VMWare ESX4 available now

Definitely going to be upgrading to this (currently on VI3 enterprise) - mostly for the backup and power management features. Think I'll wait a little while for any bugs to come out the woodwork first though :)
 
They should be done automatically - are you the named contact on the portal?

I had my upgrade notification a few weeks ago
 
Its compatible with almost every server vendor's products - its not really the type of product intended to be run on whitebox systems
 
It's a new version of VI, which they have renamed to vShere. That includes a new version of ESX (4) which has new features/modules and a new version of virtualcenter. The "cloud computing" nonsense is really just marketing buzzwords.
 
It is indeed ESX4, ESXi 4 will follow soon

Unless you have VI licenses and can make use of the new features, I wouldnt be inclined to rush into anything this soon
 
Well I'm more hoping there will be an easy upgrade path from ESX 3.5 to 4 (we have VI licences) rather than a complete rebuild. Checked there website out and there doesn't seem to be much out at the moment in regards to easy upgrades so I'll stay where we are until it's a little cleaer on how to proceed.



M.
 
Its compatible with almost every server vendor's products - its not really the type of product intended to be run on whitebox systems
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Indeed, the very nature of ESX makes this impractical for VMware. Given with ESX 3 (and I don't know about 4) it was basically a 2.4 Linux Kernel, there was no WAY they'd have enough time and resources to backport hardware support present in 2.6 into their product. One of the downsides for VMware really, it mean't a very limited range of hardware support. Supporting new hardware took lots of effort.

I wonder what ESX 4 is based on...
 
FirebarUK said:
Indeed, the very nature of ESX makes this impractical for VMware. Given with ESX 3 (and I don't know about 4) it was basically a 2.4 Linux Kernel, there was no WAY they'd have enough time and resources to backport hardware support present in 2.6 into their product. One of the downsides for VMware really, it mean't a very limited range of hardware support. Supporting new hardware took lots of effort.

I wonder what ESX 4 is based on...
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Common misconception that. The OS is actually VMware's own so hardware support is developed in house. The linux kernel you see on the console is another VM.

The point still applies though, they're selling enterprise software - why would they bother developing support for desktop chipsets and obscure SATA controllers
 
Was trying to find my training manuals to give more details on that but Wikipedia actually explains it quite well:

VMware states that the ESX Server product runs on "bare metal".[3] In contrast to other VMware products, it does not run atop a third-party operating system[4], but instead includes its own kernel. Up through the current ESX version 3.5, a Linux kernel is started first[5] and is used to load a variety of specialized virtualization components, including VMware's 'vmkernel' component. This previously-booted Linux kernel then becomes the first running virtual machine and is called the service console. Thus, at normal run-time, the vmkernel is running on the bare computer and the Linux-based service console runs as the first virtual machine (and cannot be terminated or shutdown without shutting down the entire system).
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Was trying to find my training manuals to give more details on that but Wikipedia actually explains it quite well:
Click to expand...

Interesting.

As far as I'm aware that Linux kernel is what actually boots the machine and contains support for disk controllers and the like (so it can actually boot off a filesystem). It acts as the bootstrap. Also, many of the device drivers are derived from those in the Linux kernel (also stated in Wikipedia) and (from what I've heard) are tied to the Linux kernel VMware uses (2.4 based).

In some ways this approach is similar to Xen. The Xen Hypervisor is loaded which then loads a Linux kernel which then sits as dom0. This Linux kernel sits on top of the Xen Hypervisor and is in control of all the device drivers for the hardware. So it's not the Xen Hypervisor which contains the drivers.

So, my statement still stands (I think). This is an advantage of Xen (and Hyper-V I guess), whereby special driver modules aren't required. You can get a Virtual Host on any computer you want providing Windows 2008 Server drivers or Linux kernel modules are available. Whereas VMware must modify existing kernel modules and tailor them to their architecture (lots of effort).
 
That sounds about right.

I think the hypervisor needs to support the hardware as well as the kernel.

Either way, its hard to find a server that it would be worth running ESX on (not talking old P3 Xeons etc here) that isnt supported and thats really all that matters
 
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