AMD Demonstrates Live Migration between Three AMD Opteron Processor Generations

[btarunr]

Continuing its momentum and leadership in virtualization technology, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. today released the first video and images demonstrating live migration across three generations of AMD processors on VMware ESX 3.5, including the Six-Core AMD Opteron processor code-named "Istanbul." Live Migration of virtual machines across physical servers is key to providing superior flexibility for managing today's data centers. Additionally, AMD is highlighting its continued, cooperative development efforts with Microsoft as evidenced in Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, which is available today as a beta and adds support for AMD-V technology with Rapid Virtualization Indexing. The new 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor provides scalable performance for both Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 and has received support from all four global OEMs.



"The AMD ecosystem of hardware and software partners like Microsoft, Sun and VMware illustrates a strong confidence in the advanced virtualization capabilities AMD-V offers," said Margaret Lewis, director, Commercial Solutions, AMD. "Enabled in part by RVI, Live Migration across our 65-nm and 45-nm Quad-Core and upcoming Six-Core AMD Opteron processors provides further evidence of the flexibility of AMD-V technology for data center customers upgrading their systems."

Last week Sun Microsystems posted a new 8P, 32-core world-record result on the VMmark benchmark, measuring the performance and scalability of applications running in virtualized environments based on VMware products. This top VMmark score was achieved on a Sun Fire X4600 M2 server powered by Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors. More information on leading VMmark scores for 2P, 4P and 8P AMD Opteron processor-based systems can be found here.

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[hooj]

He's buff !
Interesting read !

 

[newtekie1]

Not really a demo for AMD, but more for VMware. That is pretty much one of the ideas behind VMware, you can migrate from server to server, even with completely different hardware setups, effortlessly and without end-users being affected.

If you have to take a server down for some reason, you just off-load the work to another server, it is great.

 

[EastCoasthandle]

Good stuff here.

 

[Imsochobo]

You got it wrong, as an IT student/operator, and much into vmware. got myself vmware ESX setup at home, know how it works

Okey:
Shanghai to Istanbul: No issues whatso ever, no instruction diffrences (that im aware of at this time) while barcelona is abit diffrent.

But here we go.
Opty 8216 and barcelona, with fixes(no SSE4.) and moving from amd cpu to intel cpu IS NOT POSSIBLE.
Sorry for the caps, but i know this isnt common knowledge.

However, you are into something, a virtual appliance/machine is hardware indipendent, but that doesnt mean "Live migration" is it, and far from.

What hardware indipendent means is :
You can shutdown, and power up on another ( "Amd->intel" "Intel->Amd" and other brands.)
You can also suspend. and power up on another(Is not higly reccomended, since it usually means : BSOD or alike for unix alike operating systems, and of course linux.)

For those who is not aware of vmware ESXI and ESX. test out ESXI free, with not the enterprise live migration(DRS and HA)

How is a ESXI setup ?.

lowest setup demands(for HA and DRS)
3 ESXI boxes.
2 NAS.
1 DNS/Virtual center server.

thats 5 boxes as minimum, but renundance is important, and isnt stronger than weakest link, so this is COMPLETLY enterprise, this isnt something people with 100 users usually go for.
When you get more to 1000, its becomming cost effective.
Nas 1 down, nas 2 is there.
if one ESX fails, you got two, you cannot max them out if you need all servers.

You can set:
1x ESX server fail = kill all in resource pool : Development/test. priority 3 servers(whatever they are)
and all servers who was located on esx 3 which failed, get powered up on the remaining two, within a minute they are 100% operational!


Sounds great doesnt it ?.
if they can do this on linux, wonder what they can do to desktop linux OS!

In case someone wondering.
Doesn't it kill alot of performance, how much performance do you get out of an cpu in vmware vs a clean system.
Costs 400 mb Ram.
Costs 1 memory card/stick/pen/embedded chip(most usual)
Cost 20%.

Saves loads of power/hardware costs. servers idle most of the time!

I hope this crash course intro to vmware ESXI was at any help for any.
Enjoy!

 

[btarunr]

Not really a demo for AMD, but more for VMware.

...that relies on AMD's virtualization tech to perform what you just saw.

 

[Imsochobo]

...that relies on AMD's virtualization tech to perform what you just saw.

It is very much on cpu level, to make it rock solid.

Opty 82xx and 22xx and 12xx to barcelona and newer was a pain, and in fact, A64 to A64, maybe amd really is compability king now.

Theyve done good with the AM2 AM2+ AM3 platform!

Anyways, great to hear though, compotition is key to evolution!

 

[suraswami]

It is very much on cpu level, to make it rock solid.

Opty 82xx and 22xx and 12xx to barcelona and newer was a pain, and in fact, A64 to A64, maybe amd really is compability king now.

Theyve done good with the AM2 AM2+ AM3 platform!

Anyways, great to hear though, compotition is key to evolution!

Just to add - I too use VMWare both at work and home. At home I have migrated different virtual OSes from Sempron to A64 to X2 to now Phenom. It just needs to create a new id when you first start the virtual OS and all is done internally. And if you clone the virtual make sure to change the SID or u will have networking issues.

 

[BazookaJoe]

Yo! Dudes at AMD 'been eating ALL their pokemons...

 

[Easy Rhino]

In case someone wondering.
Doesn't it kill alot of performance, how much performance do you get out of an cpu in vmware vs a clean system.
Costs 400 mb Ram.
Costs 1 memory card/stick/pen/embedded chip(most usual)
Cost 20%.

Saves loads of power/hardware costs. servers idle most of the time!

I hope this crash course intro to vmware ESXI was at any help for any.
Enjoy!

i dont want to get too far off topic here, but really virtualization is only useful if you need to run various services on different operating systems. if you are simply a web hosting company you could buy 100 dual xeon machines and run freebsd and never worry about a thing if they are networked properly.

 

[Hayder_Master]

cool from AMD, and about the names so we have AMD Barcelona , shanghai , and now Istanbul , did i expect the 32 core with 20nm AMD cpu called Baghdad