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Microsoft Hyper-V Leaves Linux Out In The Cold
whitehartstag writes to mention that Microsoft has announced their new Hyper-V as feature-complete. Unfortunately the list of supported systems is disappointingly short. "No offense to SUSE Enterprise Server crowd, but only providing SUSE support in Hyper-V is a huge mistake. By not supporting Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS, and BSD, Microsoft is telling us Hyper-V is a Microsoft only technology. More Mt. Redmond, Microsoft center of the universe thinking. That's disappointing. Sure, if you are a Microsoft only shop, Hyper-V will be an option for virtualization. But so will VMware and XenServer. But if you run a mixed shop, Hyper-V won't solve your problems alone — you'll have to also add VMware or Xen to your virtualized data center portfolio. Or just go with VMware and Xen and forego Hyper-V."
So, it looks like the old "We don't have to interoperate" arrogance is still going strong at Microsoft. Let's see if they still think that way in another ten years.
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Are they only supporting SUSE E.S. as an ongoing policy? Or is it just the only one they've certified as of the first release?
Shouldn't any distribution based on a kernel build that doesn't require anything more or significantly different from the underlying hardware, relative to SUSE E.S. work just as well?
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Microsoft can choose to support whichever companies that they want. AFAIK, only Novell has signed the Munich Agreement with Microsoft, so it makes sense for Microsoft to exclude the others. At a recent Launch event for Windows Workstation 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL 2008, I saw only Novell was present (with a large booth) showing off Linux products and virtualized Windows environments. (Though it was funny listening to Steve B. try and pronounce SUSE.)
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If they won't virtualize other OS's, then they are not an option to be the main os in places that make use of virtualization.
You'd think they'd WANT to support everything, and do it well, so that people would actually *want* to choose them as the host os.
Stupid.
Notice that these are supported systems. That doesn't mean that other OS's will not work.
Novell probably agreed to help Microsoft support Suse Enterprise. Redhat isn't playing nicley with Microsoft so Microsoft isn't going to play nice with Redhat.
Fedora? Not a chance. Fedora is cutting edge code. I have no idea why people use this for servers when there are better distros to use on a server.
CentOS? Well this is a better distro to use on server than Fedora but it is Redhat without the support and price tag.
Finally BSD? BSD is dieing..... Just kidding. I just don't think Microsoft feels that it is worth the time.
What I didn't see is if Solaris is on the list.
So buy VMWare or use Xen folks.
Really if you want to be a Microsoft shop and run Linux then you now have an option of a Microsoft blessed Linux. If you are not a "Microsoft" shop then you can use VMWare, Xen, or VirtuaBox and have a lot more options.
I guess on the bright side they are supporting a Linux distro. It could have been a Windows only vm system.
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And just what is Hyper-V? The summary doesn't explain it. I even went against the grain here read the article (gasp!) and the article doesn't explain it. It implies that it might have something to do with virtualization but doesn't really explain itself. The "article" appeared to be more of a comment than news.
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No, it's not a little early. When you make an announcement, the lid is open and Pandora's legend is all over your shoes. The announcement did not say Suse is the first to be supported, it simply only listed it as supported. AND when you drink the coolaid, do you ever feel guilty? MS has a reputation that spoils any mis-step that the marketing droids might make. In fact this is so prevalent that not many people actually believe MS unless it is in writing and PJ has signed off on it. No matter how unfair that might be, one only has to look at the circus that OOXML has become to know that MS are not to be trusted... sigh
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It also shows they're out of sync with the current server setups that people have. The number of Microsoft-only shops are dwindling, and they're purposely leaving themselves out of the mixed market.
Aren't they supposed to dominate a market before cutting off interoperability (like IE for mac)?
Why would you go to the trouble when other solutions just work? Trusting Microsoft to run Linux ... there is no propper analogy for such a stupid thing.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216934&cid=17629948
Buy something that works and screw it up while breaking everything else.
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I don't see why the parent was modded as flamebait. I think it is a valid observation or else Microsoft would have done better at interoperability.
Maybe it isn't arrogance that caused Microsoft to go this current route. It could be they are trying to force Linux out of their (presumed) territory. It could be an act of desperation as Microsoft watches the world move to open source operating systems and applications. These new Eee PC platforms that cost only a hundred bucks or so will be pulling the rug out from under Microsoft as they have to forgo profit just to stay in the game. And as finances in the USA tighten up, there will be even more pressure to leave the expensive proprietary closed source world behind in favor of the open and free siren song of Linux.
Priced Microsoft products recently? It's unbelievable -- especially when you can get most all functionality for free. And Linux is now much friendlier than it was before. While I am a Linux fan-boy, the facts are what they are and Microsoft is just as capable of seeing it as we are.
And any business setting that wants/needs to maintain some MS compatibility ought to look at Codeweaver's Crossover Office. I use it here and it lets me run Microsoft Office apps under Linux with no virtualization needed. They install and run fine. Same for a lot of other software that supposedly is Windows-only.
You guys said the same exact thing ten years ago... and MS still doesn't need to interoperate.
Care to make a wager you will repeat the same statement ten years from now?
From the OP:
Yes... because it's all about choice... so having MS be one of the choices is SO FREAKING HORRIBLE!!! OMG!!!
