Microsoft and Virtualization

While much of the press has been focused on Microsoft's Longhorn server and its hot-swappable capabilities, our eyes were drawn to this piece in BetaNews highlighting Microsoft's virtualization plans now that Viridian is off the front burner for the moment.

The pub sent one of its own to buttonhole Microsoft GM Mike Neil at the WinHEC event in LA to dig up these gems:

• Windows Server Virtualization will be offered as a "role," basically an automatic script tying you to virtual services.
• Server Core will act as the virtualization kernel, although it's a command-line approach sans graphics.
• The company is working with Novell to tie the Viridian and XenSource hypercall APIs, but don't hold your breath waiting for interoperability with other Linux vendors.

There's other good stuff here, too, like what Neil has to say about live migration, peripheral addition and 64-processor scaling. It's worth a read if you're hell-bent on Microsoft virtualization.