1) To AnAverageJoe: how does virtualization *increase* security. This is counter-intuitive to me and to any authors I have read on this topic.
2) 3D acceleration in a virtual machine. Are you kidding?
3) Quit teasing us and get on with the artile(s).
Can't wait for the results! I've been testing a few variants of Ubuntu with some success.
Currently running Ubuntu Ultimate Gamers Edition 1.4 (all updates)
tested;
Ubuntu 8.04 32/64-bit (64bit seems faster, had problems with monitor on both versions; sony gm5410)
Ubuntu Studio 32/64-bit (amazing audacity performance 155/178)
Couldn't get asio to work under wine with Reaper DAW so went to gamers edition. Still doesn't work :/
Now this is interesting. I was under the (appearently mistaken) impression that there were no drivers for any 3D hardware for any virtual machine. That fact one can play HL2 on a VM would imply that this is not the case. I'm very much looking forward to seeing how this is working.
I joined the MS roadshow this week and they already claim some decent benchmarking/performance and that they will be announced by anand. (good pr for you guys)
Lets see what you guys have put together and how well you created load on those systems. With there Master slave concept i have some concerns with high VM count.
Off course they were so full of love for the dunnington since they already support it and Vmware dus not yet, then we get back to your testing platform, its already known that dunnington can take more Vm's but did you guys actually checked the possible throughput of a VM, looking at VMmark scores that says enough.
Actually that's the only thing you can say about the Hyper-V that is added value, larger support for platforms. The way they work with master slave concept actually scares me knowing the OS stability in the past. So get 1 VM for free but never ever install anything or patch anything in the master OS :)
Also funny how they talked about there licensing model and that they don't care about how many cores on a socket, well people from Redmond your lic model sucks very bad, for sure when you combine it with HA, there is no decent solution unless you take the win2008 datacenter solution, which other idiot does not have more then 4VM on a server during failure, we are talking about 2s-4s systems here in 2008 with quadcore as default platform.....oh and i won't mention your nice tool that is able to controll all up into the OS and furter layers, its expensive as hell in a large datacenter.
regarding the hyper-V itself, looking at the parts and tricks they put together to get there "hyping" hypervisor it will take them at least to 2008R2 to get a decent hypervisor on the market to race against esx 3 not to mention the enhancements in 3.5 and 4.0 under nda. (some issue highlights here: multiple Nics, Vm in each drive, no nfs, no vmotion, no storage vmotion, ...) For now i just call it a broken OS with some features but sure not ready for production environments unless you have old hardware (which then again in a hypervisor environment is worthless when you have hyperthreaded servers.)
for the record i don't work for VMware, just an IT guy that actually has to work with it.
love to see the final comments from Anand on there article, sure you can talk about performance then, but lets see how you highlight the functionality. waiting for the review... like we are also waiting a .....while..... for your great chipset comparison.
...about a few of the things said about Linux and Hyper-V?
I've been testing Hyper-V for the past week including a few stints into Linux guests and it seems only SUSE Enterprise is supported by the Integration Components. It's possible to patch other distros anyway but it's not a breeze in any way.
Also, SMP does appear to be working in the CentOS install I have running right now (without the Integration Services) so I find the claim SMP doesn't work in Linux curious.
In any case, I'm looking forward to some benchmarks. My own extremely cursory benchmarks show CPU performance to be extremely good while VHD disk imagae performance to be (as expected) quite poor.
I'm looking forward to the rest of the article, it sounds like a very good primer for someone like me who understands the basic concepts but doesn't know how the current products stack up against each other!
who said that enterprise IT is a dry news? i come here to know all i can, it is good to know about the virtualization market, as it also is to know about the consoles and CPUs. actually i work with IT and play with IT. I run games and also virtual servers on the very same computer at home.
Judging from the number of comments on the IT articles, versus the number of comments on enthusiast-related articles, especially video cards, I would say that it's not just me who find enterprise IT a bit dry...
4 points:
1. If your sole interest is playing games then OS virtualization is of no interest to you. Application virtualization as discussed in the previous articles however may interest you as you can sandbox a (probably modded) unstable game and stop it from taking down your system. That certainly would be of interest to me, esp. when trying out new mods.
