Microsoft Virtualization Strategy

Mike Neil's blog post on the Microsoft Virtualization Strategy is an important read if you are in this space. If you think you are not in this space, you will be soon. Sooner than you think. He identifies 5 "things" that make up the strategy:

1) platform

2) management

3) applications

4) interoperability

5) licensing

Virtualization Licensing Changes with Windows Server 2003

These are useful terms for your RSS feedcrawls :-) I have to miss MMS this year ;-( but if I were going, I'd use these as my "roadmap" for finding important sessions to attend.

And, to catch you up on the conversation, here are some good posts segemented per above;

1) platform

Virtualization as a Platform Feature - Part IVirtualization as a Platform Feature - Part III, Virtualization as a Platform Feature - Part II

TechNet Webinars on Virtualization

Q&A on Windows Server virtualization

2) management

Windows Server Virtualization and System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Updated MOM Management Pack for Virtual Server 2005 R2 Released

3) applications

Microsoft SoftGrid and ZeroTouch

4) interoperability

Microsoft Virtualization and Interoperability

PowerShell: the DMZ of Interop

Linux Support in Virtual Server 2005 R2

5) licensing

Datacenter and Virtualization Licensing Changes

Virtualization Licensing Changes

From Where we're headed with virtualization:

As we know, virtualization allows new and more dynamic uses of software that were not possible in a hardware-only model. A couple years back we moved from installation-base licensing to instance-base licensing for server products. Since these updates, the market has grown … as I mentioned in the Times’ article. And just last week, with the release of SQL Server 2005 SP2, we announced expanded virtualization use rights to allow unlimited virtual instances on servers that are fully licensed for SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition. I’m sure licensing for virtualized environments will continue to evolve for us and the industry.