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."

Comments

WTF does Microsoft know about virtualization?

[mwilliamson]

Microsoft so totally missed the virtualization boat that came by a decade or so ago... I'd liken buying a virtualization product from Microsoft about with buying a vehicle from Merrill Lynch.

Re:WTF does Microsoft know about virtualization?

[dougr650]

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.

So?

[filesiteguy]

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.)

Re:Hyper-V is what now?

[Loconut1389]

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/virtualization-consolidation.aspx

"
Introducing Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the next-generation hypervisor-based server virtualization technology, allows you to make the best use of your server hardware investments by consolidating multiple server roles as separate virtual machines (VMs) running on a single physical machine. With Hyper-V, you can also efficiently run multiple different operating systems--Windows, Linux, and others--in parallel, on a single server, and fully leverage the power of x64 computing.

Key Features of Hyper-V:

        * New and Improved Architecture. New 64-bit micro-kernelized hypervisor architecture enables Hyper-V to provide a broad array of device support methods and improved performance and security.
        * Broad OS Support. Broad support for simultaneously running different types of operating systems, including 32-bit and 64-bit systems across different server platforms, such as Windows, Linux, and others.
        * Symmetric Multiprocessors (SMP) Support. Ability to support up to four multiple processors in a virtual machine environment enables you to take full advantage of multi-threaded applications in a virtual machine.
        * Network Load Balancing. Hyper-V includes new virtual switch capabilities. This means virtual machines can be easily configured to run with Windows Network Load Balancing (NLB) Service to balance load across virtual machines on different servers.
        * Hardware Sharing Architecture. With the new virtual service provider/virtual service client (VSP/VSC) architecture, Hyper-V provides improved access and utilization of core resources, such as disk, networking, and video.
        * Quick Migration. Hyper-V enables you to rapidly migrate a running virtual machine from one physical host system to another with minimal downtime, leveraging familiar high-availability capabilities of Windows Server and System Center management tools.
        * Virtual Machine Snapshot. Hyper-V provides the ability to take snapshots of a running virtual machine so you can easily revert to a previous state, and improve the overall backup and recoverability solution.
        * Scalability. With support for multiple processors and cores at the host level and improved memory access within virtual machines, you can now vertically scale your virtualization environment to support a large number of virtual machines within a given host and continue to leverage quick migration for scalability across multiple hosts.
        * Extensible. Standards-based Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interfaces and APIs in Hyper-V enable independent software vendors and developers to quickly build custom tools, utilities, and enhancements for the virtualization platform.
"

Re:Troll article

[pythas]

Shitty article with a misleading headline posted on Slashdot about Microsoft? I'M SHOCKED.

I've been running Ubuntu Server using Hyper-V since 2008 came out without any problems.