Microsoft virtual networking upgrades keep pressure on VMware

As part of the R2 series of updates to Windows Systems Center and Windows Server 2012, Microsoft is taking a stepping up its virtual networking support, just as other cloud providers are doing the same.

The goal of the feature enhancements is to more easily manage hybrid environments that combine on-premises resources with hosted public cloud infrastructure and migrating virtual machines between the two. "If you're using multiple clouds you want them to operate the same way," says Corporate Vice President Brad Anderson. "Build once, deploy anywhere" is the goal, he adds.

The advances in virtual networking are just one aspect of a broader refresh of R2 releases. Microsoft announced those would be available for eligible customers to download on October 18, along with the much-anticipated Windows 8.1 update.

New virtual networking functionality, which is outlined in this blog post from the company, will allow for more granular control of network topology in Windows Server (a server OS) and Windows Systems Center (which is an entire data center-scale management platform).

Previous support in the 2012 versions of the products allowed for the creation of virtual private networks (VPNs), but new advancements take the networking features even further.

Surface RT, now starting at $349 at Microsoft Store Canada
New multi-site VPN features can create secure tunnels between multiple sites and a public cloud. When transferring VMs back and forth between those environments, new functionality will allow the VMs to keep the same IP addresses, no matter where it is running. New site-to-site VPNs allow for segmentation of networks and new controls that can be placed on them, including rate-limits and tenant-specific traffic filters.

The advancements solve pain points that enterprise customers are feeling today, says Chris Wolf, a Gartner researcher. "Our clients want flexibility to move workloads withouthaving to reconfigure the network," he says. "Network virtualization and SDN are huge enablers for simplifying both VM mobility and disaster recovery."

The virtual networking components come at an interesting time. VMware is gearing up for its VMworld show at the end of the month and some industry watchers expect the company to advance its virtual networking capabilities given its $1.2 billion acquisition of Nicira last year and its plans to launch a hybrid cloud service.

Microsoft's Anderson said there are significant differences between Microsoft and  VMware, even when it comes to virtual networking. For one, he says Microsoft has experience running large-scale cloud deployments which it has gleaned insight from and packaged into these R2 releases. Microsoft runs more than 200 cloud-based application brands in its cloud, and has Azure, the public PaaS and IaaS cloud platform, which has more than 50,000 networking changes each day that are all automated. "There's really no substitute to building and operating a massive-scale cloud," Carpenter says, who addsMicrosoft is "unparalleled" in that respect compared to organizations "who want to become a provider."

The networking-related R2 advancements are just one portion of a broader set of functionality Microsoft announced today. Other R2 updates include advancements to the Hyper-V hypervisor that automatically detect VM failure and remedy the problem. Linux is also now more fully supported as a backup OS. Microsoft has already been threatening hypervisor leader VMware with Hyper-V, and Wolf says these new advancements only further Hyper-V as a general purpose X-86 virtualization platform "Make no mistake," he says. "This is a significant step forward.

Teradici ups virtual desktop performance with caching and GPUs

Teradici has updated the PCoIP Hardware Accelerator with caching and better GPU support to improve the performance of virtual desktop installations based on VMware's Horizon View platform.

The PCoIP protocol is used to run desktops in the data center. To do that the protocol compresses, encrypts and encodes the desktop and transmits the necessary pixels across an IP network to a compatible client. Depending on the applications and the number of users involved, that can put a lot of stress on the underlying servers, and that's where Teradici's PCoIP Hardware Accelerator comes in.

By off-loading image encoding to a hardware encoding card, it reduces peaks in CPU utilization, ensuring more consistent desktop performance for users, according to Teradici.

The next software update, the version 2.3 driver, will add support for caching, and the company has also fine tuned the processing of pixels to better take advantage of GPUs in VMware environments, according to Olivier Favre, director of product management at Teradici. For users, the latter means higher frame rates generated by the GPU on the server can still be presented to the user, he said.

