In a recent VMware press release/whitepaper Microsoft has been accused of "playing dirty" and using unfair tactics in the virtualization market. VMware provides a list of areas where they believe that Microsoft imposes limits on their customers flexibility and tries to utilize their market share to force customers to not use other virtualization vendors technology and products.
VMware presents a very good case in that document, and there are a few key points that I really do find interesting:
3. De-Activation of Microsoft Virtual Machines on Third-Party Virtualization Software
Some Microsoft VHDs are now configured to de-activate themselves if they are run on any virtualization product besides Microsoft Virtual PC or Virtual Server (for example, this Internet Explorer / Windows XP trial VM).
4. Prohibition of Translation or Manipulation of Microsoft VMs into Other Formats
Another restriction is that Microsoft’s VHD End User License Agreements forbid the conversion of the Microsoft VMs into any virtual machine format other than the VHD format. Microsoft is strictly enforcing their VHD format on users and ISVs as a closed ecosystem and not allowing compatibility or translation with other formats (for example, this Windows Server VM).
This is something I have experienced directly. Some time ago Microsoft approached the Gallery project, asking us why we were not actively supporting MS SQL Server as a RDBMS option. Our reply was simple; We don't have the licenses needed for our developers to be able to develop for that platform, and the Gallery project is not in a position where we want to spend a lot of money on licenses for developers.
In the end we settled on using the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition VHD for our development purposes. That enabled us to get quite some testing and bugfixing done, so it has definitely helped the Gallery project, but the VHD is limited to a 30 day trial, which effectively means that we need to rebuild it every 30 days. The second problem with using it, is that you have to run it inside Microsofts Virtual Server software. Converting the VHD renders it useless. Again this means that every Gallery developer that wants to test their code on Microsoft SQL Server, will have to run this on a Windows based host.
Running this with VMware Server/Player, or even Xen, would have been much more flexible since we wouldn't have to worry that much about which host OS the developers use.
This is a direct example of how the limitations imposed by Microsoft makes it hard for end users and developers, and thats even after Microsoft themselves approached us to have us support their products. Truth be told, we are talking to Microsoft regarding getting proper licenses for our development needs, but that seems to be a time consuming task and I'm not really sure Microsoft themselves really know how they should tackle that.
5. Licensing Restrictions on Server Virtual Machine Mobility
Situation: One of the most important benefits of virtualization is the mobility of virtual machines, given that an entire application and operating system environment can be encapsulated in a virtual machine and then moved from machine to machine, replicated to disaster recovery sites, and migrated without downtime from one machine to another dynamically through VMotion. Most virtualization customers have adopted and actively use capabilities such as VMotion and Distributed Resource Scheduling to balance resources across their applications and hardware, avoid hardware downtime, and facilitate scaling and responsiveness in their IT infrastructure.
This point really bothers me. Basically the new license terms prohibits movement of Windows Server licenses more than once per 90 days. Does Microsoft really believe that VMware VMotion users will abide by this? And seriously, what is the point? First they give me 4 virtualized instances for each Microsoft Server 2003 Advanced Server license I buy, then they try to tell me that I can't move the virtualized instances between my physical hosts? I'm sorry Microsoft, but you will definately have to drag me to court, kicking and screaming, before I even consider taking that seriously.
As far as the rest of the document released by VMware goes, I'm going to leave that to the experts. Closed APIs in Longhorn etc. are beyond my current knowledge level so I'll refrain from commenting on that.
Mike Neil, Microsoft GM virtualization strategy, has also posted on the Technet Windows Server blog commenting on recent virtualization buzz and sharing his views on where virtualization is heading. While I agree with Mike's view that desktop virtualization isn't mature enough for consumers yet, I don't think that is a valid argument for the EULA limitations on running the home editions of Windows Vista in a virtualized environment. After all, the maturity level he is looking for can only come from mature virtualization vendors, and right now Microsofts actions can not be seen as mature at all.
I really thought Microsoft were beginning to understand the value of virtualization, at least it's value to end users, with the 4 for 1 license deals and the recent SQL Server Enterprise license change, sadly it seems that this is just the somewhat random results of Microsofts repositioning in the virtualization field.