Big Virtualization Launch Today

In case you hadn't heard, we're having a huge virtualization launch today in Bellevue, WA. You'll be seeing lots of announcements etc. across many blogs so I won't repeat all of them here. Instead, I'd recommend that you check out live webcast here. In particular, Bob is going to take the stage shortly and he'll show off the Live Migration feature coming in Hyper-V with Windows Server 2008 R2 for the first time. The webcasts will be available after the event as well I'm told.

It's no big secret that we've been working on Live Migration for some time. It didn't make it into the first release of Hyper-V but as you'll see today, we have it up and running and it's coming soon. While this feature is important to customers, I maintain that the more important part of the equation is the management that drives it. It's great to be able to move running virtual machines between physical hardware without downtime but knowing when to do it is really where the magic and differentiation lives. Whether you're using VMotion with ESX, Live Migration with Hyper-V or Live Relocation with Xen will increasingly become a less relevant discussion.

If you've been reading this blog for any period of time, you know that we feel strongly that everything starts with the application. Customers manage applications, not virtual machines. Understanding applications in detail enables System Center to make the right decisions to drive this platform technology.....it's an exciting day for us but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Rakesh