The addition of caching lets Teradici decrease bandwidth utilization. It can be cut by up to 50 percent in cases where users run graphics-intensive tasks, such as CAD/CAM or video content, when a lot pixels change on the display, according Teradici's measurements.

Thanks to performance improvements, interest is now growing for virtualizing entry-level workstations as well as machines used for higher-end work, Favre said.

The PCoIP Hardware Accelerator runs on a PCI card. Drivers are installed on VMware's ESXi hypervisor and on the virtual machines whose performance users want to accelerate. Off-loading the process of image controlling can then be accomplished via the View administration tool.

The 2.3 driver release will be available on August 20 as a free download.

Facebook invents a PHP virtual machine

Social networking giant Facebook has taken another step at making the PHP Web programming language run more quickly. The company has developed a PHP Virtual Machine that it says can execute the language as much as nine times as quickly as running PHP natively on large systems.

"Our goal is to make PHP run really, really quickly," said Joel Pobar, a Facebook engineering manager. Facebook has been using the virtual machine, called the HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM), across all of its servers since earlier this year.

Pobar discussed the virtual machine at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON) being held this week in Portland, Oregon.

HHVM is not Facebook's first foray into customizing PHP for faster use. PHP is an interpreted language, meaning that the source code is executed by the processor directly. Generally speaking, programs written in interpreted languages such as PHP tend not to run as quickly as languages, such as C or C++, that have been compiled beforehand into machine language byte code. Facebook has remained loyal to PHP because it is widely understood by many of the Web programmers who work for the company.

To keep up with the insatiable user demand, however, Facebook originally devised a compiler, called HipHop, that would translate PHP code into C++, so it then it could be compiled ahead of time for faster performance.

While Facebook enjoyed considerable performance gains of this first version of HipHop for several years, it sought other ways to speed the delivery of the dynamically created Web pages to its billion or so users. "Our performance strategy for that was going to tap out," Pobar admitted.

HHVM is the next step for Facebook. Under development for about three years, HHVM actually works on the same principle as the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). HHVM has a just-in-time (JIT) compiler that converts the human readable source code into machine-readable byte code when it is needed. (The previous HipHop, renamed HPHPc, has now been retired within Facebook.)

This JIT approach allows the virtual machine to "make smarter decisions at runtime," Pobar said. For instance, if a call is made to the MySQL database to read a row of data, the HHVM can, on the fly, figure out what type of data it is, such as an integer or a string. It then can generate or call code on the fly that would be best suited for handling this particular type of data.

With the old HipHop, "the best it can do is analyze the entire Facebook codebase, reason about it and then specialize code based on its reasoning. But it can't get all of the reasoning right. There are parts of the code base that you can not simply infer about or reason about," Pobar said.

Pobar estimated that HHVM is about twice as fast as HPHPc was, and about nine times as fast as running straight PHP.

Facebook has posted the code for HHVM on GitHub, with the hopes that others will use it to speed their PHP websites as well.

HHVM is optimized for handling very large, and heavily used, PHP codebases. Pobar reckoned that using HHVM for standard sized websites, such as one hosting a Wordpress blog, would gain only about a fivefold performance improvement.

"If you take some PHP and run it in on HipHop, the CPU execution time [may] not be the limiting factor for performance. Chances are [the system is] spending too much time talking to the database or spending too time talking to [the] memcache" caching layer, Pobar said.

This is not a toy: Oculus Rift's virtual talents could transform real lives

Nonny de la Peña is a journalist, but she doesn’t report tragedies. She helps you experience them. She mixes virtual reality with real-world audio clips to drop you into the role of an observer as chaos unfolds in a food bank line in Los Angeles, or into the virtual shoes of a detainee bound for Gitmo. More than mere words, her works are a punch in the gut.

Annette Mossel is a Ph.D. candidate and lecturer at the Interactive Media Systems Group at Vienna University of Technology, but her interest in virtual worlds delivers tangible benefits. One IMSG project trains amputees to use their new muscle-sensing myoelectric prostheses—months before the complex device is actually manufactured. More than mere theory, her VR work helps people regain control of their physical capabilities much faster than was previously possible.

