Posted on 04/20/2005 6:16:32 PM PDT by ShadowAce
Microsoft (Quote, Chart) plans to take a hard-charge at the burgeoning market for computer virtualization, including offering greater Linux compatibility, its chief executive said today.
Amid jokes about cooperating with rivals such as Sun Microsystems (Quote, Chart), Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the company would make serious investments in, and open up, its Virtual Server 2005 product to run on non-Windows machines.
This includes Linux, he said during his keynote address Wednesday at the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas. To prove the point, Microsoft official Bill Anderson demonstrated how Red Hat Linux could run on Virtual Server 2005.
The stance marks a departure for a company that has historically rebuffed any requests for interoperability with products it didn't make, particularly Linux, which Redmond has often sworn off as threatening.
Ballmer said the company had to soften its stance based on customer demand for virtualization, which helps multiple instances of a piece of software, such as an operating system, run on one single machine.
This technology helps customers cut down on the number of computers or servers they need to power their businesses, a cost-cutting measure that most enterprises crave.
To that end, Ballmer said Virtual Server 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1), which is now in beta, offers developers the ability to put the company's new 64-bit compatibility and improved performance to the test on editions of Windows Server 2003 x64.
The SP1 also features a new MOM 2005 management pack to help administrators manage the performance of both physical and virtual machines through a single console. Virtual Server 2005 SP1 beta is available now and the final version will arrive by the end of 2005.
Virtual Server 2005 is a component within the company's Dynamic Systems Initiative, a wide-ranging strategy for system management that will help Microsoft go for the jugulars of similar products from IBM (Quote, Chart), HP (Quote, Chart) and Computer Associates (Quote, Chart).
Microsoft Corporate Vice President Kyrill Tatarinov updated the DSI roadmap during his keynote at the show Tuesday.
But one of the key ingredients to drive system management for Microsoft is WS-Management, a Web services specification written by Microsoft, Intel (Quote, Chart), Sun and others. WS-Management lays out a common way for disparate systems to exchange and access management information across the infrastructure.
In a bid to prove the company's commitment to interoperability, Ballmer and Anderson showed how MOM can leverage WS-Management to manage interactions between Windows Server 2003 software and a Sun Solaris server.
Ballmer extracted cooling fans from the server, causing warnings from MOM to pop up as the machine whirred and hummed like a jet engine.
Ballmer said he repeatedly tells customers that Microsoft in fact offers interoperability, only to be regarded with "quizzical looks." He also surmised people continue to be surprised by Microsoft's willingness to work with long-time foe Sun.
Ballmer said the demonstration, unthinkable in years past, was a testament to the settlement Microsoft and Sun inked last year. He promised that he and Sun CEO Scott McNealy would have more interoperability news in a few weeks, when it is rumored the two high-tech giants could bridge the gap between their single sign-on technologies.
In the meantime, WS-Management is scheduled to be included in Windows Server 2003 R2, available later this year.
Peace and prosperity comments aside, virtualization was the high point of the keynote.
Looking forward, Ballmer said Microsoft will build virtualization capabilities into the Windows platform based on the company's hypervisor technology, which will virtualize Windows and other operating systems.
Hypervisor is slated to appear in the Windows "Longhorn" operating system in 2006, supporting Intel virtualization technology and AMD's Pacifica virtualization specification.
With its more open approach to virtualization, Microsoft may be taking a page from the book of VMware. That company has successfully virtualized all types of x86-based systems, including Windows and Linux. VMware parleyed this approach into excellent revenue growth that made EMC sit up, take notice, and scoop up the company in early 2005.
Microsoft recognizes it must do the same if it wants to do battle with VMware, which has promised to accelerate its pace of innovation.
Thanks for the heads up!
I went to the MS website and ordered Visual Studio 2005, Beta 2 for FREE. They are giving away some great stuff for developers over there.
I forgot the link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/getthebetas/
Microsoft will virtualize Linux... and vice-versa. Good for all concerned.
Okay, I am an aviation nut and not an IT guru; what exactly do they mean when they say that they shall virtualise Linux?
Linux ping.
For instance, on my laptop here, I am running Linux, but I am also running Win 2K inside a window--and all that implies. I can run Office (though I don't), games, and any other Windows-only programs I may have.
I don't think this is true. Microsoft has a history of making their products compatible just long enough to get people hooked and then introducing enough changes to force people away from their competitor onto a Microsoft version.
Java comes to mind as an example.
The way they did spreadsheets also comes to mind. They started out compatible with all competitors, but once they had majority market share they quit sharing file structures forcing the market to move to their spreadsheet or be incompatible with the rest of the world.
Okay, it is a Linux version of Virtual Basic, etc.
What software are you using to do that, and what kind of resources does it need? Any driver issues come up?
Once you create a VM, it shares the host's resources, so I allocate the max amount of RAM, hard drive space, etc. It uses bridged networking, so it looks like its own machine on my home network, and can access the Net on its own as well.
Once you install the OS, it acts exactly like that OS, with no problems that I have come across yet.
No driver issues that wouldn't normally come up with the OS in question. I can access everything on my system from my host or my guest OS. It's really cool.
The descriptions you're giving makes me think of the word "emulator", (such as Mame32 or Jnes running games). Am I right, or close?
Typical MS, always five years late to the dance but they love to make a big entrance. VMWare and others have been doing this on Linux for at least four years... What remains to be seen is will MS use its desktop dominance to push another sub par substitute on us..
An emulator fakes (i.e. creates a logical one in software) the CPU, memory subsystem, and other hardware. A virtualization system allows to, let's say it this way, share (not quite but close) your physical CPU and other trinkets to be available to both systems.
To bozack: No, it's supposed to be a way to run the Windows version of VB inside Windows concurrently with some other apps on some other system.
Ehem, sorry; the previous wasn't supposed to respond to bozac but to Army Air Corps #12.
I use VMWARE everyday myself, but I would never recommend allocating "the max amount of RAM" etc. to a virtual machine. You need that for your host, especially if you're going to run more than 2 VM's simultaneously with the host. A good example would be 2 gigs total RAM, with 1 G to host and 512 M to each VM.
As for the article, Linux is currently free for anyone to use, including Microsoft. They'll just make it another "window", like everything else.
CYGWIN is not bad, they finally have the x11 compatability.
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