re: Microsoft & Virtualisation..

donalb — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 12:47:45 GMT

Hi Dave,

Would you guys seriously pitch Virtual Server for production virtualisation at the moment? The lack of decent management tools is a bit of a pain I'd imagine for anything largescale.

Also since the release on VI3 on 5th June, ESX can now do HA, and it's arguable that it could be done even before that using VMotion albeit that you needed to use an external tool like IBM Director or HP SIM to monitor the hardware and initiate the failover.

It's good that VS is free, but IMO the hypervisor that will run are part of Longhorn will be the real competitor for ESX, looking forward to having a look at it when it's released.

One other thing that interests me is whether MS/VMWare/Xen etc will sit down and come up with standards around virtualisation now, rather than later, I know there have been some noises about it but haven't heard/read anything more about it. Any insider tidbits you can give away?

Cheers
Donal

re: Microsoft & Virtualisation..

daven — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 17:05:08 GMT

Donal,

Apologies for the delay.

The answer is "Yes".

Virtual Server 2005 R2 introduced 64-bit support and runs the Virtualisation stuff lower in the stack (nearer the kernel), so it's way more performant. It's cluster'able so we have the high availability. SP1 is out soon and it adds support for Intel & AMDs on-chip virtualisation (so even closer to the metal) - we'll still need Windows though.

I agree that Windows Virtualisation (Longhorn timeframe) is a better comparison to ESX (we'll actually be better - skinnier, less to go wrong, more secure). But consider the whole picture:

Virtual Server is free.

You have to license all running VMs - if you run VS on Enterprise edition Windows, you get 4 guests for free.

If you run VS on Datacenter you get as many VMs as you like for free.

We have MOM to monitor VS - it can use VS's API to automate stuff. MOM includes a neat report for "virtualisation candidates".

We have a physical to virtual tool (I know it could be better).

Windows includes Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), which makes backup a doddle (save state, take snapshot, resume state).

We are now in beta with Virtual Machine Manager - complete management of your virtual machines (running on Virtual Server or Windows Virtualisation).

We are developing Windows Virtualisation together with XenSource, so in theory you'll be able to take a Linux VM running on Xen and run it on our stack (as is) - and vica-verca. Our VHD format is a standard (at least lots of people have licensed it).

I'm sure there's more. Feel free to email me.

Dave.