Windows Virtualization demo at WinHEC

Jeff Woolsey demoed some interesting things regarding Windows Virtualization during Bill Gates’ Keynote at WinHEC:

https://www.microsoft.com/events/executives/billgates.mspx

The interesting things:

- 64bit support for guest OS

- Multiple processors in guest OS

- Hot-add devices (like memory, storage) with no downtime (this is promising!)

- Over 32GB RAM in guest OS

- Over 64 guests can run in a single host

- Managed by System Center Virtual Machine Manager (previous codename Carmine)

Finally looks like real consolidation on Windows will be possibleJ

However Windows Virtualization runs ONLY on LH x64 edition and a system HW with Intel VT or AMDV. Moreover it will be managed by MMC 3.0. I have to find out if web administration will be totally depreciated. If yes, then I'm sensing lots of trouble in the area of network ports and managing the VS from remote locations. An SSL webpage is a great way to manage the virtual server and it wouldn't be good news if it was only possible to manage it from MMC with all the DCOM ports. The future solution for managing virtual data centers will be System Center Virtual Machine Manager. It will go Beta this summer.

Virtualization is going even further… Have a look at Softricity with its application virtualization and “on-demand application streaming”. MS is intending to acquire Softricity.