Few day back, I found a brand new Virtualization related Magazine – VirtualizeTips Magazine from Brian and Mike. Good jobs!

This is a project that I’ve been working on for a couple of months now and finally was able to bring it together. My dream for this is to produce something monthly if possible. I like the magazine format because it offers something different than just reading RSS feeds and blog posts. For the people that travel or use iPads or other tablets I hope this gives you something else of interest to read.

Initially the focus of the magazine will be heavily focused around VMware technology but as time passes I hope to be able to incorporate other Virtualization topics into the mix. The content will include interviews, how-to articles, reviews and community based topics.

This edition has articles that cover HP BladeSystem Matrix, Designing with VAAI, new VMware certifications, storage and networking articles and Kendrick Colemans home lab and several other topics.

I think it’s good to share to everyone if you’re not aware of. Many thanks to all those who have contributed especially Brian & Mike. Keep your spirit!

You can download the 1st edition of VirtualizeTips Magazine in PDF here or here.

Latest version:
vCenter Server 4.0 Update 2 (Build 258672)
vSphere Client 4.0 Update 2 (Build 258672)
ESX 4.0 Update 2 (Build 261974)
VMware Tools (Build 261974)

What ‘s new about VMware vCenter 4.0 Update 2:

• Guest Operating System Customization Improvements: vCenter Server now supports customization of the following guest operating systems:
  • Windows XP Professional SP2 (x64) serviced by Windows Server 2003 SP2
  • SLES 11 (x32 and x64)
  • SLES 10 SP3 (x32 and x64)
  • RHEL 5.5 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
  • RHEL 5.4 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
  • RHEL 4.8 Server Platform (x32 and 64)
  • Debian 5.0 (x32 and x64)
  • Debian 5.0 R1 (x32 and x64)
  • Debian 5.0 R2 (x32 and x64)
• Resolved Issues:In addition, this release delivers a number of bug fixes that have been documented in theResolved Issues section.

What ‘s new about VMware vSPhere 4.0 Update 2:

• Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors.
• Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors.
• Enablement of IOMMU Functionality for AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors without input/output memory management unit (IOMMU). vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables IOMMU functionality for the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors.
• Enhancement of the esxtop/resxtop utility— vSphere 4.0 Update 2 includes an enhancement of the performance monitoring utilities, esxtop and resxtop. The esxtop/resxtop utilities now provide visibility into the performance of NFS datastores in that they display the following statistics for NFS datastores: Reads/s, writes/s, MBreads/s,MBwrtn/s, cmds/s, GAVG/s(guest latency).
• Additional Guest Operating System Support— ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 2 adds support for Ubuntu 10.04. For a complete list of supported guest operating systems with this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

Check out VMware vCenter 4 Update 2 Release Notes here and VMware vSphere Update 2 Release Notes here.

In order to upgrade or download, please refer to VMware download page here.

VMware vSphere 4 available for download now!

ESX 4.0 | 21 MAY 2009 | Build 164009
vCenter Server 4.0 | 21 MAY 2009 | Build 162902
VMware vSphere 4 release notes

Check out official link at http://www.vmware.com/download/vsphere/

Citrix Systems commissioned Tolly to evaluate the performance of Citrix XenApp when running on Citrix XenServer 5 and compare that with XenApp running on VMware ESX 3.5u3.

Testing focused on system scalability and user quality-of-experience. This test report was approved for publication by VMware. The VMware End User License Agreement (EULA) requires such approval.

The testing was conducted in accordance with Tolly Common RFP #1101, Virtual Server Performance. That document is available for license and you can find more information about it on the Tolly Common RFP website.

Download the free Citrix/VMware report as below:

Register and Download!

Get a free license for VMware ESXi and build virtual machines in minutes with this easy-to-deploy, OS-independent hypervisor.

Check out more details about VMware ESXi free edition here.

Download VMware workstation, VMware ESX 3.5 and ESXi and start your testing now!

Look at the video.


An video uploaded by DaviD Davis from TrainSignal.

Basically the new version come with 2.6.18 kernel version of Linux as the host system.

The Xen 3.3.0 features including:

• Power management (P & C states) in the hypervisor
• HVM emulation domains (qemu-on-minios) for better scalability, performance and security
• PVGrub: boot PV kernels using real GRUB inside the PV domain
• Better PV performance: domain lock removed from pagetable-update paths
• Shadow3: optimisations to make this the best shadow pagetable algorithm yet, making HVM performance better than ever
• Hardware Assisted Paging enhancements: 2MB page support for better TLB locality
• CPUID feature levelling: allows safe domain migration across systems with different CPU models
• PVSCSI drivers for SCSI access direct into PV guests
• HVM framebuffer optimisations: scan for framebuffer updates more efficiently
• Device passthrough enhancements
• Full x86 real-mode emulation for HVM guests on Intel VT: supports a much wider range of legacy guest OSes
• New qemu merge with upstream development
• Many other changes in both x86 and IA64 ports

Download Xen 3.3 datasheet

Download Xen 3.3.0 official source distribution tarball

Download Linux 2.6.18 with Xen 3.3.0 support source tarball