Windows Virtualization Team Blog : Red Hat

Microsoft and Red Hat Complete Cooperative Technical Support

porourke — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:00:00 GMT

Hi, I'm Mike Neil, general manager of Windows Server and Server Virtualization. Back in February we announced our work with Red Hat to enable cooperative technical support for virtualized environments. I'm excited to announce we've completed certification in each others' programs! Customers now can deploy Microsoft Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and a range of select applications, virtualized on Red Hat and Microsoft virtualization products, knowing that the combined solutions will be supported by both companies.

Here are the details:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 have passed cert tests when running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. See more at RedHat's certified hardware site.
Windows Server 2003/ Windows Server 2008 / Windows Server 2008 R2 are validated to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, using their KVM-based hypervisor. See more at Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program site.

Beyond the OS, both companies have select applications that would receive technical support when running on certified server virtualization software. The Microsoft applications can be seen in KB article 957006. On the Red Hat side, you can now run JBoss Enterprise Middleware within a virtual machine guest on Hyper-V and receive coordinated technical support. This is a step forward for enterprise customers, hosting providers, systems integrators, and those who want to offer their customers the top x86 operating systems to run applications.

And as mentioned in my February post, Microsoft provides the systems management tools, via System Center suite, to manage physical and virtual IT systems and applications, including non-Windows software such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We do a world-class job of managing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so customers can use one pane of glass to manage their legacy Unix and Linux environments together with their Windows Server environments. Read more here, but here's an excerpt from the website:

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 supports monitoring of the following operating systems:

HP-UX 11i v2 and v3 (PA-RISC and IA64)
Sun Solaris 8 and 9 (SPARC) and Solaris 10 (SPARC and x86)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (x86/x64) and 5 (x86/x64) Server
Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (x86) and 10 SP1 (x86/x64)
IBM AIX v5.3 and v6.1 (POWER)

The work with Red Hat is just one of numerous examples of the way we're helping customers and partners running mixed IT environments with Windows and open source technologies. A little over 2 months ago, we announced that the Linux integration components (ICs) for Hyper-V would be contributed to the Linux Driver Project and the drivers licensed under GPLv2. The community has embraced us and helped ready our submission of the drivers for inclusion in the kernel. It was great to see this support and a couple weeks ago what started as our first submission made it into the official kernel tree. The Linux IC code that we contributed is in the staging phase for the next kernel release (2.6.32). See here.

I'll close by saying that Microsoft and Red Hat have competed for customers and partners for some time now, and as platform vendors continue to compete in the marketplace. While the announcement today extends our ongoing technical support collaboration, these agreements do not address, nor do they include provisions relating to patents, open source licensing or other IP matters. We look forward to supporting our joint customers and providing unparalleled solutions for Microsoft's customers and partners!

Thanks,

Mike Neil

Linux ICs for Hyper-V and GPLv2

porourke — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:06:00 GMT

A funny thing happened on the way to work this morning ... the Hyper-V Linux integration components (ICs) appeared in Greg Kroah-Hartman's tree (aka, the Linux Driver Project) of the Linux community. This is the first time Microsoft is contributing code to the Linux kernel; see the Q&A announcement here. The Hyper-V Linux device drivers will be licensed under GPLv2. That's 20,000 lines of code that provide the synthetic device drivers and VM bus implementation needed for a Linux guest OS to run "enlightened" on either Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008.

Greg's tree is for all Linux device drivers being contributed to the community. I'm told that within 24-48 hours it will begin to be picked up by other developers in the community, and that it won't land in the mainline tree (Torvald's tree) until it has been generally accepted in other trees along the way.

So what does this mean? Here are a few thoughts:

I'll be waiting to see the reaction from the Linux community and commercial Linux companies. There should be some positive comments in there along with the expected conspiracy theories ;-)
there's a mutual benefit for Linux distis who want to broaden their work with Windows Server, and for customers to broaden the opportunity for Linux as a guest OS running on Hyper-V
Customers will have another cost-cutting tool because Linux OS will run as a first-class citizen on Hyper-V, and they be able to manage Windows and non-Windows applications and hypervisors using System Center. IT system consolidation, reduce heat in the data center, optimize power draw.
Two Microsoft employees are listed as the maintainers of the Linux ICs, and will continue to enhance the ICs and contribute to the code. I'm sure SMP support will be high on the list.
Microsoft currently distirbutes ICs for SLES 10 sp2. With the release of WS08 R2 version of the ICs, we'll also add support for SLES 11 and RHEL 5.2 and 5.3. A list of suppoted products (via SVVP) can be seen here.

You can watch/listen to Sam and Tom discuss today's news on Channel 9 here.

Patrick

Microsoft at VMworld Europe 2009

porourke — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 09:30:00 GMT

VMworld Europe's tagline this year is "virtually anything is possible". Kinda reminds me of Mike's blog post on Monday about Red Hat. And for many IT pros, "virtually anything is possible" might apply to the fact that Microsoft is exhibiting at, and sponsoring, VMworld Europe for the second year in a row. Tres bien, as they say in Cannes.

