Commodity virtualization with Amazon EC2 August 25, 2006
Posted by James Webster in : virtualization , add a commentThe blogosphere is going batty talking about Amazon EC2; their ‘limited beta’ service for provisioning virtual Linux machine hosting via a web service API. The core idea isn’t anything new, I had a virtual Linux box with Bytemark Hosting back when they had one of the few virtual hosting offerings available. EC2’s web service API is just too cool however; think about the possibility of building a web application that can respond to increasing load, perhaps due to a Slashdotting/Diggdotting, through requesting to EC2 that more application/web server VM instances be brought online to satisfy the increased load.
A few other random thoughts:
- Do Amazon risk stretching their operational support capacity too far, between EC2, S3, SQS; oh, and the fact that they are running one of the biggest e-commerce operations around?
- What virtualization technology are they using? I initially wondered if it was VMware ESX but I am now hearing that it is Xen (no mention on the EC2 website itself though).
- Is there a potential market in selling pre-configured Amazon Machine Images to be hosted in EC2?
Alas poor Parallels, I knew it well? August 7, 2006
Posted by James Webster in : apple, virtualization , add a commentSmall software vendors have a history of getting shafted at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference; remember the kerfuffle over Konfabulator when Apple announced Dashboard in Tiger? In the end I guess it worked out okay for those guys as they flipped to Yahoo. On the eve of WWDC 2006 it looks like the 600lb gorilla of virtualization is releasing a beta of VMware Workstation for Mac. Which perhaps puts Parallels Desktop Mac in a somewhat precarious position if a version of the free VMware Player for Mac is shortly behind. I sincerely hope not, as Parallels’ product is damn impressive; I have been using it for a few weeks since getting a MacBook and would be pretty lost without it at this point. Parallels does have the advantage of being priced more aggressively: $79USD to the $189USD that VMware’s Mac product would be priced at if Windows and Linux pricing is any guide. The feature set of VMware Workstation is definitely more higher-end but it will be interesting to watch how pricing of both of these products on both PC and Mac platforms may change over the coming months. About the only thing that I wish Parallels supported was the ability to open VMware virtual machine images, simply because there are just so many of them out there.
Incidentally Codeweaver’s Crossover Office for Mac is also scheduled to go into beta this month, possibly an announcement to coincide with the WWDC will be made in the next few days. I would be impressed to see them add the betas of Office 2007 to their list of supported applications but I am probably dreaming.
Virtualization and dual-screen development May 21, 2006
Posted by James Webster in : virtualization, development , 1 comment so farSeth Livingston blogs about the value of
virutalization in development (via VMTN Blog). As Seth points out, it is possible to build up a development VM with all the common tools that have been agreed upon and develop solely within that environment. This is a great idea; especially when you also consider that some tools aren’t the greatest in sharing key bindings, template shortcuts, etc. The most recent version of IntelliJ in particular has this problem; there is no easy way to share Live Templates and additional key bindings via source control without further complications. I would love to be able to develop in a VM for this reason alone. But can my virtual development box also support dual monitors? Unfortunately dual-monitor support for guest OS’s appears to be missing from the VMware Workstation data-sheet.