Virtualization

The Discussion

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  Yea!!! I've been waiting for this one for awhile.
  Will virtualization in Longhorn Server be like Virtual Server is now, or more like Virtuozzo works??? I prefer the latter if you please

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  Fantastic video. Everything from Assembly to Managed code, how much cooler can you be?
  
  

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  How does Vm effect running speed, what about about a single box with muliple CPUs( one at the core of each virtual box) to add real kick to processing? thought, does the utilization of VMs being built off old technology mimicing old hardware etc. affect speed through compatibility issues even though you are not limited except to existing box parameters?Kind of like a shotgun approach it will run Dos, Windows 3.1 Linux etc. versus a VM mimicing exactly and only what is needed to run the application, can that be done? at the kernel level or through manually establishing a box for each additional OS/App run  

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  Good stuff.  For future reference, C/Scoble, guys... When we say we want geekier videos these are the ones we want.

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  man it's been ages since i've been to channel 9 since the video's started losing my interest
  
  this is the stuff i'm talking about, way to go!
  

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  We will continue to provide this type of content. You have my word. Many of the folks we want to talk to are really busy right now making the the things we want them to spend an hour talking deeply about. That said, we have some great interviews coming up in the coming months. Hang in there my friends. We'll deliver.
  
  C

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  Comment removed at user's request.

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  Comment removed at user's request.

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  Zeo wrote:

  At minute 22 there was an edit. I don't know what was cut....but I sure hope that what ever was cut can make it on to the "Vista deleted scenes" dvd that I'm proposing be released after Vista and Longhorn server ships. Almost as a ."we couldn't show you then, but now we can" video.  

  
  
  In the interests of transparency... What was cut was a comment that I made, in harmless jest of course (we all laughed) that was not very PR friendly to a certain product team... That's all I can say. PR wanted it removed. I removed it (after going back and forth with them). In retrospect, it was just a dumb thing to say. Let's move on. Try and keep this thread on topic (I've asked the Virtualization People to keep an eye on this thread).
  
  C

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  I love to see videos on Virtual PC/Virtual Server/virtualization in general. This is definitely one I plan on watching.

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  Whats about managment - When you are running 8 partitions on a hyper visor - is there one master partition? (I guess an especially "enlightend" partition)
  
  Would it have access to the other partitions (for example show virtual cpu utilization or screen shots like you have in the current VPC)
  
  If it does have access does that mean that if I break the master partition then I can control the others 

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  -- EDIT --> Answered in the video.
  
  I don't understnad if I have hardware that has a 5% utilization rate then just add more apps to this server instance itself - instead of loping off another x percent for the virtualization software to run an entire new instance of the OS?
  
  The resources used are anyways going to the same actual hardware weather the source is an app running on the real os or a virtualized machine.
  
  Unless we are talking about reliability (don't want the PDC running on the Web server )- is that it?

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  AIM48 wrote:

  
  I don't understnad if I have hardware that has a 5% utilization rate then just add more apps to this server instance itself - instead of loping off another x percent for the virtualization software to run an entire new instance of the OS?
   

  
  
  Imagine you're running Exchange and a web server on the same machine. If a patch comes out for Exchange that requires a reboot, you have to take down the web server unnecessarily.
  
  With virtual servers, you can keep separate applications in separate VMs, thus improving availability. Plus you know with absolute certainty that the Exchange patch won't break the web server since they are running on separate (albeit virtual) machines.
  
  Virtualization is very, very cool indeed!

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  Way cool.  How about a wild idea:
  
  How about a "VM on a Stick"?  Take a 100GB Numa memory stick (TBD), and attach it via external channel to a CPU.  Now the VM has all is RAM and storage in the same stick.  Move the stick to another machine - done.  Have a 16 port memory stick Hub (i.e. Stick Pool)that connects to a machine or dual connected to two machines for failover to grab the stick pool.  How about upgrades?  Pause the stick pool, and plug it into a faster cpu unit.  Resume the stick pool and cpu upgrade is done and VMs resume.  Some very cool possibilites.
  
  "OK. No problem Mr. customer, I will express mail you your new machine.  You will have your new machine with latest updates tomorrow morning.  O, BTW, could you mail me your old stick, I would like to take a closer look at it.  Thank you."
  
    That would be a neat conversation to have some day...

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  Man that's cool stuff!

  I've been wanting to switch over to virtual server for a long time (from vmware gsx).  Unfortunately, I've never been able to get permissions to work right. I haven't been able to get a vm running as anything other than admin.

  It's surprising because MS server products are usually easier to configure. 

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  Comment removed at user's request.

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  Zeo wrote:

  Since PDC 03 I've had this general question. Why not run a Virtual PC of Windows XP so that all backward compat is maintained and then external to that virtual machine write new code for vista. That way their is never a question of back compatibility because of if an application ran on Windows XP it will continue to run on all future versions of windows without any question of back compat issues.
   
  
  I understand that there are patching issues...but I have to wonder why Microsoft hasn't adopted this approach. What are the pitfalls of creating an OS architecture like that?

  
  
  You mean a lot like Apple did with the "classic" mode in OS X? Or did you have something more transparent in mind? (In which case, isn't that akin to what WOW already does? Or have I missed the point completely?)

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  Regarding the Hypervisor architecture.
  
  Do you install a specialized HAL (like you do for different bus architectures) if setup detects that it is installing on a pacifica platform. I would assume that cramming both a "enlightend" and a standard kernel into the whole code pipeline would make for some inefeciencies.

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  I would love to know if they have though about doing something like this

  http://www.marathontechnologies.com/products.html
  
  Stephen.

