| Paul Thurrott On Microsoft Virtualization |
| Thursday, 27 July 2006 by Michel Roth | |||
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As a long-time proponent of virtualization, I felt at the time that legacy server consolidation was a valid use of the technology, but only one of the many ways that corporations might want to use it. Meanwhile, VMware's more full-featured virtualization servers and management tools opened up virtualization to a much wider range of uses. And just as important, VMware's server could run on Linux and support Linux guest environments. Put simply: Virtual Server was seen as inferior. Today, VMware and Microsoft are on a more level playing field because of various moves that have improved both the core Virtual Server product and its chances of competing with VMware. Virtual Server 2005 R2, the latest version, now natively supports several enterprise-oriented Linux distributions, although of course the server itself still runs only on Windows Server. Licensing of Microsoft's Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) virtual disk format has been more successful than expected, and many Microsoft and third-party management tools can now natively understand virtual disk-based system installs and work with them in unique ways. And, finally, Microsoft is addressing the fact that Virtual Server customers will want to use the server for far more than just consolidation. Read the entire article here.
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