Microsoft tries to hit VMware where they ain't

In Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner is wary of building a baseball diamond on his farm, which is already near foreclosure. But a voice tells him, "If you build it, they will come."

Microsoft has the same vision for its virtualization technology. Several years in the making, Microsoft's Hyper-V officially entered on Thursday a field dominated by VMware and other competitors, including the open-source Xen product.

Microsoft Corporate Vice President Bill Laing told me that he understands his company faces an uphill battle in trying to win over customers that have been using VMware and Xen, in some cases for many years.

"I think we'll do best initially in 'green field' opportunities," Laing said. "Small business, I think, is a completely green field. In the enterprise, where customers haven't deployed (another virtualization technology), I think we'll do well."

Over time, Laing said he wants Microsoft find its way into data centers that already use VMware.

"I think it will take longer to rip and replace, but that's certainly our ambition," Laing said.

As expected, Microsoft announced on Thursday that it has finished work on Hyper-V. For now, Microsoft is making Hyper-V available for download via its Web site, though it plans on July 8 to make it an option via Windows Update. By releasing it now, the company is following through on its pledge to ship the virtualization hypervisor within 180 days of the release of Windows Server 2008.

[The_Decider]

And does anyone care or even notice? Another half-assed "me-too" product from Microsloth. ZZZZZZZ......

[snidemcbride]

Decider,

lots of people care. Try it before you hate on it. It's actually really good stuff. I had a chance to see the management product Virtual Machine Manager and it looks to be kick arss too. I'm no fanboy just getting sick of the haters that don't know what they are talking about. That would be you.

[servermaker]

Could not agree more with you snider. VMware is waaayyyy overpriced in our opinion. We've evaluated Hyper-V and though it lacks some features provided by VMware it is more than sufficient for our needs. We are finally willing to move headlong into VM technology and we will be doing it with Microsoft tech...for better or worse...

[inachu]

MS--- hey lets buy a software company and remove the cempetiting parts out of it by name only and make it a MS product only!

MS really trashed a good product and most things they touch turn out really bad 3 or 4 versions later.

[The_happy_switcher]

Nobody cares about Microsoft anymore. They haven't had an original idea in 20 years. All their products or software are usually a reaction to someone else's idea and it's usually a bad ripoff.

[humanssssss]

VMWare and Microsoft products are pathetic compare to KVM. KVM is super fast and can scale to thousands of virtual machines. It's native kernel virtual machine on Linux. You can deploy as many virtual machines on as many different host you want without costing you a dime.

I've seen big SaaS infrastructure running on KVM. And btw, KVM can run VMWare image file too. The .vmdk. I don't think there is any need for VMWare or Microsoft products.

When you deal with server side, Linux is the way to go because it's proven by a lot of companies like Google, Yahoo, facebook, youtube, etc.

[rcrusoe]

Running Windows on a virtual machine is a great idea. When the server gets torpedoed by a virus, worm, hacker, buggy service pack, etc. you can have another copy of the server up and running very quickly.

But you need a stable secure host for your virtual machines, which is why we always use Linux host. It is a foolish man that builds "his virtual machines" upon sand.

[Seaspray0]

applerocks, you're just another hater like decider and we are getting tired of your rhetoric. You're clueless to what the company does because you don't even use their products. I've seen it, I've used it, and if you would get off your arse and actually look, you'd find that microsoft has and is innovating new ideas since 20 years ago... plug and play, active directory, microsoft touch just to name some. If they had done such a poor job as you claim, then then linux fans along with the EU would not be crawling all over them to release their interopability API's between the server and client. As for humansssss... if KVM does what you said it does, then I'll be interested in seeing it along with the VM microsoft puts out.

[The_happy_switcher]

Gee, that's really too bad, isn't it? Microsoft has set computing back 10 years with their lousy products the last few years. I will go on this board whenever I feel like it exposing the crap that Microsoft spews out endlessly.

[ShootDawg1]

active directory is not something microsoft came up with? banyan vines?? novell's edirectory came out 8 years ahead of AD.

[The_happy_switcher]

And plug and play? Lol, there's a good reason it was known as plug and 'pray.'

[MMC Racing]

When has Linux has an original idea? Most of the desktop environments are XP ripoffs. IBM was "virtualizing" mainframes 30 years ago.. This entire "original idea" argument is silly - there are few original idea. Most products are an improvement on something existing or the same result from another method. The iPod is a music player - who improved on the interface and music purchasing process.

A little education for the haters, when you install Hyper-V it actually pics up the host OS and lays the hyper-visor under it and the host OS because a parent partition - essentually a VM guest. This isn't a weak (really only good for labs) Virtual Server product like Microsoft had previously.

Runs SUSE nicely also with native VM driver support.