2. Johan didn't seize control of your mouse and force you to read his article.
3. OS virtualization is the next big thing in IT. The hardware is arguably powerful enough. It doesn't make sense to waste unused computing cycles under-utilizing applications. It increases standardization and security, and decreases deployment and maintenance cycles. All of which reduce costs; and in IT at the end of the day, cost is the primary focus.
4. There's an awful lot of marketing hype and someone who's willing to put claims through fact checking is a plus. Anandtech has proven itself on this in other areas, I look forward to it continuing the tradition in its IT section.
I wouldn't completely count out gaming as a reason for interest in virtualization. While there are some things I'd like to try virtualizing for at work, gaming is also starting to become important. So far I have two reasons to check this out for myself. The first is older games that require an older version of Windows to run properly. I used to just keep an older PC around for this, but they're starting to die off and parts aren't readily available. That and keeping a small farm of computers really isn't that attractive. Second is this whole DRM business. At first none of the games I was interested in had anything in them, but Securom is becoming far to common. So sandboxing that bit of nastiness might be a great way to play DRMed games while still retaining a clean system.
Who knows though, it might turn out to be completely impractical. Definitely looking forward to the next article. :)
This topic does interest some of us and the effort is appreciated. Looking forward to seeing the article and hoping it will bring some things into focus for me.
Anandtech started out as a pure hardware enthusiast site. Most of the people, like you, come here for the enthusiast part. With it.anandtech.com, we like to attract the enthusiast that - probably got a bit older - and is now building the infrastructure of the (smaller) enterprises. And believe me in some cases that is more exciting (and admitted more nerve racking since there more money involved!) than building the latest gaming pc.
The beauty of Anandtech is that claims of manufacturers are checked with benchmarks and tests.
At it.anandtech.com we try to bring that same philosophy to the IT world. Because frankly, lots of the Enterprise IT stuff is not benchmarked, but "assumed to be faster/slower".
For example, you would amazed how many people think that an expensive storage enclosure must be faster than cheaper one. "Surely an EMC must be faster than a white product!". The thing is if you apply the "enthusiast way" of looking at it, you know that it is matter of disks, RAID chip and amount of cache. So a cheap one with a newer dualcore RAID chip might beat an expensive one with an older single core RAID chip. You might still prefer the last one because it has better backup software and is easier to maintain, but at least you know it is bullshit when vendors claims their solution is faster simply "because it is in a different class".
I've been reading your articles for a long time now - since shortly after you started writing for aceshardware, and I continued reading after you joined the AnandTech team. I pretty much fit your target market too - an older enthusiast working in IT, though as it happens I'm working on small projects for huge enterprise.
There's also the fact that while few people get a job because they know tons about computer games and graphics, knowing something about the IT world can be very useful when it comes time to get a paycheck. I'm always interested in reading Johan's articles, even though I don't run any real servers anymore. :)
that's a good point too. and right now we are making more comments on the IT articles =)
thinking of my self-experience with virtualization, this was the very reason I bought my first dual-core CPU, and not gaming. I wanted to run a virtual server (windows + SQL) with more freedom to play around with disks and other advanced configurations, so I could practice and learn more before I took an exam for certification at Microsoft. Virtualization is not only for the "pro's".
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20 Comments
Back to Article
aenagy - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - link
1) To AnAverageJoe: how does virtualization *increase* security. This is counter-intuitive to me and to any authors I have read on this topic.2) 3D acceleration in a virtual machine. Are you kidding?
