Hyper-V Poised for Greatness

At last week's Tech-Ed, Microsoft VP Bob Muglia crowed about Hyper-V. You can test him at his word, as the hypervisor is nearly here; beta testers can get the latest release candidate, meaning it's almost all set to go.

Topping the list of new features are better management of Linux VMs, fewer bugs and snappier performance. You can get the software through Windows Update.

Are you jonesin' for Hyper-V? Share your thoughts by writing [email protected].

Virtualization Review Mag Rolling Along
The second issue of Virtualization Review, our newest magazine, is now out. Our first issue walked through the major platforms, VMware, Microsoft and Citrix/Xen.

We even had a killer preview of Hyper-V written by virtualization star Chris Wolf. This puppy is going to change the virtualization market forever once it ships this summer.

Our second issue was even better. Here we focused on the major hardware players -- IBM (which invented virtualization in the '60s), HP, Sun and Dell.

Here's the quick-and-dirty: IBM has the most complex strategy. It has hypervisors -- either home-grown or third-party -- for everything from mainframes, to the Power6-based System p, to industry-standard rack and blade servers. On top of all that, it has a wealth of proprietary management and storage tools.

HP is similar to IBM in that is has proprietary management and storage tools. But it doesn't make its own hypervisor.

Sun has been doing virtualization in one form or another for many, many years. Now it's pushing its own hypervisor and a new virtualization management platform. Both of these are open source, as Sun will tell you again and again (and again).

Dell is the simplest of the four. It sells industry-standard hardware equipped with third-party software. 'Nuff said!

Yoogle AdWords
Google is pretty darn impressive. It has no huge staff of well-paid journalists, yet it makes millions selling ads that surround today's media. As a journalist, I think Google is parasitic -- the tape worm of the media world.

Given all the free cash involved, it's no wonder Microsoft wanted in on this kind of action. But Microsoft last week decided it no longer wanted to pay $40 billion-plus for Yahoo just so it could copy Google.

Now that Microsoft has given up on Yahoo, Yahoo is moving closer to Google with an agreement that would put Google AdWords on Yahoo sites.

Is this innovation or more of the same? Let us know by writing [email protected].

About the Author

Doug Barney is editor in chief of Redmond magazine and the VP, editorial director of Redmond Media Group.

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