Viridian axes features to meet timeline

If you can't do something right, then don't do it all. The Windows Server Virtualization team is having to make some tough choices it seems in what they can and can't ship in the first version of its codename "Viridian" product due in beta around the time Longhorn server ships later this year.

I am actually not 100% sure what Viridian will be or look like other than reading reports that it will run under Windows to provide better support and management for Virtual machines.  To me that means it will be something like VMWare's ESX server which runs on "bare metal" providing for a low overhead datacenter solution for virtual machines.

Several of the features that have had to hit the cutting room floor to enable them to hit a beta around Longhorn Server RTM are:

·         No Live migration

·         No hot-add resources (storage, networking, memory, processor)

·         Support limit of 16 cores/logical processors (e.g., 2 processor, quad-core systems is 8 cores; or 4 processor, quad-core system is 16 cores)

Two of these are pretty biggies I think in terms of what people might need and want. Hot-add would be a very desirable feature for anyone managing a large data center and concearned about outages on critical systems.  This alone could have been a HUGE win for the product. The other is the support for 16 cores.  Not sure what they were orginally shooting for, but only allowing 16 cores could quicklly bottleneck systems that are intended to run many virtual servers.  As AMD and Intel ramp up to the quad and even 8 core processors this limit could very much affect the very systems this product is targeted at within a year from now.

No information on when or if we will see these features is known at this time. SP1?  V.Next?  who knows.

While Microsoft is making some headway in the virtualization market they certainly aren't keeping up with anyone on this front.  VMWare has a far better product when it comes to Virtual PC vs VMWare workstation, infact I just shelled out 200 dollars just this week to upgrade my two test machines to 6.0 versus going with Virtual PC that is free due to little things like USB support that even though requested numerous times Microsoft has failed to deliver on.

The same holds true of the other product lines for Microsoft in this space and people will continue to pay for the better product even if Microsoft has an OK product.  I think they will have an IPO for VMware time to get in on that, Microsoft sure isn't gonna put them out of business anytime soon. I won't say they are doomed, but they are on life support.

So what do you think? Is Microsoft competitive enought in this space? Should they just bow-out to more nimble compeditors? Will these features hurt your adoption of this product?

Follow Me on Twitter