VMWare Expands Server Software To Support Dual-Processor Virtual Machines

Targeting enterprises that want to consolidate servers, the combination of ESX Server 2 and the Virtual SMP add-on lets IT get more bang for their server hardware buck, said Mike Mullany, senior director of product management at the virtual machine maker.

"The real market is in two-CPU systems," said Mullany, citing numbers that 70 to 75 percent of the server market is in dual-processor boxes. "Virtual SMP and ESX Server 2 allow enterprises to consolidate several servers, including those based on physical two-CPU systems, onto one physical server.

"It's kind of funny," he said, "but even though companies may not need two-CPU servers, they tend to standardize on them. That means they're often running them at very low levels of operational utilization."

ESX Server 2, when combined with Virtual SMP--which released today after an extended beta period that began back in February--allows companies to "stack more servers on a single piece of hardware," said Mullany.

Rather than get a hardware efficiency rate of just 5 to 10 percent, Mullany said, companies deploying ESX Server 2 and Virtual SMP should see efficiencies climb into the 60 to 80 percent range. "It's the same workload, he said, "just less hardware."

ESX Server 2, the first major update to VMWare's server product since its original release in 2001, also boosts the number of virtual machines that can be run simultaneously on one physical system from the earlier maximum of 64 to a new top-end of 80. With Virtual SMP running, that count is halved, to 40 dual-processor virtual machines.

Other high-end features that have been added to ESX Server include the ability to gang several network adapters that multiple virtual machines can share; new support for blade servers, including IBM's BladeCenter and HP's ProLiant BL20p; and support for storage area network (SAN) fail-over, so that networked storage systems can be accessed via a secondary route if the primary goes down and out.

ESX Server 2 can create virtual machine partitions able to run Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Server, XP Professional, NT 4, RedHat Advanced Server 2.1, RedHat (versions 7.3, 8.0, and 9.0), SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8, and SuSE Linux 8.2.

ESX Server 2 sports a starting price of $3,750 when deployed on a dual-processor, Intel-based physical server, while the Virtual SMP module comes with a price tag of $1,250.

VMWare also released a new migration tool, P2V (for 'physical to virtual') Assistant, which automates much of the process of moving a physical server to a virtual machine partition on ESX Server 2.

P2V Assistant images a physical server, creates a virtual machine partition on ESX Server, then migrates the image to the partition. "Before P2V, it would take IT a couple of days to a week to move a physical server to a virtual machine," said Mullany. "Now that can be done in just hours."

Although P2V Assistant released today, VMWare is not setting a price, but instead will follow the 'soft-pricing' path it took when it first released ESX Server two years ago. "We want to have the freedom to change the price," admitted Mullany.

On Monday, VMWare also announced it was putting its VMWare Control Center software into beta testing. When it releases later this year, Control Center will allow enterprise IT to manage all a company's virtual machines, desktops as well as servers, from one location, and respond quickly to changing computing needs by moving live virtual machines from one physical server to another without bringing down the virtual machine.

While VMWare has moved from the single-CPU virtual machine to a dual-processor scheme, it's not resting on its laurels. The company is working on support for virtual servers that duplicate the power of a four-way physical server. Mullany wouldn't commit to a timeline for release of this four-CPU support, however, and said only that it would happen "pretty quickly."

This story courtesy of TechWeb.