Microsoft delays virtualisation software

Stephen Withers
Friday, 13 April 2007 04:48

Business IT - Technology

The public beta of Microsoft's 'Viridian' Windows Server virtualisation product has been pushed back to the second half of 2007, showing Apple isn't the only company having to delay software releases.

Microsoft's reasons are very different, however. Writing in the Windows Server Division Weblog, general manager of virtualisation strategy Mike Neil said a desire for greater scalability was behind the delay.

"We’re designing Windows Server virtualization to scale up to 64 processors, which I’m proud to say is something no other vendor’s product supports.  We are also providing a much more dynamic VM environment with hot-add of processors, memory, disk and networking as well a greater scalability with more SMP support and memory."

Work is also being done to ensure the beta can cope with "demanding enterprise IT workloads, even I/O intensive workloads".

Viridian is still on track for release within 180 days of Windows Server 'Longhorn,' according to Neil.

Microsoft's existing server virtualisation product, Virtual Server 2005 R2, creates virtual machines within a host operating system, an approach that is slower than the hypervisor technology used by VMware, Xen and Viridian.

Service Pack 1 for Virtual Server 2005 R2 was expected during the first quarter, but its release has now been postponed to the end of the second quarter. SP1 will add support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, Solaris 10 and the recent technology preview of Windows Server 'Longhorn'.

Other improvements include support for up to 64 virtual machines under 32-bit Windows Server (512 on x64 hosts) if the hardware has sufficient memory and CPU cores, and support for hardware assisted virtualisation on Intel and AMD processors.