Advancing the Power of Visualization.

This is an interview by HPwire with Steve Briggs, HPCD’s SVA product marketing manager on Visualisation from HP point of view. Interesting information

Advancing the Power of Visualization –Coming Soon to Linux Clusters: 100 Million Pixels and More

Xen: Invalid Source and/or Image destination

Xen Virtualisation comes with Redhat Enterprise 5 and its variant such as CentOS 5. A pretty cool package which allow full and para Virtualisation.


Very clear instruction can be found at Virtualization Guide


However during installation, I encounter a error where somehow I cannot install Media URL. I've tried NFS, but it didn't work.



















To resolve this issue, look at the CentOS Discussion Forum. Initially I tried to use iso image but couldn't get it to work

1. Start the Apache Service
2. Place the CentOS DVD Disk into the Drive
3. Do a Softlink from "ln -s /media/CentOS_5.2_Final /var/www/html/dvd"
4. Of course first check that you can see the http://127.0.0.1/dvd
5. Run Virt-Manager

The rest will be quite a breeze

Citrix XenServer Enterprise Free

Citrix XenServer (Enterprise) is provided as free download. According to CITRIX, it offers a competitive, enterprise-ready virtual infrastructure platform with full centralized management, live motion and support for unlimited VMs and servers—with no strings attached.

Citrix XenServer (Enterprise) download

ERROR unable to connect to '/var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock': Connection refused

Please ensure all these steps are done first. We can then isolate the error more accurately. The 1st few steps are taken from HowtoForge Virtualization With KVM On A CentOS 5.2 Server



Step 1: Checking the Virtualisation Technology on AMD and Intel

Step 2: Install KVM and virtinst

# yum install  kvm kmod-kvm qemu libvirt python-virtinst

Step 3: Reboot the System

# shutdown -r now

Step 4: Check that the KVM kernel Module is loaded

# lsmod grep kvm

kvm_intel     50452      0
kvm           109264     1 kvm_intel

(If you use Intel VT CPU, you should see the above, if you are using AMD-V processor, you should see kvm_amd)

When installing KVM and its related components on CentOS 5.x , you might encounter the error when you type the command "# virt-install"

ERROR unable to connect to '/var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock': Connection refused
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "/usr/sbin/virt-install", line 889, in ?
      main()
   File "/usr/sbin/virt-install", line 628, in main
      conn = cli.getConnection(options.connect)
   File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/virtinst/cli.py", line 126, in getConnction
      conn = libvirt.open(connect)
   File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/libvirt.py", line 159, in open
     if ret is None:raise libvirtError('virConnectOpen() failed')
libvirtError: unable to connect to '/var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock': Connection refused

To solve this, edit /etc/libvirt/libvirtd.conf and

# vim /etc/libvirt/libvirtd.conf

uncommented out the listen_tls = 0 line

listen_tls = 0

Start the libvirtd Daemon

# service libvirtd start

You should able to eliminate the error

Detecting Intel VT and AMD-V

Here is a simple and useful short writeup on how to Detect Intel VT and AMD-V and enabling it to ensure you can have the virtualisation extension for your Hyper-V, KVM or other Hyper-Visor that make use of hardware virtualisation

Detecting Intel VT and AMD-V from vmjournal.wordpress.com

Checking the Virtualisation Technology on AMD and Intel

You may want to check whether your hardware supports Virtualisation for Intel and AMD chipsets.

# egrep "flags.*:.*(svm|vmx)" /proc/cpuinfo

If there is output, your hardware supports virtualisation.

Other related Topics includes

1. Determining if Intel Virtualization Technology or AMD Virtualization is enabled in the BIOS without rebooting
2. Detecting Intel VT and AMD-V 
   
   

Applications from Vmware

ThinApp
VMware ThinApp virtualizes applications by encapsulating application files and registry into a single ThinApp package that can be deployed, managed and updated independently from the underlying OS.

Some of the key benefits according to NetApp:

1. Simplify Windows 7 migration:
2. Eliminate application conflicts
3. Consolidate application streaming servers:
4. Reduce desktop storage costs:
5. Increase mobility for end users:

SpringSource tc Server
SpringSource tc Server provides enterprise users with the lightweight server they want paired with the operational management, advanced diagnostics, and mission-critical support capabilities businesses need. It is designed to be a drop in replacement for Apache Tomcat 6, ensuring a seamless migration path for existing custom-built and commercial software applications already certified for Tomcat. One interesting feature is that the DownloadsSpringSource Tool Suite is Free.

Open Source Client for Vmware View

Vmware has released a free LINUX Clients for Vmware View Desktop Solution. For more information, read Vmware View. To download the Vmware View Open Client