Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 download link and availability details

re: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 download link and availability details

Chong Ai Chung — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 21:45:04 GMT

I had applied for participation to Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta few days ago but I haven't receive any e-mail with link to download.

When I select Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta link on connect.microsoft.com. It show the message "Coming Soon".

re: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 download link and availability details

jace — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 21:53:48 GMT

This sure sounds great...

Is there some way that Microsoft could allow a free virtual machine license for a guest, equivalent to the licensed OS of the host?

In other words, I would like to use Virtual Server on my XP Pro box, but I can't install XP Pro into Virtual Server because I can't afford another license....

Thanks

re: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 download link and availability details

jhoward — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 21:59:20 GMT

Chong - entry into program only went live a couple of hours ago. It appears that the someone was a little ahead of themselves and posted the link onto connect a few days ago. You should receive an email within 24 hours of 10AM (PST) when it officially opened.
Regards,
John.

re: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 download link and availability details

jhoward — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 22:11:57 GMT

Jace - a million $ question. Understand the predicament. Whereas I won't rule this out entirely, I would certainly say that is unlikely in the near future. There is somewhat of a precedent with Windows Server 2003 EE allowing 4 virtual machine use rights with the server license. I'll pass the feedback on certainly.

FWIW - if this is for dev & test, it may be worth signing up for a TechNet Plus or MSDN subscription. Both have rights for up to 10 instances of XP/2003/... There's usually some type of promotional code available.

Virtual Server 2003 R2 SP1 and Beyond

TenBrink Tech — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 00:33:58 GMT

From a VS blogger:
So what's in Beta 1? Functionally, the main change is the support for Intels VT processors...

re: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 download link and availability details

Robert Spivack — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 07:09:38 GMT

The lack of performance improvement for guest Windows VM when Intel hardware VT support is enabled seems counter-intuitive. I'm not a chip or VM guru, but my general impression was that without hardware support there is always some level of ring 0 emulation and interrupt handling that is inefficient and should be done better in hardware.

So is this wrong, or is the lack of performance improvement indicative of Intel's hardware VT support being lackluster or VS support not being optimized enough to use it and make a difference?

On another note, it seems to me one of the biggest limitations in software VM is the lack of memory image sharing. Assuming I'm running "n" copies of the same guest OS (windows Server 2003, for example) with each guest having 512Mb of ram, I would guess that 80% or more of each VM's ram content is identical code.

It's a shame that either through sw wizardry or hardware VT support for memory mapping all that read-only code pages cannot be globally shared.

Sort of a"single instance store" for VM ram much like Microsoft has done for disk files in server provisioning and the new storage server specialized OS build.

Especially with consolidating lots of low-activity VM's on one physical host, the lack of memory sharing is what limits the density.

If not an elegant solution ,then at least a "committed" and "burst" memory allocation of VM usage like Virtuozzo does would allow some higher density but not the true codepage sharing it should.

re: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 download link and availability details

jhoward — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 07:41:03 GMT

Robert

You've made some excellent point here. Hopefully I can address them all.
With hardware virtualisation assistance, there is no longer any need for ring compression. All guests VMs run their kernel at ring 0, as would be expected if running on real physical hardware. Hardware virtualisation assistance give you what can be thought of as Ring "-1", a ring below the level in which the guest VMs are running in. Hence, there is no need for ring compression or trapping of non-virtualisable instructions in these circumstances.

I understand your comments about static memory sharing. That is a consideration we're putting into Windows Virtualization, but is not today a capability we're introducing into Virtual Server. Yes, I agree, it would save overall host memory usage where there are many static pages in common between guests, however, our general consensus presently is one of security first and foremost in ensuring that there is no leakage between guests. The model of 100% isolation is generally the more secure option. Hardware assistance unfortunately doesn't provide this capability today - once we get into chipsets support providing true isolation in hardware of memory mapping of device memory space (MMIOU/DMA-r etc.,), it's becomes somewhat a no-brainer as a product feature.