There’s no doubt about it: Virtual reality has the potential to profoundly alter our lives. So far, though, its reach has rarely extended beyond well-funded institutes and government agencies.

That could soon change, however—thanks in large measure to PC gaming accessories like the Oculus Rift, a gaming-focused VR headset “designed for immersive games” but capable of so, so much more. Mere toys? Ha. These devices could be the keys that unlock the future.

The author exploring the Oculus Rift's virtual movie theater at E3.
My eyes were opened to the potential of the Oculus Rift at this year’s E3 gaming convention, where I tried the VR headset for the first time. While the game-related portion of the demo was impressive, the VR Cinema 3D trial truly blew my mind.

VR Cinema 3D, an Oculus-compatible app created by Joo-Hyung Ahn using the popular Unity game engine, dropped me into a movie theater, complete with rows of seats and a flickering projector behind me. After a moment, a theatrical trailer for The Hangover Part III sprang to life on the big screen.

Sure, it sounds simple, and it was. But the sense of just plain being there was palpable: I felt as though I were truly sitting in a cinema seat, giggling at Zach Galifianakis. The Oculus Rift’s wide field of view completely blocked out the real world and immersed me in the digital, while the responsive sensor package built into the Rift tracked my head movements flawlessly. I was in that theater. The only thing missing was the popcorn.

Oculus VRThe VRCinema3D app in action.
“With this technology,” says Brendan Iribe, CEO of Oculus VR, “the field of view (FOV) is so wide that a switch in your brain flips, and within a few seconds your brain feels like that is reality. It feels that what it’s looking at is actually where you are. If you have a small FOV, like many of the previous devices out there, your brain knows it’s looking at a screen.”

Visions of a virtual Jurassic Park danced through my head. That 3-minute demo convinced me that the Rift’s potential extends far beyond games—and apparently, I was late to the realization.

UndercurrentSomething similar to the Undercurrent exploration game could easily be used as a "virtual field trip" tool.
“In the first 30 days on Kickstarter, we started getting almost inundated with emails from people in [nongaming] markets,” says Iribe. “A lot of them came from medical fields, the military, architecture, automobile design, even fitness. There were just so many people reaching out to us.”

With a little imagination, it’s easy to envision scads of nongaming uses for an affordable VR device like the Oculus Rift.

Fenix FireThe Oculus Rift demo's Tuscan villa.
An early tech demo for the Rift, dubbed “Tuscany,” let users explore a virtual villa in the Italian countryside. Imagine the technology being used to explore foreign locales or historical events as part of an educational curriculum, or a Total Recall–esque tourism service. Something like Undercurrent could be converted to allow students to explore the Titanic shipwreck. Already, Titans of Space offers a jaunt through a built-to-scale solar system.

“You can immerse [yourself] in places which are virtual or even real, but remote,” says Mossel. “Imagine watching through a robot’s eyes that is exploring a cave, or another environment that is too dangerous for humans to go. Turning your head…could also trigger the robot to turn its head.”

But the Oculus Rift could be used for more than simple exploration.

Interactive Media Systems Group/Vienna University of TechnologyMossel's IMSG uses VR headsets with armband-style sensors to help amputees become accustomed to their prosthetics—before the prosthetics are attached. (Images show a nonamputee for reference.)
Tours of exotic locations could entice would-be exercisers to use treadmills and stationary bikes. Teens could learn to drive in virtual cars before hitting the real road. VR replicas of the entire Library of Congress— complete with a full selection of readable books—could replace e-readers. Much of Mossel’s IMSG work, such as the aforementioned prosthesis training and Playmancer, focuses on physical therapy and rehabilitation. Others are using VR for mental therapy, helping veterans to overcome post-traumatic stress disorder. Immersive journalism can virtually embed us at important events, shattering the fishbowl-gazing vibe of watching the news on the flatscreen.

