Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Saturday, 03 May 2008 13:37
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor and virtualisation technology is coming
early – but given the stuff ups with XP SP3 and Vista SP1, would you
trust it – or stick with VMWare or Citrix instead?
Computerworld has
reported that Microsoft’s Hyper-V technology is coming two months ahead of schedule.
Originally, Microsoft had planned for Hyper-V to arrive “180 days” after the launch of Windows Server 2008, which happened in February.
180 days is 6 months, and 6 months after February is August, my favourite month of all, because it’s my birthday month – something that Hyper-V would also have shared.
But Microsoft is popping Hyper-V out of a oven a couple of months early, seemingly confident that the leap to final RTM status from beta is worth doing.
Unfortunately, this is probably a very bad idea. There can be no doubt that Microsoft jealously eyes both virtualisation market leader, VMWare, and stalwart competitor – and Microsoft partner – Citrix, wanting to rapidly catch up in the virtualisation stakes.
But we need only see the mess that the release of Vista SP1 has become, and the snafu with XP SP3 with data corruption issues for the Microsoft Dynamics software suite, a bug which also affects Vista SP1, to see that Microsoft’s latest attempts at service packs have, for some at least, turned into disservice packs.
Disservice packs that have led some users to scratch their heads wondering whether or not Microsoft can be trusted – or, at least, trusted from day one.
So, does Hyper-V have any real chance of success in the short to medium term? Please read onto page 2.
