Microsoft has a big surprise planned for not just those of its own customers using virtualization, but for those in the open-source community as well.
Microsoft will support customers who choose to run Linux with Microsoft’s Virtual Server 2005 R2, which allows multiple operating systems to be run on one machine.
On April 3, the Redmond, Wash., software giant will use the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in Boston to announce that it is making its Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise Edition product available as a free download from the Microsoft Web site.
Until now, Microsoft has sold the software, which was released in December 2005, at a suggested retail price of $199. The Standard Edition, which used to cost $99, is being dropped and will no longer be available.
[B]Virtualisation :[/B]
Virtualisation is an emerging technology which is garnering growing interest from corporate customers, allows a server to run multiple instances of an operating system. This makes it easier for corporations to consolidate many applications on a single hardware server and provides a level of reliability.
Microsoft said that it has developed software to simplify the installation of Linux distributions from Red Hat and Novell SuSE to run on Virtual Server 2005 R2 on Windows. In addition, Microsoft will provide technical support customers running Windows and Linux side by side.
“We’ve made a long-term commitment to make sure that non-Windows operating systems can be run in a supported manner, both on top of Virtual Server and our future virtualisation products,” said Zane Adam, director of Windows Server product marketing, in a statement.
Reasons :
When asked if the decision to provide the product for free was also a response to the fact that both Red Hat and Novell’s SUSE Linux were building the Xen hypervisor technology into their server operating systems, Ni said Microsoft had always planned to offer its Windows hypervisor technology for free with Windows “Longhorn” Server.
However, he said, “we have been discussing internally how we incorporate virtualization into the operating system in the Longhorn server wave, and that this was something users would just get with the operating system. We applaud the fact that Red Hat and Novell are now doing this,” he said.
Another advantage of giving customers the Virtual Server products for free, he said, is that it opens the benefits of virtualization up to a broad range of customers, while giving them an upgrade path to Longhorn Server and the Windows hypervisor, which will use the same VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) format that the current Virtual Server product uses.
Currently, customers running Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition can run as many as four virtual instances on one physical server at no additional cost. If they want to run more instances of Windows Server, they have to buy another Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise license that gives them four additional virtual instances, he said.
Add-Ins :
Microsoft will also use LinuxWorld to announce the availability of virtual machine add-ins for Linux, which until now have been beta tested only by a closed group of Linux customers.
“This will let customers have greater usability for Linux-based virtual machines running on top of Virtual Server. It is a really broad effort from Microsoft to foster interoperability, and is based on customer feedback. This is a big step in that direction,” Ni said.
These add-ins can be downloaded from the Microsoft Web site and installed in Linux guest operating systems to improve interoperability with Virtual Server 2005 R2 and enhance guest and host synchronization, mouse and display drivers, and SCSI disk emulation, he said
Support :
Microsoft is also introducing a new 24/7 technical product support model for Linux guest operating systems running on Virtual Server 2005 R2, which will be covered under existing Microsoft support contracts.
People needing that support will be routed to a technical team at Wipro Technologies, based in Bangalore, India. The Wipro team has domain expertise in Linux and in troubleshooting Linux guests running on Virtual Server, Ni said.
Rivals :
Microsoft faces competition in the market from EMC subsidiary VMware and increasingly the Xen project that’s being built into forthcoming versions of Suse Linux Enterprise Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
This news comes at the same time as VMware, of Palo Alto, Calif., uses LinuxWorld to announce that it is sharing, license-free, its core virtual machine format and specificationâ€â€technology customers use to manage, patch, update and back up virtual environments.
Dan Chu, VMware’s senior director of developer and ISV products, said the move is just another step in the company’s push to create a larger ecosystem around virtualization. Included in the company’s virtual machine specifications are virtual disks, which are the containers for the disks used by the operating system running in a virtual machine.
Future :
Also, in the future, Microsoft plans to release the Windows hypervisor in the Longhorn Server time frame as part of the operating system, which reinforces its commitment to giving customers resource management and virtualization as part of the operating system, Ni said.
Ni also gave a road map for Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1, which has been pushed back. This is now scheduled for beta release in the second quarter of this year, with general availability likely in early 2007. SP1 will support the hardware virtualization capabilities developed by AMD and Intel.
The service pack also will support Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service, providing better support for backup and disaster recovery, he said.