their implementations of Windows Hyper-V – something you might not have heard a year ago. Features like live migration and support for AMD VirtualizationTM (AMD-VTM) technology Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI) are new functionalities in Hyper-V R2. This is the result of the on-going collaboration between AMD and Microsoft on an engineering level – and the value it brings to customers is a virtualization platform that can efficiently and effectively run demanding applications such as database, web serving, and virtual desktops.
Virtualization with Windows 7 was showcased with a demo showing XP mode – a virtual machine running Windows XP that allowed seamless access to an older applications using Windows 7 capable machines. AMD-V technology again plays a role here – helping to improve performance to maintain a solid user experience. And virtual desktop technology – the streaming of applications and entire desktops from central servers to clients – is enhanced with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
There are a number of events in progress throughout North America – check out if there is an event near you so you can see the products in action first hand. If you can’t attend the events alive and in person – visit the AMD booth at the Microsoft New Efficiency Virtual Experience.
Margaret Lewis (@margaretjlewis) is a Product Marketing Director at AMD.
Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Live Migration: Here to Stay
Posted by tmueting in 11:57 AM
(5 votes, average: 4.40 out of 5)I have recently returned from the HP Technical Conference and, although attendance was down a bit this year (likely due to the economy), there were still plenty of enthusiastic AMD customers and partners in attendance. The buzz around the availability of the recently released Six-Core AMD OpteronTM “Istanbul” processor and HP Proliant G6 servers was tremendous. HP has announced seven HP ProLiant platforms based on “Istanbul” processors as well as the availability of upgrade kits for existing G5/G5p platforms. I’m also happy to report that I had a packed room during my virtualization session on Tuesday.
In our booth on the exhibition floor we demonstrated the ability to use VMware’s VMotion to seamlessly migrate a running virtual machine between an HP Proliant G2 server running Dual-Core AMD Opteron “Rev F” processors (released in 2006), G5 server running Quad-Core AMD Opteron “Shanghai” processors, (released in 2007) and the newest G6 server with Six-Core AMD Opteron processors. We’ve just released a video on YouTube featuring a similar demo -- except that it also includes our upcoming processor codenamed “Magny-Cours”.
I’m constantly getting questions on the topic of live migration and VMotion in particular. Customers want to be assured that they can use VMotion to migrate virtual machines between older and newer versions of their AMD processer-based platforms. Apparently we and our technology partners could do a better job of getting the word out.
So let’s be clear -- the answer is a resounding YES!
Here are the facts. With the launch of our first quad-core processors, AMD formalized a functionality that had existed in our processors for a while under the feature name of Extended Migration. This capability enabled virtualization software vendors like VMware to support the live migration of a virtual machine between different versions of AMD processors starting with Rev E, which was released in 2004. Subsequently, with ESX 3.5 u2, VMware released a feature as part of VMotion called Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) that uses AMD Extended Migration to support VMotion between AMD Opteron processor generations. In order to utilize the feature, each server must be configured for EVC. For information on configuring EVC, see the “Migrating Virtual Machines” chapter in the Basic System Administration Guide for your ESX release. You can also gain a better understanding of EVC processor support and baseline definitions at the Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support VMware web page.
Keep in mind that live migration across AMD OpteronTM processor generations is supported by other virtualization software, including Citrix XenMotion and Microsoft HyperV Server 2008 R2 Live Migration. In fact, you can watch a demo showcasing Hyper-V live migration between Quad-Core and Six Core AMD Opteron processors.
And don’t forget the technology demonstration we did a year ago with Red Hat, showcasing live migration between an AMD and Intel processor -- the YouTube video is still getting a lot of views.
Rest assured, AMD is pushing the technology envelope to cover all bases when it comes to offering broad support for your virtualization environment.
Tim Mueting is a Product Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Serving Up a Big Dose of Virtualization with Windows Server 2008 R2
Posted by Margaret Lewis in 10:53 AM
This has been a big week for the Windows Operating System. Along with the much awaited “Release to Manufacturing” (RTM) of Windows 7, we also saw the RTM of Windows Server 2008 R2.
Many of the improvements in Windows Server 2008 R2 are centered on Hyper-V, Microsoft’s hypervisor that ships with the product. Noteworthy is the support for Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI), a key feature of AMD-VTM technology that is designed to reduce the complexity of memory handling and enhance performance for demanding applications like web serving and database. My colleague Tim Mueting has an in-depth Q&A on RVI posted on the Doing It Virtual web site if you want a more detailed look at the technology.
