Submitted by Microsoft is stepping up the pressure on virtualization leader VMware on the management tools front, releasing its System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 product to manufacturing. The software maker also plans to support some third-party virtualization software, including VMware and open-source Xen, in the next version of the product.
So, they plan on stepping up the pressure on their competitor… by increasing the number of ways their competitor’s product can be used?
Does anyone else see the contradiction?
Not really. The management tools, not the runtime, are what you pay for when you buy a Virtualization product to run on top of another OS. You can download VMWare’s runtime for free, just like MS’s.
On the other hand, when buying a bare bones implementation, you pay for the whole shebang.
But I’m just positive that Microsoft isn’t going to treat the VMs from other vendors as true first class citizens. Instead, it will just expose the lowest common denominator between VMs, and hope this will stifle competition by including speed hacks that are activated on VPC and left dormant on the others.
Not to mention how VMWare can expose hardware acceleration to the guest OS. Or how Xen can let guest OSs access some classes of hardware directly. VPC does neither, except for allowing access to USB…
I’m highly unimpressed by Microsoft’s move, and I’m really wary that it’s just smoke and mirrors to water down the differentiating qualities of their competitors. The one thing Microsoft won’t ever do is let customers know there ARE stuff out there that’s better implemented than Microsoft’s offerings; and they surely won’t expose such facts on a management tool such as this front-end.
‘Nuff said.
The biggest question I have is why use Windows with all its bloat. ESX is very lean and only has a CLI. You access a simple web interface for the rest. Why would you want to bring all the cruft from Windows to your host OS. It just makes the system unstable and causes problems.
ESX and Lean are not the two words I would use together.
Source: http://www.vmweekly.com/news/20070618/2/
Cutting ESX down to fit into firmware is not an insignificant task, a source said. As it stands, a default installation of ESX 3.0.1, VMware’s shipping product, consumes about 8 GB of space on a system, across several file systems. But VMware’s plans call for ESX Lite to consume orders of magnitude less space – as little as a of couple of megabytes, one source said.
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Now compare this to upcoming windows server 2008 with built in hypervisor – the server core with no GUI tools would take approximately 2 GB space.
No it doesn’t. It might partition the disk that way, but it doesn’t come close to filling it up.
df -h from an 3.0.1 esx service console:
/dev/sda2 4.0G 1.3G 2.5G 35% /
/dev/sda1 99M 32M 63M 34% /boot
/dev/sda3 2.0G 241M 1.7G 13% /var
As it stands, a default installation of ESX 3.0.1, VMware’s shipping product, consumes about 8 GB of space on a system, across several file systems.
No it doesn’t at all. I think it partitions it that way, but it consumes nowhere near that amount of disk space. I’m not entirely sure where they get this from.
Now compare this to upcoming windows server 2008 with built in hypervisor – the server core with no GUI tools would take approximately 2 GB space.
So you’re comparing a bare metal system with just a kernel, a hypervisor and some tools running to a whole OS with the associated overhead running a hypervisor? Right………..
Oh, and by the way, Windows Server 2008 does have a GUI, because Windows and any installable software has an inherent dependency on it. All they’ve done is cut down the GUI so that it runs a couple of CMD windows.
Oh, and by the way, Windows Server 2008 does have a GUI, because Windows and any installable software has an inherent dependency on it. All they’ve done is cut down the GUI so that it runs a couple of CMD windows.
Not true. Most Windows has no dependency on GUIs, except for… GUI tools. Windows is mostly componentized, meaning GUIs are just connectors to components which actually manage system. That’s how you can achieve the same results by GUI or scripting. So saying that Windows depends on GUI is wrong. If you say that Windows preferred way to behave is thru GUIs, that could be correct (even if many actions cannot be performed by GUI tools while they are available to developers via system objects).
While 3rd-party software usually needs a GUI for normal operations, most server software are componentized as well and that’s how they can be integrated inside control panels, for example. So they wouldn’t technically require a GUI though no Windows software usually comes without one (would be insane).
If you think Windows Server 2008 Core is meant to emulate Unix behaviour you didn’t understand what 2008 Core is. Core is not meant to replace standard Windows Server installations but it’s meant to be used in highly-automated contexts where you *never* manage server yourself but where servers are usually managed by scripts and automation software. In such contexts GUI is pretty unuseful because admins never use that (as opposed to standard Windows installations where admins *use* GUIs to perform everyday tasks). In such contexts then, having a GUI or not is irrelevant because you never use that so they just took advantage of their system componentization and stripped (or reduced) the GUI. Core 2008 is also meant to take on a different market where Windows is not present: electronic appliances (eg. routers, modems and so on). Windows is simply not present in those markets and Core 2008 would make Windows a viable choice (how good it will be, it’s a matter of time for us to see).
