From: Martin Blackstone [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, 5 October 2008 1:27 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Microsoft's Free version of Hyper-V Ships! & a random Friday Q
Hyper-V is a huge step up from Virtual Server. I always hated that app. The web based interface blew with teeth. I would love to see Hyper-V written as its own product rather than laid over Windows. One of the things I like about VMware is it only takes about 10-15 minutes to install and it's still fairly lightweight. I don't want to install Windows, then add Hyper-V. Give me a single CD installer (not a DVD, a CD). It can still be a Windows core, but separate it. Completely. The architecture of Hyper-V requires regular Windows drivers for most hardware devices (NICs, mass storage, video etc). This requires some kind of OS to host it. It's a different design to VMWare's monolithic kernel. If you just want Server Core + Hyper-V (or Windows Hyper-V Server) then you can get that on a single DVD. Just automate the installation of the optional Hyper-V role (if using Server Core). People spend all this time complaining about how Microsoft adds all this optional stuff in. Now, you have to add all the separate bits yourself... :-) I would like to see much wider guest OS support. Windows, multiple Linux flavors, Novell, Solaris, etc. If they truly want to play with the big boys, they are going to have to spread out. I suppose if you are an MS only shop, that's great. At my shop we have Windows, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Suse, and a few other flavors that our customers use and we need to test against. Hyper-V won't cut it. I don't think Microsoft cares - yet. You are not their target market. At the moment they are after large scale customers doing large scale server consolidation. And after large scale customers that need run test or dev environments that run to hundreds or thousands of servers. They need to get the features to support that first (automated P2V, high availability, monitoring, provisioning etc). Then they are going to worry about supporting other OSes with additions (well, SUSE is already supported. Xen-aware kernels was in the works). Cheers Ken From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2008 7:57 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Microsoft's Free version of Hyper-V Ships! & a random Friday Q Um, Microsoft cut the price of Virtual Server to $99, and then gave it away for free, well before VMWare started offering VMWare Server v1.0. You used to have to pay for GSX Server... And VMWare Server doesn't use a hypervisor in any case. Whilst Microsoft's technology might be behind VMWare's - they are doing to VMWare what they've done in many other markets (databases, directories etc). They produce several versions of a product and sell at a fraction of the cost of their competitors. Over a period of a few iterations, the product ends up with 90% of the features that 90% of buyers need. Windows Server used to be nowhere. SQL Server used to be nowhere. Biztalk used to be nowhere. Sharepoint used to be nowhere. Exchange used to be nowhere. Now these are all serious players in the market. Cheers Ken From: Chris Alliey [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, 4 October 2008 6:12 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Microsoft's Free version of Hyper-V Ships! & a random Friday Q VMWare has been giving their hypervisor away for free for a while now. In addition to ESXi, they have been giving VMWare server and Player away for a long time. I'm glad MS is 'giving' it away (Don't you still need to buy an OS from them?) - but I'll stick with VMware! Just my 0.02¢ Chris From: David Lum [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 03, 2008 11:45 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Microsoft's Free version of Hyper-V Ships! & a random Friday Q Perhaps not immediately, but surely many of you remember when Novell had a seemingly untouchable hold on the networking OS market? Dead horse Q of the week: If Microsoft suddenly made several poor choices and was about to go under, would the government bail it out? David Lum // SYSTEMS ENGINEER NORTHWEST EVALUATION ASSOCIATION (Desk) 971.222.1025 // (Cell) 503.267.9764 From: Sherry Abercrombie [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 12:16 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Microsoft's Free version of Hyper-V Ships! Hmmm, I don't think that Hyper-V is going to shove VMWare out of the way, they are way to ahead of MS in virtualization at this point to even be threatened by Hyper-V. On 10/1/08, Andy Shook <[EMAIL PROTECTED]<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: <yawn> Shook From: Carl Houseman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>] Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 2:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Microsoft's Free version of Hyper-V Ships! +1 I think the whole world is about to become more virtual. Will free Hyper-V do to VMware what Internet Explorer did to Netscape? Is it déjà vu all over again? Carl ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