In addition Windows Server 2008 R2 offers live migration capabilities. This long awaited functionality, which allows the migration of running VMs between physical hosts, is a standard feature of the basic Server 2008 R2 product as well as with the upcoming Hyper-V 2008 R2 Server. This means you don’t have to pay extra for this key functionality. Hyper-V Live Migration is supported on up to 16 node clusters. AMD OpteronTM processors have included Extend Migration functionality since 2005, designed specifically to enable live migration capabilities in virtualization software. Check out the video on YouTube that showcases Hyper-V Live Migration on AMD Opteron processor-based servers.
Windows Server 2008 R2 is also about scalability offering support of up to 64 processors cores and up to 384 VMs running concurrently per host system in Hyper-V. This provides seamless support for the HP ProLiant DL785 G6 8 Socket featuring Six-Core AMD Opteron processors.
So congratulations to Microsoft on another successful RTM. Check out Jason Perlow’s article for a more in-depth look at Windows Server 2008 R2.
And don’t forget Windows 7 – check out Nigel Dessau’s recent blog to read more about how Windows 7 combined with the upcoming DirectX 11-enabled ATI RadeonTM graphics cards will help deliver what we at AMD like to call The Ultimate Visual ExperienceTM. Another good read is Matt Kimball’s blog on Windows 7 virtualization capabilities.
Margaret Lewis (@margaretjlewis) is a Product Marketing Director at AMD.
Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Virtual Machines on the Move
Posted by Margaret Lewis in 5:15 AM
As you can imagine, migrating virtual machines without downtime is considered a core technology for building flexible and highly availability virtualized environments. So there were many questions around whether a hypervisor could gain widespread acceptance if it did not offer live migration capabilities. Fast forward to Spring 2009, and it is clear that Hyper-V has made a significant impact on the market.
In fact, a March article by Stephen Sowyer of Virtualization Review, highlights research by industry analyst firm, Gartner, who reported within the next five years “Microsoft and VMware will vie for bragging rights in the server virtualization infrastructure segment.” This builds on the October 2008 Worldwide Quarterly Server Virtualization Tracker from industry analyst firm, IDC, which concluded, “In its first quarter of general availability Microsoft Hyper-V delivered a strong showing, and when combined with Virtual Server 2005, Microsoft’s market share is 23% of new shipments.” These findings are truly significant given Microsoft entered the world of virtualization less than a year ago.
With today’s release of Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, Microsoft will offer live migration capabilities, enabling users to virtualize their IT environment in the most cost effective manner while having full access to enterprise-class features.
Now, a lot of folks new to virtualization don’t quite understand all the factors involved in making live migration a reality (in fact, I’m sure some of you are wondering why we keep blogging on the topic). To perform live migration with Hyper-V 2008 R2, you are required to have the failover clustering role added and configured on the servers running Hyper-V. Failover clustering requires shared storage for the servers in the cluster nodes so that all virtual machines can be stored in the shared storage area and running virtual machine state can be managed by one of the nodes (check out this great step-by-step guide on TechNet here).
An advantage for folks with a data center full of Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors—even various generations—is our stable platform approach enables folks to do live migration between the processor family (“Barcelona” to “Shangahi” to our upcoming six-core “Istanbul” processors) without losing any functionality—see for yourself as we migrate across all three generations with Hyper-V 2008 here.
This stable platform approach is something we also use for power efficiency. You may have seen that we recently announced our new low power (EE) processors which provide the same level of functionality as other versions but with a lower power envelope.
As you can imagine, I’m very excited about the live migration demonstration with Microsoft and its upcoming Hyper-V 2008 R2 technology. Working with the virtualization team over there has been a rewarding experience and I’m impressed with the inroads they have made on the virtualization market since the release of Hyper-V. I look forward to continuing to working with the team to push us all towards the “holy grail” of virtualization as it is a technology that truly enables a powerful and dynamic virtualization experience for customers.
Margaret Lewis (@margaretjlewis) is a Product Marketing Director at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Margaret Lewis, director, AMD commercial software and solutions
@margaretjlewis
Rapid Virtualization Indexing with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V
Posted by Julie Lass in 4:10 PM
Hello, my name is Bryon Surace. I’m a senior program manager on the Windows virtualization team within the Server & Tools Business at Microsoft. Today’s announcement by AMD highlighting our two companies’ cooperative development efforts marks another milestone in Microsoft and AMD’s continued efforts to deliver an industry-leading virtualization platform that matches processor enhancement with Hyper-V technology advancements.
Hyper-V, as a feature of Windows Server 2008, relies upon hardware-assisted virtualization, such as AMD-Virtualization (AMD-V). The use of this technology is a design principle of Microsoft’s virtualization architecture that is continuing with the upcoming Windows Server 2008 R2 (now in beta).
Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, builds upon the solid foundation laid in Windows Server 2008. Of the many virtualization enhancements being made in Release 2, a few of the key features take advantage of advancements included in the newest generation processors.
Specifically Hyper-V, as part of Windows Server 2008 R2, will take full advantage of Second Level Address Translation such as AMD’s Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI) (formerly known as Nested Page Tables). Through RVI, the AMD processor provides two levels of address translation. This additional page table is used to translate guest physical addresses to system physical address allowing the guest to control its own page tables. This negates the need for the hypervisor to intercept the guest’s modifications of the page tables. This model provides virtualization overhead improvement as compared with traditional software shadow page tables.
In Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V can use the AMD RVI technology to increase performance of the virtualization platform and results in system resource savings. These savings include a drop in Hypervisor CPU time as well as a reduction in memory overhead.
The continued cooperative development efforts between Microsoft and AMD are highly valued and critical in delivering great virtualization technology.
If you have more questions about Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, or about other Microsoft server, desktop, or management virtualization products, check out Edwin Yuen’s web chat on March 31. It’s 8am-noon PST. Register and submit questions ahead of time here.
Thanks to AMD for allowing me to post a guest blog.
Bryon Surace a senior program manager on the Windows virtualization team within the Server & Tools Business at Microsoft. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Any claims made herein have not been independently verified by AMD. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
The Dawning of the Age of “Coopetition” for Virtualization
Posted by Margaret Lewis in 3:30 AM
Earlier this week, many were probably asking themselves, “Is the Moon now in its 7th house? Did Jupiter just align with Mars?” when they learned of the most recent Microsoft and Red Hat announcement. Two fierce global competitors agreeing to validate and certify each other’s virtualization software and coordinate technical support. Seems a bit far fetched.
And while I personally am thrilled with this development, I think what’s most interesting is that the industry seems to be recognizing this for what it is: a major milestone for the evolution of virtualization, a big step for the enterprise credibility of open source, and most importantly, a big win for customers. Matt Asay at CNet does a good job of reviewing the announcement and giving credit where credit is due.
Most are focusing their kudos on the fact that this alliance promises to create a new level of interoperability for virtualization and that it results in a “win-win” for users, who now have even more freedom to select the software that they feel is best suited for their specific application environments. But for me, the real takeaway is that this alignment definitely illustrates how quickly virtualization is maturing. We are now entering the Age of “Coopetition“ - the phrase Ray Noorda, past CEO of Novell, coined to describe cooperation with competitors.
In short: This is a necessary milestone for the mainstream acceptance of virtualization and clearly reflects mounting pressure from users who don’t want to live in a world of siloed virtualized environments.
We all know that the early adopters of virtualization had to accept the fact that some operating systems were not supported as guests by some hypervisors. They also had to learn how to plan for cross-generational processor live migration limitations that reduce their flexibility. But the mainstream market isn’t willing to bleed as much and wants broader interoperability assurances before they jump on board with virtualization.
The Red Hat and Microsoft agreement allows customers to run Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual servers on either environment with configurations tested by both sides. And it is not the first of such agreements – we all remember how the world shook the day Microsoft and Novell announced their cooperative agreement in late 2006.
AMD has played a key role in driving the open innovation needed for effective x86-based virtualization. We took the route of publishing our proposed specifications for hardware-assisted virtualization (AMD-V™) and IOMMU (AMD-Vi) to ignite industry-wide dialogues and illicit partner and user input. We have worked with standards group, like the PCI SIG, to ensure that virtualization technologies fit into their specifications. Early on in the development of the AMD Opteron™ processor we opted to use HyperTransport™ technology for chip-to-chip interconnections instead of taking a closed architectural approach like Intel has done with Nehalem and its proprietary Quick Path Interface. By the way, Mike Uhler, vice president of Accelerated Computing, was just appointed president of the HyperTransport board, underscoring AMD’s continued support of driving innovation through standards-based technologies.
As virtualization continues to mature, my hope is that this new age of coopetition will drive live migration across vendor platforms—one of the last big challenges for virtualization (and customers). While we were able to showcase this technology with Red Hat, last October we haven’t been able to make it a reality—yet. While live migration across vendor platforms is a technical and complicated it would allow customers to realize the full potential virtualization technology and have the ultimate flexibility of their data center.
While my hope for cross vendor live migration is a bit far off, many thanks to our partners Microsoft and Red Hat for taking this big step and giving customers even more flexibility and control of their virtualized servers. Making competitive products interoperable will give virtualization the freedom it needs to become a pervasive technology. It also means that vendors like AMD, Microsoft, and Red Hat have to stay on their toes, developing cooperative products that address real user problems.
Margaret Lewis is a Product Marketing Director at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.