Improved tools for Virtual Server backups
According to the rumours, the next release of ESX, ESX 4.0 (aka vSphere, the project codename) which will include the 2.0 release of VMware Consolidated Backup (*VCB) will be announced at VMworld – with significant enhancements for virtual server backups.
The question of virtual server backups is a hot button in the datacenter. Virtualisation is widespread in the enterprise, a standard feature in the CIO's toolkit; production servers are virtualised and some users are already rolling out end-point virtualisation. For some the question of backups doesn't arise. But backing up a virtual server is not as simple as it looks. Several vendors have built a successful business by specializing in this area. An example is Vizioncore, offering a battery of solutions for the security, management and backup of virtual servers. Other vendors such as BakBone, Atempo or Arkeia, well known as traditional backup specialists, are moving in on virtualisation. Arkeia has just announced the first virtual backup appliance dedicated to the VMware ESX environment, and is developing solutions for other hypervisors. Storage market leader EMC's Avamar Virtual Edition for VMware combines deduplication and backup for greater efficiency. But the replication specialists like Double-Take Software can also offer a solution to the problem of backups. With Double-Take for VMware Infrastructure, virtual servers can be replicated incrementally to a remote site. When problems arise, failover systems can be brought online automatically in just a few minutes. It's a solution that complements the more classic replication and failover solutions from Double-Take Software.
* What is VCB? VMware Consolidated Backup is a suite of drivers and scripts allowing virtual servers running on a supported operating system to be backed up via a centralised proxy server (Microsoft Windows 2003), using a single backup agent on the proxy and avoiding use of the LAN. Consolidated Backup integrates with most of the backup products available on the market. The VCB server interfaces with the hypervisor and runs the backup utilities, reducing the load on the ESX server during backups.
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Hyper-V version 2 is due in 2010 (but a beta version is already available)
A few weeks ago at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Microsoft announced a beta version of Windows Server 2008 R2 – which certain users are already referring to as Windows Server 2007, on the basis that it's developed from the same base as Windows Vista replacement Windows 7. This new version of Windows server 2008 is only supported on 64-bit architectures, with production release scheduled for 2010. One of the core elements will be an improved version of the Microsoft hypervisor, Hyper-V 2, with new features intended to allow Microsoft to compete on a more equal footing with VMware.
Live Migration: Much awaited, comparable with VMware's VMotion feature, Live Migration refers to the ability to move a virtual machine from one physical host to another without taking it down. Live Migration builds on the Clustered Shared Volume feature, which allows every node in the cluster to access the same disk volume, so that multiple virtual servers can be run on a single LUN.
Power Management: Support for CPU Core Parking lets Windows put unused processor cores into a low power state, but quickly bring them back up again to meet an increase in workload.
Improved virtual server network performance: the Virtual Machine Queue implementation allows the NIC to use DMA directly to virtual server memory, accelerating throughput
Support for TCP/IP offloading and jumbo frames
Support for new memory management features in Intel (Extended Page Tables) and AMD (Nested Page Tables) processors
Support for 32-core processors
Hot plug-in and hot removal of physical and virtual disk storage
Boot from virtual disks, SAN or NAS
A new, enhanced release of PowerShell
We'll undoubtedly learn more at the Microsoft Techdays event in Paris this week (Feb. 10th to 12th). Hyper-V release 2 is expected to be made available as a standard component of Windows Server 2008 R2.
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