So if you're one of the 3,000 paid attendees expected at VMworld Europe 2009, below's a sneak peak at what you'll find inside booth #133. If you're not attending, I'm going to attempt to post some pix ... maybe video if I'm lucky ... from the booth so you can see the action. No doubt there will be plenty of other blogs coming from VMworld Europe. You can see most of them at the Virt blog aggregator.

So what am I expecting to see in Cannes? Outside of the Microsoft booth, I'd expect to see early versions of client hypervisors, interop announcements, new product packaging, cloud computing announcements, and likely an update about VMsafe. Should be a busy week.

As for Microsoft, of course we'll be showcasing our server virtualization platform - Hyper-V. (Citrix might do a little bit of that, too). We'll have a total of 4 demos in the booth:

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V running Live Migration
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 showing management of VMware ESX Server and a Citrix PRO pack demo. Not sure if this will be a sneak peak of the next version or not of SCVMM.
Desktop virtualization with App-V 4.5 and beta of MED-V 1.0.
a VDI demo with Citrix XenApp and WS08 r2 remote desktop services.

I was hoping we'd be demoing the lab manager functions in Visual Studio 10, or the integration to System Center DPM 2007 sp1 and Iron Mountain cloud backup. Oh well, maybe next show. I know we will be there to answer all your licensing questions about the above scenarios. I do recall about 33%-50% of all the people I met in the booth last year had licensing questions. Thankfully Chris Wolf (Burton Group analyst) will have a session on that topic Feb. 24 at 3:15pm. Check it out.

The Microsoft-presented session (comes with the sponsorship) is Feb. 25 at 2pm in Les Ambassadors 2/3. I know Jeff and Edwin have some good demos for this session.

This will also be the first time Paul Maritz takes the stage in front of his European customers and partners. Let's just hope he can pronounce Cannes better than Diane did last year [hint: it's not pronounced like "canz"].

Now it's off to Cannes, and the beautiful promenade with lots of well-dressed locals walking their tiny little dogs. A memory I won't forget. No doubt the poodles will offer a better welcome than we did in Vegas ;-).

Patrick

Microsoft and Red Hat Cooperative Technical Support

porourke — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Hi, I’m Mike Neil, general manager of virtualization at Microsoft. It’s been a while since I’ve blogged here, but today’s post is worth a read.

Ever since we released Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Terminal Services, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Microsoft App-V 4.5 last year, customers and partners have been getting huge value from server consolidation projects, have been able to increase business continuity at much lower costs than with VMware, and have decreased the time and cost required to deliver applications to end users. And while doing this, they’ve been able to use a familiar set of system management tools for both their virtualized and non-virtualized systems and applications across the datacenter and desktops. In fact, Chris from Kroll Factual Data wrote about his DR project on this blog last year. So in many ways I’m pleased that we’ve been able to help so many customers and partners break down the barriers to enterprise-wide virtualization.

But until today there’s been one barrier, not product related, that we haven’t been able to overcome to meet customer and partner demand: the ability to run and support Red Hat Enterprise Linux within a guest VM on WS08 Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server 2008. For all of those who have emailed me, my colleagues and your Microsoft account teams and partners, I’m pleased to say that today is the first big step to delivering that support.

Microsoft and Red Hat recently signed agreements to test and validate our server operating systems running on each other’s hypervisors. Customers with valid support agreements will be able to run these validated configurations and receive joint technical support for running Windows Server on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization, and for running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Hyper-V Server 2008. You can see Red Hat’s news release here, and watch a public webcast discussing this news.

So how are we doing this? Red Hat has joined Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program, and Microsoft is now a Red Hat partner for virtualization interoperability and support. Microsoft will be listed in the Red Hat Hardware Certification List once we’ve completed the Red Hat certification process in H2. In addition to the agreements, Microsoft will publish Linux Integration Components for RHEL when the testing and validation is complete. The folks at Red Hat tell me that they’ll provide WHQL [Windows Hardware Quality Labs] drivers for a variety of Windows Server versions. So not only will you get cooperative technical support, you’ll also get high-performing enlightened VMs.

You might also be wondering – when can I get this? I don’t have a calendar date for you just yet, but I know that validations are now underway and will be as comprehensive as possible. Each company is doing its respective validations separately with the first validated configurations available at different times later this year.

And I’m sure you’re wondering about tools to manage those RHEL guests running on Hyper-V? Good news there. We know virtualization projects aren’t successful unless the right management tools are in place to manage both the virtual and physical. System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, which will be released in calendar Q2 2009, includes cross platform monitoring and support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux server versions 4 and 5 so that you can manage the applications and OS in the guest VM. Other Linux distros will be supported, too. This will allow you to monitor end-to-end data center applications that are distributed across both Windows Server and RHEL, whether these servers are physical or virtual.

I suspect that you’re now as excited as me about these agreements. But maybe you’re wondering … what took so long? That’s a fair question given the number of customers and partners that have been asking for this result.

