Some big Microsoft virtualisation announcements happening real soon now

Check it out
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2006/may06/05-22Virtualization.mspx

• Windows Server virtualization: Microsoft’s hypervisor-based solution is on track to be available with the upcoming Microsoft Windows Server “Longhorn” operating system. Microsoft anticipates having a beta release of Windows Server virtualization by the end of 2006 and plans to release to manufacturing (RTM) within 180 days of Windows Server “Longhorn” RTM. 

• Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager: Formerly code-named “Carmine,” this technology is a centralized, enterprise management solution for the virtualized data center. System Center Virtual Machine Manager is part of the System Center family of products and is due for beta release within the next 90 days. Microsoft anticipates release to manufacturing (RTM) in the second half of 2007.
   
  • Intent to acquire Softricity, Inc: Softricity’s application virtualization and streaming technologies provide application compatibility and accelerate corporate desktop transitions to Windows Vista.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager site is at http://www.microsoft.com/scvmm

if you're up bright and early tomorrow morning, be sure to catch the Bill Gates keynote from WinHEC streamling live from http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/default.mspx  will be some great demos to watch there.

Starts at 4AM New Zealand time, otherwise available to stream on demand later in the day

UPDATE:  the stream is now available on demand:

56k 100k 300k
 
The times for the Hypervisor demos are:
25:30 BillG starts talking about Hypervisor
27:00 demo starts
33:30 end

The Windows Hypervisor is a core component of Windows Server virtualization, a thin layer of software between the hardware and the OS that allows multiple operating systems to run, unmodified, on a host computer at the same time. It provides simple partitioning functionality and is responsible for maintaining strong isolation between partitions. It has an inherently secure architecture with minimal attack surface, as it does not contain any third party device drivers. 

It was announced during the keynote that we aim to have a beta by the end of this year (2006). and targeted for RTM within 180 days of RTM of Windows Server “Longhorn”.  Windows Server virtualization will include x64 host and guest support,  ability to run guest machines in a multi-processor environment, dynamic resource management, and ability to move running virtual machines with minimal downtime.

Some of the key features demonstrated in the keynote include:

• New Longhorn Server MMC UI. Windows Server virtualization takes advantage of the new MMC 3.0 capabilities to provide an elegant Windows Server experience.
• x64 virtual machine support. Windows Server virtualization provides 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) virtual machines to provide support for workloads with large memory requirements. Windows Server virtualization virtual machines will support more than 32 GB of memory per virtual machine.
• SMP virtual machines support.  In the demo this morning, we showed a 4-way virtual machine and we announced that we will provide 8-way virtual machines.
• Hot-add virtual network adapter support. Windows Server virtualization provides support for the hot-add of virtual NICs into a virtual machine. In the demo, we showed a dual-processor x64 virtual machine running Windows Server 2003 that had no network adapters and we hot-added a NIC while the vm was running. The NIC appeared almost instantly.
• Hot-add memory support. Windows Server virtualization provides support for the hot-add of memory into a virtual machine. In the demo, we showed a quad-processor x64 virtual machine running Longhorn Server with 4 GBs of memory and we hot-added an additional 1 GB of memory taking the virtual machine to 5 GB of memory while the vm was running. The memory appeared instantly in Task Manager.

The demo was done with real code, no smoke & mirrors here :)

Lastly the Microsoft Windows Virtualization Product Group Team Blog is now up and running at http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/default.aspx