Strog
December 20th, 2004, 14:11
VMware announces (http://www.vmware.com/news/releases/esx_vc_sdk.html) ESX server 2.5. Most noteworthy item to the users here is that FreeBSD 4.9 is fully supported as a guest OS. While this is probably beyond what most users here are looking for, I bet there's a few people here that would love to have FreeBSD running this setup in their SAN. :squarewin
New features in VMware ESX Server 2.5 include:
* Boot from SAN. ESX Server runs virtual machines on diskless servers and blades by booting the ESX Server kernel directly from a SAN.
* SAN transparency. ESX Server enables native SAN access from within virtual machines. Guest operating systems can now directly access extended SAN functionality as if they were running directly on the physical hardware. Users can run SAN backup and replication software that depends on native access inside virtual machines or offload file-level backups to SAN-based utilities.
* Automated ESX Server installation. Users can use scripts to speed deployment of multi-server installations and integrate with third-party provisioning products from Altiris, HP, IBM and LANDesk.
* Expanded ESX Server hardware support. ESX Server has been tested with and fully supports industry leading rack and blade servers from Dell, HP and IBM, using AMD and Intel processors.
* Expanded ESX Server guest operating system support. ESX Server adds full support for FreeBSD 4.9, Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 and SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9.
* Common Information Model (CIM) API and object model. The VMware CIM SDK enables monitoring of ESX Server host and virtual machine storage resources from any CIM-aware client or management tool.
New features in VMware ESX Server 2.5 include:
* Boot from SAN. ESX Server runs virtual machines on diskless servers and blades by booting the ESX Server kernel directly from a SAN.
* SAN transparency. ESX Server enables native SAN access from within virtual machines. Guest operating systems can now directly access extended SAN functionality as if they were running directly on the physical hardware. Users can run SAN backup and replication software that depends on native access inside virtual machines or offload file-level backups to SAN-based utilities.
* Automated ESX Server installation. Users can use scripts to speed deployment of multi-server installations and integrate with third-party provisioning products from Altiris, HP, IBM and LANDesk.
* Expanded ESX Server hardware support. ESX Server has been tested with and fully supports industry leading rack and blade servers from Dell, HP and IBM, using AMD and Intel processors.
* Expanded ESX Server guest operating system support. ESX Server adds full support for FreeBSD 4.9, Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 and SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9.
* Common Information Model (CIM) API and object model. The VMware CIM SDK enables monitoring of ESX Server host and virtual machine storage resources from any CIM-aware client or management tool.