Server virtualisation "hugely successful": Microsoft

Stephen Withers
Monday, 17 May 2010 09:33

Business IT - Technology

Virtualisation is now mainstream and Hyper-V is gaining traction at VMware sites, according to Microsoft's server virtualisation guy.

Jeff Woolsey, Microsoft's principal group program manager, server virtualisation, has been working in the virtualisation arena for 15 years, starting with Virtual PC for Mac - he joined Microsoft as a result of its acquisition of Connectix.

The hypervisor approach has proved "hugely successful" with "incredibly rapid adoption," he said. The main reason for running a non-virtualised server is a hardware compatibility issue, such as software that requires direct access to a hardware encryption card.

Performance is no longer an issue - for example, SQL Server delivers equal performance on a physical or virtual server on Windows Server 2008 R2, he said. Further evidence can be found in the fact that Microsoft has been running the MSDN web site (which attracts 3 million hits per day) on Hyper-V for the last two years, and other high volume Microsoft sites including Codeplex and TechNet have also been virtualised.

Woolsey said customers are increasingly adopting Hyper-V even if they were already using VMware. This is partly due to the ease of use (if you can deploy Windows Server, you can deploy Hyper-V, he claimed), and partly to price (eg, live migration is available for free with Hyper-V and Xen, but costs at least $US2500 for VMware).

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