Microsoft shows Windows Hypervisor

Tuesday, May 23, 2006   |   6 Comments   |   addthis
During the Bill Gates keynote at WinHEC 2006 Microsoft demonstrated the new Windows Hypervisor (codename Viridian), definitively called Windows Server Virtualization. Jeff Woolsey, Window Virtualization Program Manager, showed:
  • a migrated Virtual Server 2005 virtual machine inside the Windows Server Virtualization
  • a running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 guest OS
  • a running 64bit Windows Server 2003 guest OS powered with 2 virtual CPUs
  • how to add or modifiy virtual hardware to a powered on virtual machine without downtime (in particular they added a virtual NIC and changed memory assignement from 4GBs to 5GBs)
  • a running 64bit Windows Server codename Longhorn guest OS powered with 4 virtual CPUs
All of this from a dedicated Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in. Microsoft also announced that Windows Server Virtualization will be able to live add storage to virtual machines and support up to 8 virtual CPUs. Note that live modification of virtual hardware are features not provided by any virtualization vendor while more than 2 virtual SMP is offered just by Xen. Later, during the Bob Muglia keynote the new System Center Virtual Machine Manager (codename Carmine) was demonstrated as well. Eric Winner, Virtual Machine Manager Lead Program Manager, showed:
  • how to perform a physical to virtual (P2V) migration
  • how to provision new virtual machines from a masters' library in an automatic way (through the Self Service Portal)
  • how to redistribute virtual machines on physical hosts depending on workload
In his keynote Muglia also mentioned application virtualization (obviously referring to ongoing Softricity acquisition) and OS partitioning, mentioned by Microsoft itself 1 month before WinHEC. The sneaking message is that Microsoft is going to provide all three major virtualization tecnologies in the Longhorn wave: server (or hardware) virtualization, OS partitioning and application virtualization. Watch the Bill Gates keynote (Windows Server Virtualization is at minute 27:00) or read the transcript (Jeff Woolsey's part). Watch the Bob Muglia keynote (Virtualization and Virtual Machine Manager are at minute 33:00) or read the transcript (Eric Winner's part). Hear a Silicon Valley Sleuth podcast with Jim Ni, Windows Server Marketing Group Product Manager, about Microsoft virtualization strategy. The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Comments

Microsoft does not provide it either because it is not released yet. VMware with ESX 3.0 will have it for a year (at least) in production before Microsoft can have a go.

Adding virtual hardware without powering down the guest is cool though. I expect (hope) that VMware will also have something similar. Hot-add virtual disks in ESX 3.0 is already a good start!

By Anonymous Anonymous, at Tuesday, May 23, 2006 8:05:00 PM 

Watch the live demo here !
http://www.microsoft.com/events/executives/billgates.mspx

Skip to 27 mins in if you want to see what MS have done

PS Add this to the news story to show others

By Anonymous Anonymous, at Wednesday, May 24, 2006 1:02:00 AM 

Re the uniqueness of number of virtual CPUs and live modification of virtual hardware:

we support up to 32 VCPUs under Xen (IIRC), and you can hotplug VCPUs according to demand.

Also, we support hotplugging other hardware in theory but I've not looked at that recently, so I don't know if it works at the moment ;-)

By Blogger Mark Williamson, at Wednesday, May 24, 2006 3:52:00 AM 

It is great news, finally Microsoft has something decent to look forward to.

For the time being I'm still going to stick to VS because its free and performs well.

A while back I did a review of ESX vs Virtual Server.

http://capitalhead.com/1094.aspx

By Anonymous Przemek, at Wednesday, May 24, 2006 8:41:00 AM 

I'm confused. Will "Windows Server Virtualization," the hypervisor + virtualization stack + miniWin package, ultimately take over as the only deployment option for Windows Server? It sounds like it, since Jeff Woolsey says that the hypervisor is part of the Windows Server codebase. But if that is the case, then what do you do if you don't want virtualization? If the hypervisor is the only part of Windows Server with Ring -1 access, how do you bypass it?

By Anonymous Anonymous, at Friday, May 26, 2006 5:41:00 AM 

I've posted an exclusive Q&A session about Windows Server Virtualization which could help clarifying some points:
http://www.virtualization.info/2006/06/windows-server-virtualization-qa-with.html

By Anonymous alessandro, at Friday, June 02, 2006 1:06:00 AM 

Post a new comment

Virtualization Congress 2008

© 2003-2008 virtualization.info
Sitemap