3) Quit teasing us and get on with the artile(s).
stormyandcold - Saturday, October 18, 2008 - link
Can't wait for the results! I've been testing a few variants of Ubuntu with some success.Currently running Ubuntu Ultimate Gamers Edition 1.4 (all updates)
tested;
Ubuntu 8.04 32/64-bit (64bit seems faster, had problems with monitor on both versions; sony gm5410)
Ubuntu Studio 32/64-bit (amazing audacity performance 155/178)
Couldn't get asio to work under wine with Reaper DAW so went to gamers edition. Still doesn't work :/
Starcub - Monday, October 13, 2008 - link
Now this is interesting. I was under the (appearently mistaken) impression that there were no drivers for any 3D hardware for any virtual machine. That fact one can play HL2 on a VM would imply that this is not the case. I'm very much looking forward to seeing how this is working.Kiijibari - Saturday, October 11, 2008 - link
Solaris is so far not very usable as desktop OS, but maybe it could be a very good Host-OS ?Would be interesting, imo :)
thx
Kiiji
duploxxx - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link
I joined the MS roadshow this week and they already claim some decent benchmarking/performance and that they will be announced by anand. (good pr for you guys)Lets see what you guys have put together and how well you created load on those systems. With there Master slave concept i have some concerns with high VM count.
Off course they were so full of love for the dunnington since they already support it and Vmware dus not yet, then we get back to your testing platform, its already known that dunnington can take more Vm's but did you guys actually checked the possible throughput of a VM, looking at VMmark scores that says enough.
Actually that's the only thing you can say about the Hyper-V that is added value, larger support for platforms. The way they work with master slave concept actually scares me knowing the OS stability in the past. So get 1 VM for free but never ever install anything or patch anything in the master OS :)
Also funny how they talked about there licensing model and that they don't care about how many cores on a socket, well people from Redmond your lic model sucks very bad, for sure when you combine it with HA, there is no decent solution unless you take the win2008 datacenter solution, which other idiot does not have more then 4VM on a server during failure, we are talking about 2s-4s systems here in 2008 with quadcore as default platform.....oh and i won't mention your nice tool that is able to controll all up into the OS and furter layers, its expensive as hell in a large datacenter.
regarding the hyper-V itself, looking at the parts and tricks they put together to get there "hyping" hypervisor it will take them at least to 2008R2 to get a decent hypervisor on the market to race against esx 3 not to mention the enhancements in 3.5 and 4.0 under nda. (some issue highlights here: multiple Nics, Vm in each drive, no nfs, no vmotion, no storage vmotion, ...) For now i just call it a broken OS with some features but sure not ready for production environments unless you have old hardware (which then again in a hypervisor environment is worthless when you have hyperthreaded servers.)
for the record i don't work for VMware, just an IT guy that actually has to work with it.
love to see the final comments from Anand on there article, sure you can talk about performance then, but lets see how you highlight the functionality. waiting for the review... like we are also waiting a .....while..... for your great chipset comparison.
ChronoReverse - Thursday, October 9, 2008 - link
...about a few of the things said about Linux and Hyper-V?I've been testing Hyper-V for the past week including a few stints into Linux guests and it seems only SUSE Enterprise is supported by the Integration Components. It's possible to patch other distros anyway but it's not a breeze in any way.
Also, SMP does appear to be working in the CentOS install I have running right now (without the Integration Services) so I find the claim SMP doesn't work in Linux curious.
In any case, I'm looking forward to some benchmarks. My own extremely cursory benchmarks show CPU performance to be extremely good while VHD disk imagae performance to be (as expected) quite poor.
JohanAnandtech - Thursday, October 9, 2008 - link
Unfortunately Microsoft agrees with us:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954958/en-us">http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954958/en-us
"Linux distributions
Note Virtual machines are configured to use one virtual processor."
Did you check if you really get SMP performance on CentOS?
ChronoReverse - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link
Yes, I've done enough testing to convince myself that at least 2-way SMP is functioning.Oakenfold - Wednesday, October 8, 2008 - link
I'm looking forward to the rest of the article, it sounds like a very good primer for someone like me who understands the basic concepts but doesn't know how the current products stack up against each other!AmberClad - Wednesday, October 8, 2008 - link
Looking forward to the bit about DX on Linux. I come here to read enthusiast articles, not articles about dry topics like enterprise technology.marc1000 - Wednesday, October 8, 2008 - link
who said that enterprise IT is a dry news? i come here to know all i can, it is good to know about the virtualization market, as it also is to know about the consoles and CPUs. actually i work with IT and play with IT. I run games and also virtual servers on the very same computer at home.AmberClad - Wednesday, October 8, 2008 - link
Judging from the number of comments on the IT articles, versus the number of comments on enthusiast-related articles, especially video cards, I would say that it's not just me who find enterprise IT a bit dry...AnAverageJoe - Wednesday, October 8, 2008 - link
4 points:1. If your sole interest is playing games then OS virtualization is of no interest to you. Application virtualization as discussed in the previous articles however may interest you as you can sandbox a (probably modded) unstable game and stop it from taking down your system. That certainly would be of interest to me, esp. when trying out new mods.
