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Alex Barrett over at searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com has posted an article comparing Microsoft Virtual Server to VMware ESX server. As John Troyer at VMware correctly points out, thats comparing apples to oranges.

The correct comparison would be to compare Microsoft Virtual Server with VMware Server, not ESX server.

One thing they both fail to mention though, and that is IO performance. Running IO intensive servers, like Domino/Exchange in a virtualization layer on top of Windows Server 2003, be it VMware Server or Microsoft Virtual Server limits you to the underlying OS IO limitations. Running several of these virtual machines on top of Server 2003 will cause serious slowdown of the virtual machines purely due to the native IO limitations.

This is one area where VMware ESX server really excels. VMFS is designed for high speed access and large file sizes and is way more efficient than NTFS when it comes to multiple simultaneous IO requests.

While I agree that VMware Server or Microsoft Virtual Server both provide an easy and very cost effective introduction to virtualization, it does come at a price in performance. There is no way, not currently at least, virtualization platforms that run on top of existing "full scale" Operating Systems will provide you with the performance that a thin hypervisor layer and a specially designed file system will give you. Nor will it provide you with the real failover and dynamic resource allocation features you'll find in an enterprise product.

And thats the whole point, VMware Server and Microsoft Virtual Server are not enterprise products, and VMware sure hasn't positioned or marketed VMWare Server as one.

Invirtus has published a press release announcing the availability of their new Enterprise VM Converter beta. The tool was formerly "known" as Humboldt and only available to selected beta testers has now been announced publicly and "IT professionals interested in becoming Beta testers can sign up on the following Web site".

I did get an invite to test the Humboldt software earlier this month, but never really got around to test it properly. Now that a new build is available I'll be sure to put it through the ropes in the next week or so.

The P2V tool is poised to be released in Q1 2007, alongside other virtualization tools still to be announced.

Get all the details from the Invirtus website.

Over at vmblog.com I ran across an interesting post:

It looks like Microsoft is starting to eat its own dogfood so to speak. What could be considered a cousin to the virtual appliance is now making its way out of the Redmond campus. Microsoft is offering a pre-release of its Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" (its next generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System and the Web) in the September Community Technology Preview (CTP). This time, Microsoft is making the CTP available only as a Virtual PC image. In order to use it, you'll need to download either of Microsoft's free virtualization platforms, Virtual Server or Virtual PC.

Very interesting indeed, and it really does make you wonder what else might be in store. We'll just have to wait and see of course, there is no telling what Microsoft might come up with.

It also makes me wonder if VMware Converter 3 can convert it into a VMware compatible image that can be used with VMware Player or any of the other VMware virtualization platforms. What would Microsoft have to say about that? Probably nothing, as long as you don't redistribute it I guess.

I also wonder what the license on the base OS that this runs on is, I definately need to try this.

A couple of virtualization related announcements from Microsoft today:

Beginning Oct. 1, 2006, customers will be able to purchase Windows Server 2003 R2, Datacenter Edition, from Microsoft resellers and account managers on their Microsoft Volume Licensing agreement as well as from OEMs preinstalled on servers with two to 64 processors, with or without the Datacenter High Availability Program. Windows Server, Datacenter Edition, licenses will also include the right to run unlimited virtual instances on one server at no additional charge, which can potentially extend the savings customers can realize through server consolidation on the Windows Server platform.

Responding to changing market conditions, Virtual PC 2004 SP1 is available immediately for free download. In addition, Virtual PC 2007, which supports Microsoft Windows Vista, will be available for free in 2007.

Details are in the announcement.

VMware has released Beta 3 of Virtual Server, with better snapshot support and experimental support for Sun Solaris 10 (32 and 64 bit) amongst other things.

Details available here and the download is available here.