VMware ESX

Microsoft Supports Other HyperVisors

Microsoft has changed their licensing so that they are more “friendly” to competing hypervisor products. This also extends to their support of their products on other hyper-v platforms which currently are Xen, VMWare and Novell’s virtualization product.

While they are supporting several additional virtualization platforms they are not extending this level of support to all of their products. For a complete list and the press release see the links below.

Links
List of Supported Products
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957006

Microsoft Press Release
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/aug08/08-19EasyPathPR.mspx

Microsoft Support Article
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=897615

MS HyperV versus VMWare ESX

Microsoft’s HyperVisor software is new to the market. While it always takes time for a new product to have the bugs worked out it seems that Microsoft’s offering the visualization market is making waves even at this early stage. VMWare is surely aware of this and is going to working on proving that their product is superior in the coming months. Either way, competition in any market makes the product better for consumers.

Check out this article that discuss the various high level differences between VMWare and MS’s HyperVisor

http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisewindows/archives/2008/06/hyperv_gets_att.html?source=NLC-ENTWINDOW&cgd=2008-06-18