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.'"

Comments

Beware of Geeks bearing gifts!

[Locke2005]

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.

Re:Beware of Geeks bearing gifts!

[VGR]

I don't think that deserves to be labeled flamebait.

This is something Microsoft has already done with other products they could not otherwise embrace, extend and extinguish: They simply make it look bad.

Like distributing Java 1.1 for years. Or having pages return degraded content for Opera browsers.

I don't know that they'll introduce actual data corruption, but I can certainly envision the VM doing a number of things very slowly, particularly if it's running Linux or emulating functionality that Linux is known to frequently rely on. It may not even be deliberately hobbled functionality, but rather "lax support" for some key functionality.

Microsoft != stupid

[CogDissident]

They know that open source can be good for them sometimes. While many of you might be huge linux advocates, the fact remains that many of the bigger companies still use windows server solutions. Its not so much that they support linux, is that now that its a viable solution, if they can blend themselves into linux, but still get you to pay for M$ products, then they come out ahead.

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.

VMWare "pioneered" the market????

[cdn-programmer]

What about IBM? Seems VMWare is about 40 years late.

Copycats

[thegattaca]

We swear! It has nothing to do with Boot Camp or VMWare!

How much support?

[bastardadmin]

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...

Re:and...

[pla]

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.

OS sold with server is important

[Enrique1218]

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.