What Core 2008 is not meant for is replacing standard Windows server in markets like hosting and so on, though in highly-specialized cases (like big server farms) it could be a choice too.
I “love” these preemptive moves by Microsoft. They have been doing this since they were founded. Announce a product promising to make an existing product irrelevant and hope to instill enough doubt in the market as to the viability of the product that competes with Microsoft’s that a few years later they become the only guy left standing in the room.
Note that support to manage VMwawre and Xen virtual machines is planned, not yet implemented. Does anyone here seriously believe that Microsoft would be able to afford these sorts of things if it were not for their stronghold on the computing industry?
The only announcement here is that VMM shipped. eWeek noted that they plan to add support for other hosts, which is not “announced” per say but merely information that the VMM team has shared on blog sites. It is consistent with the OSS concept of “release early, release often (in this case, your plans)” that Microsoft now also subscribes to.
Edited 2007-09-11 23:32
“Announce a product promising to make an existing product irrelevant and hope to instill enough doubt in the market as to the viability of the product that competes with Microsoft’s that a few years later they become the only guy left standing in the room.”
Wow, you mean just like EVERY other big company in existence?
“Does anyone here seriously believe that Microsoft would be able to afford these sorts of things if it were not for their stronghold on the computing industry?”
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If they don’t support 3rd party software, people complain about that. If they support 3rd party software, people complain about that.
They are just trying to steal some thunder from VMworld, thats happening this week… That and VMware bought some infrastructure management company.
Maybe you guys should actually read what Virtual Machine Manager is before you comment. It does not +host+ the VMs – it is installed on a separate machine and provides manageability stuff for your VM hosts. For example, it provides a web interface for self-service provisioning of VMs, managing libraries of (dormant) VHDs, enabling a quota-points system, etc. It essentially automates VM software such as Virtual Server, and in future Viridian, VMWare and Xen.
And to speak to TechGeek’s comments regarding the weight of virtualization, check out Viridian aka Windows Server Virtualization.
Well if i am not going to bother running Windows to host the VMs, and incur the monetary penalty for that, why would I want to install MS software for managing it? That makes NO SENSE.
Some people run mixed environments, you know.
Some people run mixed environments, you know.
Yer. It’s just a pity that these management tools won’t run on anything other than Windows. *rolls eyes*
Microsoft will support the 3rd party VM tools but there Virtual Machine will run the best on there OS.
I think that its funny on how Microsoft makes announcements on software that wont be released for another year or so. It makes you wonder if they even have a product at all, when they make these announcements. They are a very large company and I’m sure if they could pump out some beta of anything they want in no time.
Which announcement are you speaking of? Virtual Machine Manager v1 +has+ shipped. And there +were+ a series of public betas leading up to that, as there no doubt will be for v2.
The fact that Microsoft is announcing support for 3rd-party technology is, somewhat, unexpected. They rarely include support for “foreign” technologies but they’re behaving completely different in virtualization (support for 3rd-party OS in Virtual PC and Virtual Server and tools for foreign VMs) so I guess Microsoft sees virtualization like an important part of their server strategy.
Anyway, this is a good move because they’re simply trying to force other players to include support for Virtual PC/Server. If competitors won’t do that, users will find using MS tools better than others because of the ability to manage all of their stuff. If competitors will reply by including support for MS technologies, they will automatically be recognizing them as important players and will provide users on their end access to such technologies. It’s a Win-Win for Microsoft. Good move.
Now let’s see how good others can react.
The fact that Microsoft is announcing support for 3rd-party technology is, somewhat, unexpected.
There’s one simple reason. They’re behind in this market.
There’s one simple reason. They’re behind in this market.
Being behind is not a problem. Staying behind would be. Microsoft started to actually playing this game later than others so let’s see what happens.
For one, this move is good. Though I’m not really interested in mixed virtualized environment there are plenty of companies which are.
I’d say that third party VM’s would be better off licencing technology to OS companies and using other means to make money rather than expect EU intervention to solve technological problems.
Microsoft is adding VM, but it all depends on what the purpose of the VM is for; if it is solidation of the same operating system, then something like Sun’s Zones would be a better fit, if it is different versions of the same operating system, for compatibility, purposes, a different solution is needed.
It us unfortunate that there is an attempt by some to create a one size fits all when in reality it doesn’t work that way.