2. Johan didn't seize control of your mouse and force you to read his article.
3. OS virtualization is the next big thing in IT. The hardware is arguably powerful enough. It doesn't make sense to waste unused computing cycles under-utilizing applications. It increases standardization and security, and decreases deployment and maintenance cycles. All of which reduce costs; and in IT at the end of the day, cost is the primary focus.
4. There's an awful lot of marketing hype and someone who's willing to put claims through fact checking is a plus. Anandtech has proven itself on this in other areas, I look forward to it continuing the tradition in its IT section.
Mr Perfect - Tuesday, November 25, 2008 - link
I wouldn't completely count out gaming as a reason for interest in virtualization. While there are some things I'd like to try virtualizing for at work, gaming is also starting to become important. So far I have two reasons to check this out for myself. The first is older games that require an older version of Windows to run properly. I used to just keep an older PC around for this, but they're starting to die off and parts aren't readily available. That and keeping a small farm of computers really isn't that attractive. Second is this whole DRM business. At first none of the games I was interested in had anything in them, but Securom is becoming far to common. So sandboxing that bit of nastiness might be a great way to play DRMed games while still retaining a clean system.Who knows though, it might turn out to be completely impractical. Definitely looking forward to the next article. :)
JohanAnandtech - Thursday, October 9, 2008 - link
Really nice to read that you appreciate our articles. Nothing better than a pat on the back to keep going ;-).smithkt - Thursday, October 9, 2008 - link
Consider this a real pat on the back.This topic does interest some of us and the effort is appreciated. Looking forward to seeing the article and hoping it will bring some things into focus for me.
JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, October 8, 2008 - link
Anandtech started out as a pure hardware enthusiast site. Most of the people, like you, come here for the enthusiast part. With it.anandtech.com, we like to attract the enthusiast that - probably got a bit older - and is now building the infrastructure of the (smaller) enterprises. And believe me in some cases that is more exciting (and admitted more nerve racking since there more money involved!) than building the latest gaming pc.The beauty of Anandtech is that claims of manufacturers are checked with benchmarks and tests.
At it.anandtech.com we try to bring that same philosophy to the IT world. Because frankly, lots of the Enterprise IT stuff is not benchmarked, but "assumed to be faster/slower".
For example, you would amazed how many people think that an expensive storage enclosure must be faster than cheaper one. "Surely an EMC must be faster than a white product!". The thing is if you apply the "enthusiast way" of looking at it, you know that it is matter of disks, RAID chip and amount of cache. So a cheap one with a newer dualcore RAID chip might beat an expensive one with an older single core RAID chip. You might still prefer the last one because it has better backup software and is easier to maintain, but at least you know it is bullshit when vendors claims their solution is faster simply "because it is in a different class".
RagingDragon - Friday, October 10, 2008 - link
Johan,I've been reading your articles for a long time now - since shortly after you started writing for aceshardware, and I continued reading after you joined the AnandTech team. I pretty much fit your target market too - an older enthusiast working in IT, though as it happens I'm working on small projects for huge enterprise.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 8, 2008 - link
There's also the fact that while few people get a job because they know tons about computer games and graphics, knowing something about the IT world can be very useful when it comes time to get a paycheck. I'm always interested in reading Johan's articles, even though I don't run any real servers anymore. :)marc1000 - Wednesday, October 8, 2008 - link
that's a good point too. and right now we are making more comments on the IT articles =)thinking of my self-experience with virtualization, this was the very reason I bought my first dual-core CPU, and not gaming. I wanted to run a virtual server (windows + SQL) with more freedom to play around with disks and other advanced configurations, so I could practice and learn more before I took an exam for certification at Microsoft. Virtualization is not only for the "pro's".