I'm familiar with Virtuosso, but certainly wouldn't consider myself an expert. Both Virtual Server and Windows Virtualization are what can be considered hardware virtualization. Virtuosso on the other hand is what most people would consider "software" virtualization. They address completely different problems in radically different ways. Maybe a little simplistic, but hopefully this make sense.

Regards,
John.

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 14:04:34 GMT

re: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 download link and availability details

Philipp Kohn — Mon, 01 May 2006 15:34:07 GMT

Hi John,

very interesting stuff.
I´m very excited to see how much performance impact Vanderpool has...

Next week I will test it on a new IBM Dual Core Xeon Server.

Regards Philipp
http://blog.kohnonline.de

Speaking of Virtualization - Service Pack 1 Beta opened on Friday April 28th

Canadian IT Professionals — Mon, 01 May 2006 17:47:46 GMT

This slipped past my RSS reader until the weekend (I had a busy Friday).&nbsp; Service Pack 1 for Virtual...

re: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 download link and availability details

Philipp Kohn — Tue, 02 May 2006 01:45:53 GMT

BTW: On mcseboard.de where I´m a moderator a user have posted a interesting question to this topic.

Is there any common solution how to check if a cpu is vanderpool ready and if it´s activated?

Regards Philipp

re: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 download link and availability details

jhoward — Tue, 02 May 2006 01:59:11 GMT

How about using the Intel utility for processor identification: http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df-external/confirm.aspx?ftpDown=ftp://aiedownload.intel.com/df-support/7838/eng/pidenu07.msi&agr=N&ProductID=1881&DwnldId=7838&strOSs=All&OSFullName=All%20Operating%20Systems&lang=eng

Cheers,
John.

re: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 download link and availability details

Philipp Kohn — Tue, 02 May 2006 08:50:58 GMT

Same answer I give ;-)

but I pointed to the bootable Version...
http://support.intel.com/support/processors/tools/piu/sb/CS-015823.htm

I will have to recheck this when I´ll get my Vanderpool-Ready Server.

What would be very interesting is, how can I identify if Virtual Server use Vanderpool.

Regards Philipp

jtb.blog » Blog Archive » Beta: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1

jtb.blog » Blog Archive » Beta: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 — Tue, 02 May 2006 17:43:47 GMT

PingBack from http://blog.jensthebrain.de/archives/2006/05/02/beta-virtual-server-2005-r2-sp1/

re: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 download link and availability details

jhoward — Tue, 02 May 2006 20:13:49 GMT

Hi Philipp - assuming you mean can a guest tell if it is running on a VT enabled host processor, answer is no.
Regards,
John.

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 FAQ#1: Hardware requirements

John Howard — Wed, 03 May 2006 21:51:56 GMT

I've had numerous direct emails asking what are the requirements for hardware when running Virtual Server...

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 download link and availability details

Ken Lince - Partner Technology Specialist — Fri, 12 May 2006 00:43:52 GMT

There will be a couple of beta releases of Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 -&nbsp;You can download the first...

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 2 Download link and availability

John Howard — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 04:43:55 GMT

Following on a previous entry&nbsp;in April, within the last hour, Beta 2 of Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1...

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 2 Download link and availability » Dee’s-Planet! Blog

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 00:28:04 GMT

PingBack from http://www.roks.xmgfree.com/blog/2006/08/31/virtual-server-2005-r2-sp1-beta-2-download-link-and-availability/

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 2 Download link and availability

External News — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 03:35:14 GMT

Following on a previous entry in April, within the last hour, Beta 2 of Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 has

Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 2 Download link and availability

John Howard - Hyper-V and virtualization blog — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 04:41:30 GMT

Following on a previous entry in April, within the last hour, Beta 2 of Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 has

re: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 download link and availability details

Patrick Kennedy — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 07:47:52 GMT

Can you virtualize Windows 2008 Beta (AMD-64) Server via Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1? That would be cool.

re: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 1 download link and availability details

jhoward — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:01:56 GMT

Patrick - wow. This was an old post. No is the simple answer as both Windows Server 2008 and Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 (as well as Hyper-V) have "RTM'd" since April 2006.

Virtual Server only support x86 guests. To run a x64 guest operating system, you have to use Hyper-V.

Cheers,

John.