Yesterday the third part of the “Hypervisor Footprint Debate” appeared on the Windows Virtualization Team Blog. As a consultant I’m supposed to be unbiased concerning vendors or products. “It depends” is our slogan . Therefore I’m always considering Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer along VMware VI3/VS4 when it comes to hardware virtaulization and therefore I’m regularly checking the WVT-blog.

But the way Microsoft is using this blog to trash VMware is sad. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft announced the immediate availability of the App-V 4.6 beta from Microsoft Connect.

One of the major improvements is that the sequencer now packages native 64-bit applications, and with this they seem to be the first in the market ! Off course this is a beta and the question is whether Microsoft will really be the first to release an RTM product that packages 64-bit apps.

Another big change Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday Microsoft announced through their Windows Virtualization Team Blog that Microsoft’s Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 will support boot-from-flash. This means that they give the OEM vendors the possibility to suplly Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 as an embeded virtualization solution just like it is happening now with embedded versions of VMware VI3.5 and Citrix XenServer 5.

Check out the latest details on Hyper-V R2 and boot-from-flash here.

This sounds impossible but when I read Gabe’s article correctly he brings back Microsoft OS licensing costs of about $800.000 (for 200 physical hosts) back to just $40.000 (for 200 virtual hosts). Of course this presents an ideal situation.

The situation Gabe describes:
- 200 physical hosts -> 200 virtual guests on 7 physical hosts
- virtualization solution can be any: MS, Citrix, VMware or other
Read the rest of this entry »

Just like last time Microsoft and Citrix will be present this year with a booth at VMworld in Cannes. Lately Microsoft as well as Citrix have been spreading some pretty interesting news to attract visitors to their booth and to their products in general:

- Citrix presents first-ever demo of bare-metal client hypervisor.

- Citrix will officially announce free XenServer 5 Enterprise Edition.

- Citrix and Microsoft will support eachothers hypervisors with Citrix Essentials and Microsoft System Center.

Read the rest of this entry »