Microsoft throws Hyper-V R2 into the ring

anticompetitive?? netscape vs ie??

Doesn't anyone here think that microsoft giving away it's hypervisor which obviously cost money to produce as free, is remarkable similar to the situation that netscape found itself in when microsoft started to give away IE???

Doesn't nobody agree that if someting cost money to develop, you should charge money for it? I know the company can decide the price, but obviously here what is happening is that microsoft is just pushing VMWare out of the business by deploying decades old tactics.

The entire article doesnt mention that fact?

I know we live in an age of free, everything is free, but people who create a free hypervisor and give it away, are lightyears apart from microsoft doing the same. VirtualBox has a free version, but it has ALWAYS had a free version and they dont make money until you start to think about support, etc, etc.

But this is obviously something we've seen before.

Microsoftf?

I think I'd sooner trust a free and open-source hypervisor, than a closed one by Microsoft, however much or little money I paid to Microsoft for it.

First, there's the thought of closed Microsoft-quality software sitting where only the absolute highest quality code will do.

And then there's the thought that a multiply-convicted monopolist might decide to do something to give itself an edge. Maybe, find ways to slow virtualized linux systems down a bit compared to Windows servers? Maybe, to tickle bugs in the LInux system, so that (latent) coding flaws in Linux cause crashes a bit more often than they do when running on real hardware?

@nigel11

good point, I never thought about that angle.

Have they imporved the managemetn tools?

After couple of days of fail, I finally gave up on R1, because if you don't have a copy of 2K3 or 2K8 running somewhere in your environment, it's a royal PITA to try and manage it. Never could get the management tools working with Vista or XP, and gave up and installed XenServer.

Still, I'm generally underwhelmed by the big three commercial hypervisor stacks. I use ESXi/e at work, and it's really great until you need to do something exotic like use an RS232 or USB device. XenServer did those okay, but the commercial version didn't allow you to pass through PCI devices.

And power management is still fickle. I'm looking for things to use in my lab environment for development, and still end up running whatever is bundled with a linux distro, VMware Server, or VirtualServer.

The market is too diffuse a target...

It may seem strange to say so, but having been in this niche for the last 20+ years (before the PC existed!), the market is way too diffuse a target which is something that the article alludes to but not well. Ever since VMWare hit the market I've been exploring the various niches which could exist and there are a lot more of them then the current players are even paying attention to in a coherent manner. Today it is more like a food fight in an elementary school cafeteria with everyone tossing things in different ways to see what sticks (literally!). Hopefully it will work out eventually as each identifies their most profitable niche, but this is going to be messy indeed (witness the VMWare snub to MS and Citrix, the latter uncalled for, IMNotSoHO).