Windows Server Virtualization
It’s the first snow day in a long time here in Minnesota, so I have some free time in between snow blowing and shoveling. I honestly haven’t been following Microsoft’s virtualization offerings in a while. It’s time to see what they are up to.
To make it clear where I stand, by offerings I mean future products. Virtual Server is out there and is a competitor to VMware server (GSX). I’m more interested in something that can compete on a larger enterprise scale. I am interested in the details of Windows Server Virtualization (WSV), codename Viridian. In general, my bare minimum requirements for a product to compete with VI3 are the ability to move VM’s between hosts while online (vMotion).
This all started when I ran into this video today. The video shows hot adding a nic to a VM.
http://blogs.technet.com/aralves/archive/2007/02/28/longhorn-hypervisor-demo.aspx
So first, what is the status of WSV/Viridian? When can I run the beta?
- Hmm. Only the final release on the radar for 2008 over at the virtualization.info roadmap. http://www.virtualization.info/roadmap/Roadmap_2007.png
- The Windows Virtualization team blog is not so helpful with both posts from last spring.
http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/default.aspx - This one does not help at all.
http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2007/02/25/Where-we_2700_re-headed-with-virtualization.aspx
I give up. I read somewhere that a private beta released end of 2006. I would assume we can see some bits following the release of Longhorn beta 3.
So, the following pieces make up Microsoft’s new virtualization initiative.
- WSV/Viridian
- Server Core (headless windows) - This one should be useful in any virtualization scenario and not really part of MS virtualization.
- Systems Center Virtual Machine Manager
So far, the details are few. Some standard things, such as
- 8 vCPUs
- Hot add different devices
These things are good, but I am curious about a couple critical points.
- Price. How will this be licensed?
- Shared filesystems (VMFS). How do I vMotion without VMFS?
- Networking. How do they accomplish the equivalent of vSwitches and port groups.
I will follow up as I uncover details.