Microsoft Virtualization 360

Surely 2007 was the Virtual Year.

Although Virtualization has been kicking around for some time, 2007 saw some easy to use and free versions. Add to that the time is ripe in terms of hardware. Virtualization has one OS often running on top of another. That can be quite the performance hit. The result was virtualization went from a power user or guru trick to the buzz of 2007.

So while 2007 kicked open the door in terms of price, availability, ease of use and widespread acceptance. The winter of 2007-2008 saw an ever increasing number of offerings and counter offerings. The offerings have gone beyond price and performance. Microsoft enumerates 6 uses or promises:

1. Virtual Presentation

2. Virtual Application

3. Desktop Virtualization

4. Server Virtualization

5. Virtual Storage

6. Virtual Network


Microsoft is marketing these under "Virtualization 360". Which is reassuring since so much is going on in this space, it is nice to know Microsoft is trying to gather it's offerings in one place. Judging from the presentation there is a total of 5 offerings:


1. Microsoft Virtual PC

This is listed as the Desktop Virtualization solution but it can run server OSes. Chances are good this version (and multiple copies at that) is already running in your company. The reason is simple, it is free, it is easy to use and it will run legacy OSes as well as Server OSes.



2. Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-VTM

Currently if you want to host a virtual OS directly on the machine without the host OS getting in the way you will need to use the Server Version. If you need to use 64 bit OSes you will also need the Server Version.

3. Windows Terminal Services


Terminal Services have been around for quite a while now. Microsoft wants us to think of this as Presentation Virtualization. The application will be run on one machine but the presentation of the application can be presented on many machines.

4. Microsoft Application Virtualization
This is similar to the Windows Terminal Services. Here the application is run over the network without being installed. The key here is that the configuration layer that the application uses is separated from the OS. The intent here is to reduce the conflicts created when different applications attempt to configure the platform during their install. Instead this configuration information is kept on the central location. This opens up an added advantage of centralizing the updating and patching of applications.


5. Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager

And one server to store them all, and rule them all.... After working with the Virtual PC 2007 for just a few days, I had so many images of machines that I connected a 1 Terabyte external hard drive to my desktop just to store them all. While this stop gap solution gave me space for a few hundred images, keeping them organized is still quite the challenge. Plus as soon as you start working with one machine you are changing it. So you will need a way to generate new copies of your original machine. Then there is the problem of sharing the images with coworkers. We routinely have dozens of images that illustrate active problems.

So there you have it that is what Microsoft considers the complete circle of virtualization.

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