Microsoft Tests Virtualization Interop
Microsoft continues to embrace interoperability when it comes to virtualization technologies -- at least when it comes to Xen. The virtualization team, in a
blog posting, announced that the the "Interop Vendor Alliance" took a trip to Redmond to try out a number of virt products and how well they play together.
The products -- Citrix XenServer, Novell XEN Virtual Server and Sun xVM -- were installed, along with Hyper-V RC1, on servers in the Microsoft Partner lab. Of course, the notable omission here is VMware. That makes sense for competitive purposes, since Microsoft and Citrix have ganged up against VMware. For users of VMware who would like to know if they can use pieces of Hyper-V or Xen in their environments, it won't have much value.
Here's what they're trying to determine, according to the entry:
"In this way we will be able to mix and match the different virtualization environments to test cross-platform interoperability from both virtualization and application point of view."
Note also that all of those products use the Xen hypervisor, but some other major Xen vendors, including Virtual Iron and Red Hat, aren't included. Quite frankly, I have no idea if that means anything or not. Any readers with insight into the Alliance, please contact me and provide some context.
In any event, it will be interesting to read about the results coming out of the tests. Microsoft said the future will bring further tests with more complexity.
Posted by Keith Ward on 06/04/2008 at 12:48 PM