Nonny de la PeÑaNonny de la Peña's "Hunger in Los Angeles" puts you in the role of an observer at a food bank line marred by tragedy. It re-creates an actual event and uses audio captured at the scene.
Both Iribe and Mossel are excited about potential social VR applications. Mossel notes that speedier Internet technology, together with improvements to CPU and GPU processing power, “make it possible to build shared collaborative VR systems where users can interact remotely in real-time.”

Iribe takes a more personal tack. “What happens when you look not just a video game bot or monster in the eyes, but when you’re in a social multiplayer experience when you look your friend in the eye in this virtual environment?” he ponders. “You’ll really feel connected to them because you’re looking them in the eyes, and your mouth is moving to your lips using the audio in the game. That’s going to spark a lot of emotion that has never been sparked before.”

Second Life never sounded so potentially awesome.

“Can you imagine the educational possibilities?” asks de la Peña, who feels that VR is on the verge of mainstream adoption. “They’re limitless, just limitless. But they’ve taken a few things to come together.”

Indeed they have—and a lot of those things were designed first and foremost for PC gaming.

Design engineers use Canon's "Mixed Reality" augmented VR headset, which costs $125,000 up front, with additional annual maintenance charges of $25,000—not exactly consumer-friendly pricing.
Virtual reality is nothing new, of course.

Specialized VR tools have been around for a while now, training soldiers to shoot, pilots to fly, and disabled people to conquer their handicaps. But up until now, the high cost of virtual reality setups has severely limited their adoption. The jankiest VR headsets out there cost north of $1000; many rigs run in the tens or (gulp!) hundreds of thousands.

An App That Lets You Play a Virtual Game of Catch

Image: Joe Doucet Studio

Joe Doucet was grabbing a cup of coffee at his local shop when a common sight caught him off guard. “Everyone sitting down had this bent-over posture staring into their phone. Everyone,” he told Wired in an email. “It seems silly to say, but I was quite struck by this picture.”

Most of the time, using our phone restricts us to a flat, screen-sized world. Doucet, noticing this, wanted to create something that would allow people to interact with their phones and the real world simultaneously. The result was AMU, a perspective-bending mobile game that the NYC-based designer created with app developers at Sirqul.

You have to physically move your mobile device to catch it.

Think of AMU as a virtual game of catch. Simply put, the goal is to catch a white virtual ball with an empty circle in the middle of the screen. It all sounds easy enough until the ball disappears from the screen. “You have to physically move your mobile device to catch it,” Doucet explains. “Many people just try to tilt their phone, but that won’t get you very far.” AMU is tricky and a little frustrating until you realize that the vanishing ball leaves a visual trail, indicating how you need to move in order to catch it. The game forces players to physically move around while still concentrating on the phone screen, making it a good test of agility and eye-hand coordination (…or lack thereof). Doucet says the guys at Sirqul found the frantic movements they made while playing so hilarious that they decided to activate the front-facing camera so players can record themselves playing AMU and send it to their friends.

AMU’s design process was unusually straightforward. Doucet knew from the outset that he wanted to push the boundaries of mobile user interface by making physical space as important as the screen. From there, it was really just a matter of quickly storyboarding the game and adding the simple graphics and menus.

“Rather than start with designing a game on a screen, I thought about the game taking place all around you,” Doucet explains. “Really thinking of the screen as a portal in which to view the game, rather that being the location of the game itself.”

Doucet and Sirqul aimed to keep AMU as simple as possible from a design perspective. The game’s interface is clean and intuitive, with no instructions and minimal buttons. This simplicity helps, considering the movements required by AMU do take some getting used to. Doucet notes that while the game can be challenging at first, people typically catch on after the first couple of levels. But don’t get too comfortable. The better you get, the faster the ball moves and the harder it is to catch it.

“As of now, I’m about 20th down on the leader boards,” says Doucet. “Even I find it quite challenging after 5 or so minutes.”

AMU is available in the Apple app store for $.99.