Microsoft To Support CentOS Linux In Hyper-V

jbrodkin writes "Long the enemy of Linux users, Microsoft is apparently seeing dollar signs in the Linux-dominated Web server market. Microsoft's virtualization software, Hyper-V, will immediately add support for CentOS Linux, a community version of Red Hat that even Microsoft notes is a 'popular Linux distribution for hosters.' 'This enables our Hosting partners to consolidate their mixed Windows + Linux infrastructure on Windows Server Hyper-V,' Microsoft said. In addition to Web hosting, this targets another area where Microsoft is stuck in second place: the virtualization market dominated by VMware."

Comments

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[slazzy]

Yes, I believe there are almost as many hyper-V servers as zune music players.

As seen in another Slashdot sig...

[GameboyRMH]

Running Linux in a VM on Windows is like strapping yourself to the outside of a car with a seatbelt.

Re:As seen in another Slashdot sig...

[jellomizer]

Not really,
Linux key strength over windows isn't stability or security. It is the fact that it is hugely customizable and great for making pre-packaged virtual machines that do one or two things and does them well. For the most part the office could be nearly all Microsoft and its administration staff are windows administrators and they treat that random Linux VM as just as an other application. Vs. the inverse of having to deal with a Linux system and each windows VM as its own OS that needs administration. Because Windows isn't customizable to an appliance as well as Linux can be.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[Anonymous Coward]

"not trolling"

"Reboot host and have to shutdown all your VMs at least once a month?!!"

Not trolling you say? What's the last version of Windows you used? 98?

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[jdastrup]

While it's not nearly as widely used as VMware or other virtualization platforms, your argument is weak. Windows 2008 R2 hardly needs a reboot.

The facts are Hyper-V is behind in features and performance than others. For example, only since 2008 R2 SP1 a few months ago do they support shared memory. Before that, if you had 10 hosts and wanted to grant each 4 GB of RAM, you needed 40 GB in your host. If you didn't have enough RAM, you couldn't boot up your guests - lack of memory. That's a serious drawback, especially since the host OS can consume memory at will. There have been times that I've shutdown a Hyper-V guest and I couldn't boot it back up because the host had done something to use a few more MB's of RAM than before.

Worst of both worlds?

[ron_ivi]

So all the stability and security of Microsoft running on the bare metal; combined with the user-friendliness and ease of use of Linux. :)

Re:They're a business

[LBArrettAnderson]

I don't think anyone actually runs VMs under Windows
 
Are you kidding?

Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[Jailbrekr]

KVM and Xen are both fully featured enterprise class hypervisors with the ability to live migrate. Hyper-V only *just* got live migration and only when you're using clustering (translation: large wads of cash are required). VMWare is undoubtedly the leader, but KVM and Xen are defaintely fighting for 2nd.

Re:Hyper-V isn't second. It doesn't even place

[MightyMartian]

If I'm just testing things, VMWare is free, and so is VirtualBox. Why would I want to pay for a very expensive Microsoft OS when there are free alternatives. Heck, I could just install any of the modern Linux distros and get KVM, which has very much matured in the last year or two.

Wow Support a Distro that may be dead

[Isaac-1]

User are leaving Centos left and right, security patches are months behind schedule, Centos 6 is over 6 months behind RH enterprise 6, the devs are a closed group and will not accept help, and do there best to allienate the user base.

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[mcrbids]

Well that is the answer to his question. Windows is actually quite stable now, on par with Linux.

Well, believe what you wish, I suppose. Over this last weekend, I set up my wife's laptop with Windows 7/64. The number of reboots I had to go through after the O/S install in order to get everything updated was no less than 10 or so, over a few hours. Mind you, this wasn't when setting up drivers, this was *after* I'd loaded the O/S and the drivers. This was just to apply security updates.

I have quite a number of Linux/RedHat/CentOS servers that I maintain, and when I build a new server, I have to reboot exactly one time after loading the O/S to apply updates. Literally, I type a single line as:

yum -y update && shutdown -r now;

That's it. That's the entire sum of the update process, after which I have a fully working, fully updated server with all updates updated.

What about para-virtualization?

[Britz]

OpenVZ (Virtuozzo) and Linux-VServer used to be the big names in virtualization. Now Linux has LXC in the mainline kernel. Virtualization with Xen and KVM are nice. But when you want to run Linux in virtualized guests you get a much better performance with para virtualization.

Xen and KVM are useful is you want to run Windows as a guest. But for Linux guests I really recommend the above.

But why would you buy a commercial Hyper-V? VMware is there. VirtualBox has excellent support for Windows hosts and is free. I don't see how Microsoft could make any headway with all the excellent products with every ninche (commercial, open source, free, expensive) already taken.

Why would you even do it?

[hackus]

Honestly I cannot understand why you would virtualize anything but commercial software. It is a pain to manage without virtualization, it suffers from legacy problems due to all of the very big risks you take when you buy the license. You really have no benefits at all I can think of running commercial software.

Thanks to KVM, the commercial software I do have to buy, I can virtualize it, freeze the hardware requirements in time so it will always work forever and ever. Never need to reinstall it and it isn't if, but when the company goes tits up I am protected. I can dump the software on my terms.

I can even make a copy of it in case the hardware virtualizing the commercial software breaks.

Deploy it to a disaster recovery site and I don't have to have a huge checklist to go through to make sure it is configured right during recovery.

No stupid specific backup agents for commercial software's little proprietary databases they all like to create to make things even more expensive to use.

I left with the opinion that Hyper-V is a solution in search of a problem.

I would be using Cent OS with KVM to virtualize Microsoft's OS, where it is safely under the flipper of my penguin, where it can't make my life hell.

-Hack

Re:does anybody really use hyper-V?

[houghi]

If Hyper-V is the only thing running on Windows, just so you can run Linux, why would you run Windows in the first place? Just run XEN, KVM or even VirtualBox on Linux and have several Linux sessions run on that.

ANYBODY WHO KNOWS MICROSOFT

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Understands this is not a concession or olive branch.

It is a way to damage the RedHat business model. Trust me - Redmond will get to the point they offer Premiere support for CentOS on HyperV, starving RedHat of oxygen.

Even if it made them no money at all, Redmond has people who'd love this outcome, and set MBOs for this.