Let me say that I’m sure everyone reading this can appreciate the distance between Microsoft and Red Hat is measured in more than just the 2,900 miles between Redmond, WA and Raleigh, NC. Microsoft and Red Hat have competed for customers and partners for some time now and as platform vendors continue to compete in the marketplace. Yet, our customers have told us that technical support for server virtualization is an area we must work together. And that’s certainly understandable when you consider the fact that roughly 80% of the primary guest (in a VM) operating systems on x86 servers today come from Microsoft or Red Hat. Indeed, customer demand is the main driver behind these agreements with our competitor.

One thing I’d like to point out: since these agreements are focused on joint technical support for Microsoft and Red Hat’s mutual customers using server virtualization, the activities included in these agreements do not require the sharing of IP. Therefore, these agreements do not include any patent or other IP licensing rights.

I want to leave you with the point that Microsoft is pragmatically focused on helping customers and partners be successful in a heterogeneous IT world. We’re committed to enable and support interoperability with non-Windows OSes. As a result we take a multifaceted approach to interoperability, be it customer-driven industry collaborations, such as this Server Virtualization Validation Program, be it standards that promote common technologies (e.g., device virtualization through the PCI-SIG), or proactive licensing of IP (e.g., Microsoft’s Virtual Hard Disk format, Microsoft’s Hypercall APIs), or the creation of technologies that bridge different systems (e.g., protocol licensing and documentation, Integration Components for Linux). In the end, customers with mixed IT environments expect it all to work together and today’s announcement is one way of making that happen.

Below you can read an FAQ that is also on Red Hat's website.

Mike

FAQ

Q1: Is this a joint agreement between Red Hat and Microsoft?

A1: It’s not a joint agreement. Red Hat has signed an agreement to join Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program, while Microsoft has joined Red Hat’s Virtualization Certification Program . Microsoft will be listed in the Red Hat Hardware Certification List once it has completed the Red Hat certification process.

Q2: It seems like customers should have had this type of support some time ago. What took so long to provide customers with technical support?

A2: Microsoft and Red Hat started hearing requests for bilateral validation soon after Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program went live in June 2008. Both companies quickly agreed to work together; finalizing the details around comprehensive, coordinated technical support has taken some time. As a result, customers will be able to confidently deploy Microsoft Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, virtualized on Microsoft and Red Hat hypervisors, knowing that the solutions will be supported by both companies.

Q3: Are there other components of the deal that have not been disclosed yet?

A3: No. The agreements are specific to establishing coordinated technical support for our mutual customers using server virtualization. The agreements have nothing to do with patents, and there are no patent rights or other open source licensing rights implications provided under these agreements. The agreements contain no financial clauses other than test fees for industry-standard certification and validation.

While Microsoft and Red Hat continue to compete in the marketplace, customers have told us that technical support for server virtualization is an area where we must work together. Now we have agreements to test and coordinate technical support and provide customers with a new level of mutual support between Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows Server for their heterogeneous IT environments.

Q4: What versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Virtualization will be validated, to what versions of Windows and Hyper-V?

A4: Validations are now getting underway, and are planned to be comprehensive. Each company is doing its respective validations separately, with the first results expected later this year.

As a participant in Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program, once Red Hat submits test logs indicating that Windows Server 2008 runs properly on the Red Hat Enterprise virtualization, the specific version of Red Hat used in the tests along with parameters of the virtual machine tested will be posted on Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program website. At that point customers can confidently deploy Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 SP2, or Windows 2000 Server SP4 and later and receive coordinated technical support from both vendors.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux SVVP completion is planned for calendar H2 2009.

Microsoft currently plans to validate Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 as a guest on Windows Server Hyper-V. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V (all editions) and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 will now support uni-processor virtual machines running:

· Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 (x86)

· Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 (x64)

· Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 (x86)

· Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 (x64)

Q5: How do customers get support for the validated solutions? Who do they call?

A5: Customers with valid support agreements with both companies call either Microsoft or Red Hat to have their issues resolved. If the first vendor contacted cannot resolve the issue they will work with the other vendor to come to a resolution for the mutual customer.

Q6: What level of support agreement is required from Red Hat and Microsoft for a customer to receive support when running RHEL on Windows or Windows on RHEL?

A6: Customers with current Microsoft support agreements for Windows Server 2008 will be entitled to obtain support under this agreement. Where an existing agreement is not in place, customers can identify their willingness to purchase ‘per-call’ support.

Any customer with a valid Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, and using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 or 5.3 guests will be entitled to support under this agreement.

Q7: How do these agreements compare to agreements you both have with VMware and/or Citrix?

A7: There is no change in Microsoft's or Red Hat's relationship with VMware. Note that both Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux can be deployed on VMware ESX. Red Hat doesn’t have any virtualization agreements with Citrix at this time. Both VMware and Citrix have product configurations that have been validated through the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program.

Q8: How do I find out what validations have been completed?

A8: Validations will be posted to the respective Microsoft and Red Hat web sites:

http://www.redhat.com/rhel/compatibility/hardware/

http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx

Q9: Who will be the primary beneficiary of this agreement?

A9: The primary beneficiary of this agreement will be Microsoft and Red Hat customers. Of course, a secondary beneficiary will be the virtualization ecosystem because it will be more useful to customers, leading to wider deployments and faster technology development.