Virtualization News Archives

QEMU 2.1 has been officially released!

If all goes according to plan the QEMU 2.1 release will happen next week but before that can happen some last-minute testing is encouraged with the new release of QEMU 2.1-rc3.

The Xen Project has announced the release of Mirage OS 2.0, which they describe as "the industry's first software framework that unifies cloud and embedded deployments behind a safe, secure programming language, allowing developers to seamlessly build systems that span both embedded devices and public cloud services."

QEMU 2.1 is expected later this month while now the second to the last release candidate is available for those interested in testing it to ensure it will be a great release as being an important part to the Linux virtualization stack.

The first release candidate to the upcoming QEMU 2.1 was released on Tuesday.

A pre-RC test release is out for the QEMU open-source processor emulator.

The KVM virtualization update for Linux 3.16 brings improvements mostly for less common CPU architectures. With the Linux 3.17 kernel should come more interesting work for x86 fans but KVM on IA64 is likely to get the boot.

The first pull request for the Xen virtualization updates for the Linux 3.16 kernel have now been submitted.

QEMU 2.1 should be released two months from today and with it will come ARM architecture improvements and other enhancements.

The Xen Orchestra open-source software that provides a web GUI to Xen Server and the XAPI is out with a significant update.

With yesterday's official release of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS I set out to do some benchmarks of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS vs. 14.04 LTS in the public cloud. Unfortunately, that testing was drawn out due to the variable performance out of instances/droplets in the public cloud that are even of the same instance type.

QEMU 2.0 has officially shipped. The QEMU 2.0 release has been under development for many months and has numerous new features for this processor emulator commonly used in conjunction with Linux KVM or Xen.

The oVirt open-source virtualization management software led by Red Hat saw its 3.4 release last week. The oVirt 3.4 release delivered a self-hosted engine, PowerPC 64 support, CPU hot-plug support, and other capabilities. While oVirt 3.4 just left the building, there's a lengthy list of features being planned for future releases.

The Kernel-based Virtual Machine has seen some semi-exciting enhancements with the in-development Linux 3.15 kernel.

How does toggling VirtIO affect the performance of virtual machines / droplets within DigitalOcean's public cloud? Here's some benchmarks.

Linux within cars was a big topic at this week's Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in Napa Valley. Besides Intel talking up Tizen IVI, Xen Automotive is the work being done for using Xen virtualization on ARM hardware within automobiles.

Xen 4.4 was released earlier this month and this big virtualization update shipped many new features, but there's even more exciting features currently under development.

Last month on Phoronix I wrote about Intel's new XenGT project as a means of mediated GPU pass-through to Xen-based guests. Today at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit is an update by an Intel engineer on the XenGT technology.

The first point release to virt-manager 1.0 has been released this weekend.

One of the interesting but seldom talked about GNOME applications is GNOME Boxes for virtualization, but it did have an interesting 3.12 development cycle and there's more plans ahead for GNOME 3.14.

Anthony Liguori on the behalf of QEMU developers around the world has announced the first release candidate of the QEMU 2.0 major update.

Xen 4.4 has made it out into the world today after being under development for the better part of the year and seeing more than one thousand changes.

Version 2.0 of the widely-used QEMU emulator that's commonly used with open-source Linux virtualization setups will soon be released. In just over one month is the planned release of the very exciting QEMU 2.0.

LXC 1.0 was announced a few days back as the latest work on Linux containers support.

Intel has announced an interesting project in the space of GPU virtualization and being able to share a graphics processor with a virtualization hypervisor while still achieving a level of shareability.

Xen 4.4 is a major release of the open-source virtualization stack commonly used on Linux systems but has increasing support for BSD and other platforms. Xen 4.4 is bringing with it many new features and today 4.4-RC4 was released.

A set of 19 patches published a short time ago provide support for "guest back surfaces" within the VMware SVGA Gallium3D driver that is used by the company's virtual machine clients.

The Linux Foundation is announcing new member companies today that will be coming together in support of the foundation's Open Virtualization Alliance for pushing KVM.

The crew behind Xen Orchestra have announced the release of XO 3 "Clarinet" as the latest work on their web GUI to the XenServer and XAPI.

The latest pull request for the Linux 3.14 kernel merge window are a second serving of Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) changes.

Kernel-side support for Xen PVH is landing with the Linux 3.14 kernel. The para-virtualized hardware extension support takes advantage of modern Intel and AMD CPUs.

ReactOS, the open-source operating system that aims for Windows API compatibility with the Windows NT kernel and aims for binary compatibility with Windows drivers and programs, is now hoping to develop a commercial cloud distribution. While ReactOS hasn't gained much adoption and is still trailing in their Windows support, they are now looking to make Throium Core, an open-source Windows compatible operating system for the cloud.

Earlier this week I shared VMware might have a big GPU driver update for the Linux 3.14 kernel and now in time they have successfully delivered. This new "vmwgfx" virtual GPU driver adapts to their new virtual GPU (SVGA2) hardware revision.

Thomas Hellstrom of VMware sent in their first pull request today of "vmwgfx" driver changes for the Linux 3.14 kernel, but it looks like the best is yet to come.

Xen 4.4 is scheduled to be released one month from now and when the release happens of the popular industry-backed open-source virtualization hypervisor there will be a good deal of new features.

Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk at Oracle has re-posted the Xen PVH patches for the Linux kernel as he seeks to get support for para-virtualized hardware extensions into the Linux kernel.

As expected, the stable release of QEMU 1.7.0 has met the world.

Yesterday I wrote about features coming to QEMU 1.7 for improving Linux virtualization and cloud computing. That release will happen any moment now (it was tagged this afternoon in Git), but now QEMU 2.0 is entering the developers' sight.

QEMU 1.7.0-rc2 was released yesterday and if all goes according to plan the official QEMU 1.7 release will happen on Wednesday. This next QEMU emulator update that's also relied upon by Linux KVM will bring some exciting improvements.

oVirt 3.3 was released in September to better compete with VMware's vSphere in the space of virtualization management. The open-source KVM virtualization management application has now been updated to version 3.3.1 and it is a feature release.

Siemens announced to the world this morning Jailhouse, a Linux-based partitioning hypervisor. Jailhouse is a lighter weight alternative to KVM but still in early development stages.

VMware's "vmwgfx" virtual GPU graphics driver has received support for PRIME buffer sharing -- the underlying Linux feature that has allowed Optimus-like features.

Debian with its current kernel now provides support for Xen PVHVM guests "out of the box" and this can mean an easy performance win over a classic Xen PV (para-virtualized) setup.

Besides virtual GPU drivers like the proprietary components within VMware and VirtualBox virtualization stacks and the under-development Virgil3D for QEMU, another option for those seeking 3D/GPU hardware acceleration support within VM guests is VGA pass-through.

Announced last month was a new work-in-progress DRM/KMS driver implementing support for the virtual VGA cards using the Bochs DISPI interface, namely for the QEMU standard VGA output used commonly in Linux desktop virtualization setups.

Oracle announced this morning the release of their VirtualBox 4.3 cross-platform virtualization software.

After showing improved performance with the new VMware Fusio 6, are there any upgrades in moving virtual machines from Ubuntu 13.04 to the soon-to-be-released Ubuntu 13.10?

The third beta release of the upcoming VirtualBox 4.3 major update is now available.

OVirt 3.3 was released today as an open-source KVM virtualization management application targeting data centers as an open-source alternative to VMware's proprietary vSphere product. The oVirt 3.3 release pulls in many new features.

Are you curious about the performance of the recent release of VMware Fusion 6.0? Here's some early tests though more are on the way.