Microsoft eases datacentre software virtualisation rules

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 20 August 2008 07:33

Business IT - Technology

Microsoft has also changed its support rules, and will provide the same technical support whether the product is running in a virtualised or non-virtualised environment. This is not limited to Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualisation software, it also applies to validated third-party virtualisation systems such as those from Citrix, Novell and Sun.

"Technical support of virtualised images is an industrywide challenge," said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of open platform solutions at Novell.

"Novell and Microsoft continue to collaborate to optimize bidirectional virtualization between Windows Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise with Xen," he added. "Microsoft's Server Virtualization Validation Program provides customers with additional peace of mind when they run Windows as a guest in a validated environment such as SUSE Linux Enterprise."

Microsoft's Adam scores a brownie point for getting a company tagline into his quote: "Get Virtual Now" is the name of a series of events currently being held around the world to deliver virtualisation training to more than 250,000 IT professionals.

The 100-plus event program in more than 50 countries began in South Africa on August 3, and hits the US on September 8 at Bellevue, Washington.