Fabrice Meillon BLog's (Archives)

Today at the Intel Developer Forum, Microsoft disclosed new information about its Virtual Server product roadmap, including the official name for the next version and planned support for hardware virtualization technologies from AMD and Intel.

• Virtual Server 2005 R2 – not Virtual Server 2005 SP1– will be the official name of the next version of Virtual Server 2005.  The official name will appear in the RTM of the product, which is scheduled for release in Q4 2005. Virtual Server 2005 R2 provides customers improved performance, availability, and scalability in order to increase operational efficiency in server consolidation, application re-hosting, disaster recovery, and software test and development. For more information, see http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/evaluation/sp1beta.mspx
• Microsoft will deliver a new release of Virtual Server after Virtual Server 2005 R2.  Scheduled for beta in the first half of 2006 and availability in the second half of 2006, this release will provide customers and partners an important transition between Virtual Server 2005 and Windows hypervisor, which will be delivered in the Windows Server “Longhorn” wave of products.
• During a keynote given by Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’ s Digital Enterprise Group, IDF attendees saw an early preview of this future (post-Virtual Server 2005 R2) release of Virtual Server. The release will support the hardware virtualization capabilities of Intel’s VT and AMD’s Pacifica. By supporting both products, this future release of Virtual Server will provide customers better interoperability, strengthened isolation- preventing corruption of one virtual machine from affecting others on the same system, and improved performance for non-Windows guest operating systems, such as Linux.  Microsoft announced plans for Virtual Server to support non-Windows guest operating systems in April 2005.