As usual, the "all about choice" crowd proves that they really mean all about choice, so long as none of your choices dares to be Microsoft. IMO, you guys should be happy they provided official support for anything at all.
Oh god. Since this is slashdot then microsoft automaticly sucks. Check.
I can't speak for hyper-v but Microsoft did a great job with virtual server and it's FREE... but then so is vmware server. And this is coming from someone who loves VMware and has been using it from day one.
My company is a MS Gold Certified Partner, and we could care less about 90% of the crap they make.
MS doesn't even care about their partners. They are not making software for us. Or for the consumer. They only make it for their marketing department.
We get every piece of software they make for free. We run Server, SQL, XP, and Office. And even Office is optional given Thunderbird and Open Office.
My 3 year old single core laptop with 1gb of RAM runs far faster on Ubuntu than my DX10 overclocked dual core box with 4gb of ram runs XP. And we won't even go into the Vista debacle here.
The faster their market share goes down, the happier I am.
Stop letting off hot air on the dumbass article. See installing fedora core 8 on hyper-v . Even Ubuntu server is being used by people on HyperV. SUSE is supported in the sense of calling up MS's support desk and talking to them about it. But Linux distributions work just fine. This is just MS's way of telling people that they're on their own if they try other distributions(this is usually true for Linux servers anyway).
In the Microsoft world, "unsupported" means literally "we do not support this." i.e. "if you call us for support on this, we won't answer your question." There are a million things that Microsoft doesn't support, but still work perfectly-- Microsoft doesn't support typing in an IP address to Windows Remote Desktop Client, to use a particularly strange example I came across a few years ago, and yet it works fine and always has.
I don't know what Linux people think "unsupported" means, but they have the wrong idea whatever it is.
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While I agree with you that most of this is FUD, the fact that the other distros "work just fine" is irrelevant. "Not supported" means, to the enterprise world, not doable. Meaning, Microsoft VM ain't gonna happen in the big shops.
I think that there is a valid overall point to this submission, regardless of its hyperbole. It is that Microsoft's arrogance to think that they don't have to support other distros is exactly a fall back to their old ways. And this time, giving it away for free or making it a part of the Windows operating system isn't going to save Hyper-V like it did to save so many of their other products. For this fight of the hypervisor (essentially the new OS of the data center), VMWare has all the market share and lock in.
Sorry, but although the original article does exhibit some characteristics of an overblown rant, the main point is still valid. Most companies bigger than a mom-and-pop operation simply cannot use something that is "unsupported," regardless of whether it anecdotally "works just fine" or not.
If a user cannot call the Hyper-V tech support regarding an issue they are having running RHEL on Hyper-V and receive a proper response other than "we don't support that," then it is effectively useless and cannot form any part of that company's virtualization strategy. It may work just fine, but there are many companies with specific corporate policies prohibiting use of unsupported software, and in some cases, running into a serious problem with unsupported software can be seen as a violation of Sarbanes-Oxley and may be construed as negligence.
Whether it works OK or not with other linux distributions is irrelevant. Without real support, it's a non-starter for most businesses. That's not MS-bashing or Linux-fanboyism, it's just plain fiscal responsibility.
Do you think XAN and other projects like the possibility of incorporating MS patents into their codebase?
Novell have stated that their main focus is now 'interoperability' via the Microsoft patents that have been granted to them. Novell's corporate culture has no compelling reason to avoid implementing MS patents; quite the opposite in fact. Their execs are making increasingly flaky, shift statements WRT patents as well.
I don't think it odd at all that they are mistrusted.
Supporting a platform is a two-way street y'know. If RHEL works smoothly on Hyper-V it's because of the effort Novell and MS have put in.
There will still be corner cases where things don't work. It's impossible to nail them without having Red Hat on board working with MS to do that -- they know their own OS better than MS, they have the test automation etc., and know their scenarios. But Red Hat won't work with MS on this, because even if they wanted to they'd get crucified by the Open Source community (and especially by /.)
For this fight of the hypervisor (essentially the new OS of the data center), VMWare has all the market share and lock in. Is this a good thing?"Sorry, but although the original article does exhibit some characteristics of an overblown rant, the main point is still valid. Most companies bigger than a mom-and-pop operation simply cannot use something that is "unsupported," regardless of whether it anecdotally "works just fine" or not. "
Right, but the only other option available to Microsoft is to 'support' all those Linux and who-knows-what-else distributions at an enormous price, when it brings very little benefit to 99% of their customers. It simply isn't worth it, and 'supporting' other OS'es isn't really Microsoft's responsibility anyway. This article is purely pigswill for the Slashbots to wallow in.
The article mentions only the latest OS that are supported.
If i look at the release notes, even fewer OS are supported:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3ED582F0-F844-40BA-B692-230845AF1149&displaylang=en
What you often see is that virtualisation is used to put old application that are only reliable on old but unsupported OS (like windows 2000 or NT 4.0) run on virtualized hardware.
So i bet they the list of operating OS will be longer. ( win98, NT4.0, windows 2000 server, old SP1 XP1 to mention a few)
If these are not SUPPORTED however then for big corporations will take a look at the competitors for a virtialisation server that supports old OS.