MetaShip Hyper V..... May GODs bless her and all those who Pilot with IT's Counsel.

Microsoft make AI Quantum Leap into Virtual Leadership? Or just building on Bloat in the Information Stack?

Steve's Call is it? Only one Answer steals AI NEUKlearer Lead, fair and square.

Of course Novell SuSE is the only distribution M$ is listing as supporting. Where's my penguin icon?

so this new hypervisor stuff from redmond only supports stuff that don't belong in an it datacenter. Another swing and a miss from microsoft. And why isn't IBM suing their asses off for using the term hypervisor.

It's called divide and conquer. Anything that MS can do to cause one Linux faction to start fighting with another will keep Gates and chums sleeping soundly at night. And you just got suckered into it.

> Better late than never, eh?

No, not really.

with all the know-how MS has re: virtualization why the hell don't they develop a sandbox app (like Virtual Sandbox or SandBoxie) in which EXEs can run and gradually force apps to run in it? Limit access to the registry (even better - simulate the registry API but don't actually use it), prevent disk access outside a user-controlled folder, per-app firewall and add an API for cross-app communication. Sure it'll break a lot of bloated apps in the beginning but it's better than watching customers flee to Ubuntu or Mac.

Microsoft make AI Quantum Leap into Virtual Leadership = good

Or just building on Bloat in the Information Stack = bad

What the world really needs is a nice de-challenger integrated into development environments.

Technet and MSDN have been running within this hypervisor for a little while now from accounts - suggests it can be as datacenter capable as you wish to employ - in the same vein as other hypervisors really.

This week I had a coworker, computer literate but not geeky, complaining to me that he was about to return his brand new Sony Vaio. The machine came with Vista but did not run half of its software and he was bored of the overall use interface clumsiness. On top of that, the machine (a dual core laptop with 2GB of RAM) fell very very slow.

What he really wanted was to put XP on the system, as he had a purchased XP license. He tried, but he could not install it because there were no XP drivers for his brand new machine. He complained to Sony and got a response from their customer service that said that there will not be XP drivers for the machine.

That was the point where he wanted to just return the machine to Sony when I suggested him another approach. He had heard of Linux, but there were two things that made him not jumping into it. First, since the HW was so new as not to have XP drivers, he was fearing that no Linux drivers were going to exists. Second, he had a handful of programs that do not have Linux equivalent that he still wanted to run. I asked if he had games or anything DirectX related, and he was not interested it that.

My suggestion was to try Kubuntu, since he was going to return the machine there was nothing to lose anyway. He tried it, installation was smooth and all basic HW was recognized and working.

I then helped him in two areas. First, the webcam required compiling a module and installing it. Second, I set up VirtualBox for him. Now his XP license lives comfortably inside a VirtualBox VM and he has installed all the programs he needs for which he does not have direct Linux equivalents.

He's the happiest man on earth. The machine performs splendidly, he can browse the net, mail, etc on the Linux side of things and can use the Windows programs when he needs them. Plus, no Windows AV, Windows firewall, etc. He has just made an snapshot of the VM after finishing installation and if XP kills itsefl he can just restore the image, which is a regular file inside his home Linux folder.

Voila, another convert... and by the way it's an awesome machine. Now try to do that with Vista....

I would like to see a test against vmware server on windows server please.

I bet HyperV is faster because of some proprietary sys-calls within the windows server kernel. I really hope it will be a fierce competition forcing down the horrendously vmware pricing.

I think you'll find that Hyper-V supports more that the few mentioned in the article. Maybe read this stuff ? I think the Datacentrer versions are designed for a Datacenter ?

The CLIENT OS, is different.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/virtualization-consolidation.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv-supported-guest-os.aspx

I wonder if any Linux kernel hackers will find a way to work ouf if the kernel is running under Hyped-V, and take appropriate action? Like maybe eat extra CPU cycles to the MS host's detriment?

... else thought a hypervisor is something to do with having eyesight like Geordie off ST:NG?

Mine's the one with "Word Geek" across the shoulders ;-)

MS have exactly what you describe: formerly called Softgrid, about to be renamed "Microsoft Application Virtualization"

VMWare have Thinstall, and Xenocode have Application Virtualization Studio

Each is able to work as you describe... applications in their own little sandbox, no dll-hell etc; so you can happily run different versions of whatever software you want side by side (IE 6 and IE7 for example?) and do as you wish.

Hope this helps

H

Paris because I'm led to believe that she's had several different applications in her sandbox... maybe even simultaneously ;-)

thanks but those seem to be tools for developers to package their apps, right? I was thinking the reverse - a program where end-users select existing, potentially unsafe exes to run in. And for Microsoft to make that sandbox app available as a free download/windows update so it can make up for all the other security failures. And they'd have to stop calling it virtualization, I'm sure it impresses WallStreet, not so much end-users.

Bob and Clippy are the only things Microsoft can claim they invented, but that's never stopped 'em in the past...

Main advantage of using it, a BSOD can take down multiple copies of your app.