Virtualization Research

[craigbuk]

Hi
I am a university student sudying Network Computing and for my disertation i was thinking of doing a project on virtualization and how licencing of Windows and third party software is effected by a p2v conversion.


Areas i was thinking of addressing:
1. If software developers mention virtualization specifically in their licence agreements or if it would be covered another article in the licence agreement.
2. testing to see if the software licence actually prevents the software from being used with virualization, rightly or wrongly so.
3. Based on my findings from the first 2 steps, whether software developers need to address the virtualization issue specifically as it becomes more widely used.
4. Look at rule of best practice when dealing with licencing and virtualization.


I have access to a HP ML115.

I was wondering if this research would be worth while or interesting to the vitualization community and also if you have had (or heard of) any particular problems with licencing and if so, if there was any software inparticular it would be useful to test.

I was also wondering if this research would be legal to attempt as I would be using the software for that may or may not breach the licence agreement. Would it be best to check with the software vendors first? Is it legal if the software licence permits it to be used in this way?
Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

[WebMaster]

Hi,

I haven't seen any licensing issues. If objective is to test if licenses remain valid after p2v then either you can test it in lab environment and see or ask the manufacturer.

As long as the hardware is compatible with the server being converted to VM, you or the OS(software) should not see any difference.

As far as which software to use, you can use either vmware or xenserver. Vmware allows you to test the software for 60 days, ample time for lab environment but you may be able to extend that if you use Citrix Xenserver.

[juwel]

Licensing will not be a issue.It is advised to check if your software, is listed in HCL list certified and published by the virtualization vendors (Vmware, Citrix etc.)
This clears your "compatibility" issues, even before deploying it in test labs.

:-)