Virtually yours
They feel the heat. Even though I am not too fond of projects like Windows apps and Win4Lin on Linux on Xen but it is pretty obvious that Virtualization is the way to go.
Informationweek: “VMware, a unit of EMC, announced Monday that several industry leaders ranging from processor manufacturers AMD and Intel to software providers Novel and Red Hat have signed on to its standardization concept. The partnership also includes BEA Systems, BMC Software, Broadcom, Cisco, Computer Associates International, Dell, Emulex, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Mellanox, and Qlogic as well as additional companies expected to sign on later.”
With Virtual Server and Virtual PC Microsoft has a pretty strong story in the virtualization space that will become even stronger with SP1 of Virtual Server, the support for host OS will be expanded to 64-bit. With the support of x64 based hosts OS, Virtual Server will allow for very well performing 32-bit guest OS. This enables consolidation scenarios entirely based on Microsoft technology, guaranteeing the greatest level of compatibility.
The current scenario of running a guest OS “inside” of a full blown host OS is disappearing with products like ESX Server, Xen and any other product offering solutions based on Hypervisor. A Hypervisor is a slim layer of software running in the layer between the hardware and any OS, abstracting the hardware like memory, processor and devices from the OS.
So the big question is what’s happing in the Microsoft Virtualization space. Well, don’t miss the web chat on Aug 26th:
Executive Chat - Microsoft's Machine Virtualization Roadmap
Friday, August 26, 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time
Join Mike Neil, Product Unit Manager for Windows Virtualization, for a conversation about Microsoft's current and future machine virtualization plans. Provide feedback, ask questions and get answers regarding Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 as well as Microsoft's plans for Windows Virtualization in the Longhorn Server wave.