Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Microsoft is 'expected to offer sophisticated virtualization products in the next year or two,' Does Microsoft's definition of "sophisticated" include inducing random data corruption in any non-Microsoft OS? I think I'd be more a lot more comfortable getting my virtualization products from somebody that lets me look at the source code.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The simple fact is that M$ wants to keep its name in the big buisnesses because 10,000 licenses a year is a big deal, plus those big boys of buisness also influence their workers to be familiar with windows, which leads their families to purchase windows, and so on and so on.
What about IBM? Seems VMWare is about 40 years late.
Didn't VMWare have its start as the IBM product VM/386? It was released in the early 90's, but at the time IBM really didn't know what to do with it - they had their hands full with trying to quit alienating OS/2 developers...
Didn't VM/360 come about in the early 70's? Is it really over 40 years old?
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
We swear! It has nothing to do with Boot Camp or VMWare!
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.
Wake me when they support NTFS on Linux.
If by "they" you mean the open-source crowd, then check out here.
If by "they" you mean Microsoft, then check the status here.
It's all vaporware. Vaporware until it actually ships -- if ever.
And in Microsoft's case, it's vaporware until version 3.0 at least.
Or until they buy a company that already knows how to do it properly.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
And wake me up when MS also natively supports Ext3, ReiserFS, etcetera on their own OSes too
Why? With virtualization, the host OS has no need to understand the guest OS's filesystem any more than it needs to know the guest's binary format. You just point it at a partition or an FS image file, and let it do its thing.
Some of us actually consider that one of the most useful features of running a virtual machine - Absolutely perfect 100% backups involve nothing more complicated than shutting down the guest OS and copying its image file. You can even perfectly backup a running OS that way, you just need to pause it and do a state dump; Then when you restart it, you resume right where you left off.
Microsoft wants to remain relevant with the OEMs. The way to keep that secure is to make sure that OEM will still offer Windows with their servers. Virtualization's emergence may redefine the importance of the operating system. It is spreading from high end server right down to the desktop. Microsoft will be keen to support competitors operating systems including Linux because Linux certianly will support Windows via VMWare/Xen. Otherwise, OEMs will begin bundling Linux over Windows with the knowlegde that it can always be install after market as a virtual OS. When that happens Microsoft loses clout with the OEMs which may trickle down to destops. Also, the other reason is to compete to be the host OS and not the virtual one because the customer may rely more on that OS than the virtual one and is more likely to invest more in it.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Here is a link to a video from MS virtualization developers:
Channel 9: Virtualization
You will be able to tell they're ready to make serious money on this when they offer a cut rate discounted license for "Windows 2003 server, virtual machine edition" On top of "Windows Virtual Server"
This way, you get a VMware ESX style OS to handle virtual servers on the box which would presumably come with some set number of windows server licenses, and a per virtual server licensing option for windows running on virtualization options other than MS's own.
Sell in option would be to do server consolidation for companies. The pitch? "Let us consolidate these 10 servers onto one box for you, you save the yearly maintenance costs on 9 servers, and we credit your account part of what those 2003 server licenses are costing on all of them to help subsidize the virtualization software with double that number of virtual windows servers licensed on it."
The potential is here for it to be truly insidious.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
virtualization is great (in theory), but will MS be offering write support for it's archaic and flawed NTFS without sacrificing transfer speed? What about ReiserFS and ext3FS support? Instead of converting completely to Linux, companies will pay for the Windows license, use whatever they want inside the shell, and the information therein is (presumably) accessible to Windows users. I'm going to venture a guess and say that MS is performing triage, advertising software (which VMware already sells) that will help your company have a smooth transition into Linux. In the past, VMware had trouble with kernel upgrades, which will likely be the case with MS as well. In the end, why switch to an OS where you don't have to worry about adware/spyware utilities that suck up system resources, an idle process that steals resources, or patches that leave you with your pants down? You can run it from inside the OS that gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling and has that familiar loading chime.
"Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
I had a bet with a guy I knew that this would not happen before Microsoft started becoming less popular and was bought out by some other company.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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
Actually, Windows Services for Unix (STFU, oops, SFU), formerly the interix stuff, has been free for a while. It's a posix layer and includes standard utilities/headers/libraries, ksh, and even gcc.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
You forgot: Paying all that money and watching your business die when Windows does. Priceless.
Charles Wyble System Engineer