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How Virtualization Led Microsoft to Support Linux
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Why did Microsoft make the surprise announcement that it would support business customers who also use Linux? Because of the increasing importance of virtualization, Lee Gomes writes in the Wall Street Journal. 'Once businesses start using virtualization to cut back on the number of machines they need to buy, "a light bulb goes on over their head," says Tony Iams, who follows the field for Ideas International, an analyst group,' Gomes writes. 'Other uses become apparent, such as backing up data or easily adding processor power to a particular application as the need arises.' VMware pioneered the market, but now Microsoft is 'expected to offer sophisticated virtualization products in the next year or two,' Gomes writes. 'The company currently has a fairly rudimentary product, which was involved in its big Linux announcement earlier this month.'"
Before everyone gets all smiley and happy about this, what depth of support are they offering?
Are we talking OS configuration and administration support, or merely: "Is your Linux VM booting?" level of support?
I've heard conflicting reports about this. Can anyone set the record straight? I'm asking you, MS Virtual Server team...
And wake me up when MS also natively supports Ext3, ReiserFS, etcetera on their own OSes too (do they?). Microsoft not interoperating with others, while everybody else tries to play nice with each other, could eventually lead to it's downturn as it is painting itself into a corner. Especially since they aren't the only game in town (practically) in a lot of areas like they used to be in the late 80's, and most of the 90's.
Here is a link to a video from MS virtualization developers:
Channel 9: Virtualization
I realize I could just ask Google, but why not ask humans at Slashdot? How much does the virtualization cost us. It's clear that 10 boxes can't do the work of 100. They can only do the work of 10. But how much does the virtualization absorb? Is it 10% so the 10 boxes really do the work of 9? Or is it worse?
And what's a bit troubling to me is that this is the second layer of bureaucracy in the machines. The OS already has semi-virtualization turned on to keep the different processes from running into each other. What does the second layer cost in performance?
but now Microsoft is 'expected to offer sophisticated virtualization products in the next year or two.
So, what's new. We've seen it before.
1. Say that you are going to release a "new", "feature rich", "superior", etc. product after an year.
2. Businesses stop buy competing products, thus killing the competitors.
3. Release a crappy product, stolen (or bought) from someone, and cripple it more.
4. ?????? (Balmer jumps, etc.)
5. Profit
Computers are more powerful now than then.
In 1996, a "top-end" computer would be a Pentium Pro. At 200Mhz.
10 times this would be 2Ghz (and, yes, I am making the mistake of just comparing clock rate, but I don't have much time).
The job of 10 1996 computers can be merged into one computer today (actually, more, but lets stay simple).
Those 10 systems used rack space, power, a/c, etc.
The problem is that if each of those 10 computers had a task (and we presume they did, or they would not have been deployed) and these tasks are combined, you would have a system with 10 times that number of tasks.
Now lets look at an example of a 1996 server: It could handle imapd, httpd, ntpd, tftpd, nfs, smb, dhcpd, yp, sendmail. 9 applications, say 90 processes. After merging, you would have 90 applications, and 900 processes.
A 4 way Operton I just worked with had 1800 processes. Using virtualization, this consolidation can be split back into multiple virtual boxes.
As to the security of virtual machines: I have NEVER had a malicious program in VMWare 4 bring down the entire machine. Easy enough to kill the virtual machine, but the not the host. And I've tried. With proper instruction level support, it will even get better. Old time IBMers have no problem running under VM.
Ratboy666
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061