Update to Virtual Server 2005

The fate of Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005 product has been the subject of some speculation in recent months. It's been years since it was updated to its current version (with the ungainly name Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 - come on guys, could you be any more obscure? This name reminds me of the old Merkur XR4TI automobile). Now, with the advent of Server 2008 and Hyper-V, industry observers have been curious about whether Microsoft will continue to improve Virtual Server 2005. Heaven knows there is considerable room for improvement.

My money is on those who believe that Microsoft will pretty much drop the older product and push customers towards Server 2008 and Hyper-V. There are several reasons, but the most significant one may be that Virtual Server 2005 generates no income for Microsoft, and Server 2008 does. Having said that, Microsoft has just released an update to Virtual Server that adds support for Server 2008, Vista, and XP SP3 as host and guest operating systems. (About time this product supported Vista, which has been out for over a year and a half now.) Go read Knowledge Base article 948515 for details on the update and where to download it.

I wonder what this product will be called - "Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 with KB Update 948515"? Whatever its name, my crystal ball tells me that you won't see any future updates to this product. It's clearly not on Microsoft's high priority list if it took 20 months to build in Vista support.