DABCC Radio recently interviewed Dr. Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Technical Fellow in the Platform and Services group. While the format of the interview was not quite as interactive as I prefer, overall I think Doug Brown conducted a great interview. This is a valuable podcast to listen to if you want to get a basic understanding of issues around virtualization. Mark was actually introduced to virtualization through his first use of VMware. Considered a Windows OS expert, Mark speaks fluently on virtualization its future.
Does the Hypervisor displace or obviate the OS? Mark's view is that OS' manage the physical, and now virtual, resources on behalf of the application. If the hypervisor were to replicate what an OS does, then the hypervisor becomes one monolithic piece of software. I agree with Marc's view on this but I believe that the hypervisor becomes the primary technology layer which other components, e.g. the operating system, operate on. Selecting your hypervisor technology and virtualization management systems is now the first decision to make, rather than the OS. This virtualization stratum supports multiple OSs running across your Virtualization Center, utilizing hardware that could be in many locations.
Another interesting topic was the use of VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) formats as a common container structure that would be consistent across products and vendors. Xen announced support for VHD (at VM World) which is a step towards sharing image containers across vendor virtualization technologies. VHDs are envisioned as the master image which virtual machines are operated from so apply patches and service packs could happen by migrating them from a master VHD onto an operating virtual image. Is essence VHDs become a meta layer for storage vs the current file formats we use on disk drives today.
Early in the podcast interview, Mark described virtualization as "Extremely powerful tool for managing servers today, and might become a tool for managing client options". By managing client options (as Mark describes it), I believe this plays well in to Citrix' strategy with Xen, virtual desktop images can be centrally managed and distributed to client machines, creating a virtual desktop operating on whatever computer that end user is using. This also plays well into the evolution of Terminal Server and Citrix servers into a virtualized world.
Like this? Here are more recent posts.
Xen Publishes Benchmarks And RoadmapHow Microsoft Can Save Vista And Windows Server 2008
Microsoft Live Workspace - Anybody Home?
Virtualization Center Series: Microsoft Hyper-V Release Candidate In Server 2008
Cutting The Microsoft Apron Strings
Visit Microsoft Subnet for more news, blogs, opinion from around the Web.
Sign up for the bi-weekly Microsoft newsletter. (Click on News/Microsoft News Alert.)
Also check out Mitchell's personal blog The Converging Network and SSAATY Podcast.
Mitchell Ashley is principal consultant at Converging Network LLC where he provides product, technology and social media consulting to emerging technology companies. A successful CTO and product innovator, Mitchell has created many successful, award winning products in the networking, security, convergence, Internet and IT industries. In addition to blogging for NetworkWorld, Mitchell regularly blogs at TheConvergingNetwork and co-hosts the widely popular StillSecure After All These Years podcast.
Subscribe to Mitchell Ashley's Converging on Microsoft feed
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
|
|
Post new comment