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  dang...
  
  It looks like Virtual PC will not support the 3D Aero Glass compositor until 2007.
  I wonder when VMware Player will support it.
  

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  The hypervisor technology for LHS produces a full virtual machine to run a separate instance of the OS and is more like Virtual Server in that regard. 
  
  Virtuozzo is more like the Solaris Zones concept of running just virtualized user mode components and is also an interesting approach if you don't need a full isolated instance of the OS.
  

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  "I've been wanting to switch over to virtual server for a long time (from vmware gsx).  "
  
  Not trying to start a war,
  
  But I am much happier with VMware GSX server than I am with VS 2005 R2.  I use both in  production and have purchased both.
  
  Also see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897614/en-us for compatability issues.  VMWare GSX does not have a list such as this.
  
  Having said that, the video was quite interesting and useful.
  
  Hope that helps,
  Bob

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  All of the enlightenments are being done in the regular kernel for LHS.  The kernel detects the presence of the hypervisor and dynamically uses the enlightenments where they make sense.  No need for a custom HAL.

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  We use a hierarchy model for management of VMs.  There is a parent partition that has control over its child partitions.  In v1 on the hypervisor we will keep this simple with a root and children, but in future versions we may open this up to have multiple parents and a deeper hierarchy.

   

  -Mike

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  If I wrote any kind of emulator for a computer or otherwise would this technique work with it if I wrote it to spec in Windows Vista?

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  TimStone wrote:

  If I wrote any kind of emulator for a computer or otherwise would this technique work with it if I wrote it to spec in Windows Vista?

  
  
  If the emulator is standard user mode code, it should work fine in a VM.

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  Loved this video great stuff!

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  Very interesting. Virtualization will play an important role in the future of computing.

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  Just curious.  How did/does IBM MVS do it? Could you compare/contract the arch?  Are we going to get to Partitions like that or better?

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  AndyC wrote:

  Imagine you're running Exchange and a web server on the same machine. If a patch comes out for Exchange that requires a reboot, you have to take down the web server unnecessarily.
  
  With virtual servers, you can keep separate applications in separate VMs, thus improving availability. Plus you know with absolute certainty that the Exchange patch won't break the web server since they are running on separate (albeit virtual) machines.
  
  Virtualization is very, very cool indeed!

  
  This could be achieved with proper layering and adding the ability to reboot a layer and all other layers above it. I'd guess.
  
  For instance, it's still baffling me why Windows still can't perform a "hot" reboot by shutting down everything above the kernel, have the kernel cleanout everything and restart all drivers. Instead of going through the BIOS boot and all that.
  

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  "For instance, it's still baffling me why Windows still can't perform a "hot" reboot by shutting down everything above the kernel, have the kernel cleanout everything and restart all drivers. Instead of going through the BIOS boot and all that."
  
  For that matter, why could it not call a special driver that reloads a last known good image from disk. Not sure if that would actually save much time or not. 

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  Another outstanding video!  I love both virtual pc and server.  Keep that Intel chip working to the max. 
  
  I tried one of my applications loaded on virtual pc and then went to the Intel virtual chip site and gee, everything was really virtual! 
  
  Actually they had a Windows server 2003 with a virtual xeon simulation on the site, so it was pretty interesting to see all working at once. 

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  Does this support 'live migration', saving, restoring VMs out of the box like Xen does?
  

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  I am curious if Dave Cutler is involved in the hypervisor design or even the VS 200x projects.
  
  Thanks,
  Bob
  

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  krishkumar wrote:

  Does this support 'live migration', saving, restoring VMs out of the box like Xen does?
  

  
  
  Virtual PC and Virtual Server both support saving and restoring VMs and have since their first release.
  
  Live migration is currently a planned feature for the Windows hypervisor based systems.
  

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  Osm3um wrote:

  I am curious if Dave Cutler is involved in the hypervisor design or even the VS 200x projects.
  
  Thanks,
  Bob
  

  
  
  Dave works in the same organization as the VM team.  He is primarily focused on the Windows kernel development, but does provide input on the hypervisor and the virtualization strategy.
  

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  Are you guys planning to provide the checkpointing feature too? It might not be in the same form as discussed in the video. For example, you might not be able to checkpoint a VM absolutely since you cannot capture the state of the filesystem. Or can you?
  

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  Excellent.  Will you support MultiMontor support where each VM is on a separate monitor?  Will you support Seamless VMs where its desktop is in a window on the host desktop?  Will you support Seamless apps from a VM where the app will display on the host desktop?  Good for legacy apps.  Definitely the host or displaying VM should use all the great display technology, for example 16 monitors with 3D effects. I see maybe an advantage here with debugging kernel code coverage with your restart feature. You said you have things to help kernel development, I find that interesting.  With Multi CPUs will the VMs run on separate CPUs?  Also since the Hypervisor will never crash, servers can always be inband and controlled remotely over say Ethernet. Also could the Hypervisor be scaled to the Workstation - 1 CPU to always allow inband connections for remotely controlly boxes that even BSOD. This is definately good technology - thank your time. Like to hear more.

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  thanks

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  Just wondering if there are a metod to convert my current physical XP installation into  VHD(virtual Hard) and run under VPC and V server
  
  thanks

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  Are you able to install Longhorn/Server 2008 B3 with the hypervisor?  And how would I tell it that's how I want it setup? (Is it just an option in the setup configuration?
  
  I know I need to use the x64 version, and a processor that supports it, which I have.  I haven't tried installing it, as I'm waiting for the Seagate Barracuda ES 500 GB Hard Drive I ordered to come in, which will probally be Monday or Tuesday.