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Microsoft Shipping Hyper-V Tomorrow? (Update: Yes)

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Does Microsoft intend to start shipping Hyper-V tomorrow?

Update: no official news out of Redmond just yet, but both ZDNet and NetworkWorld have confirmed.

Update 2: finally confirmation by Microsoft

The Redmond software giant’s proprietary hypervisor is currently in Release Candidate mode, but the final, nonbeta version could be shipping tomorrow, according to SearchWinIT. That would be well before the company’s projected release date (which would be in about 2 months).

The software is part of the Windows Server 2008 license, although here is a standalone version of Hyper-V expected later this year that will sell for (only) $28. The Microsoft hypervisor is highly anticipated, and lots of analysts are expecting Hyper-V to (finally) give VMware a run for its money. Of course, let’s not forget Hyper-V was initially scheduled to be part of Windows Server 2008, but was ultimately delayed and rescheduled for availability about six months after its introduction.

PCWorld points out that the upcoming release for tomorrow has not been confirmed by Microsoft officials, so we’re a little hesitant to run with the story just yet. We’ll update the post when more information is available.

Update: no official news out of Redmond just yet, but both ZDNet and NetworkWorld have confirmed.

Update 2: finally confirmation by Microsoft

Update 3: It’s all over the wire! Get more perspective on the milestone release and how it will compete with VMware, Xen and others from The Register, Virtually Speaking, OStatic, Virtualization.info, InformationWeek, Computing, Network World, VMBlog, GigaOM, Virtualization Review, DaniWeb, ChannelWeb, Reuters, Forbes, Washington Post, Virtual Strategy Magazine, Microsoft Watch, Virtual PC Guy, Scott Lowe, Intel Software Network, Dugie’s Pensieve, NetApp Blogs, The Hypervisor, PC World Forums, Dustin’s Tech Notes, Vinternals, The System Administrator, ArsTechnica, Silicon, ITwire, VolkerW’s Weblog, ChrisWolf, InternetNews, etc.

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Updated, Now Supports Hyper-V

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Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), released in beta end of April, has been updated to enable it to function with Release Candidate 1 (RC1) to the Hyper-V role. Note that the VMM server and all of the hosts in your environment must be running Hyper-V RC1. After you install the update, you will not be able to add hosts running Hyper-V RC0 to your VMM environment.

[Source: Windows Virtualization Team blog]

Jeff Woolsey and Scott Lowe Discuss Hyper-V

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IT pro and virtualization expert Scott Lowe had an interesting discussion with Jeff Woolsey, Senior Program Manager for Hyper-V at Microsoft. Scott posted a summary of their conversation on his blog, here’s an excerpt:

What are the key architectural advantages of Hyper-V as compared to Xen or ESX?

Jeff indicated that Hyper-V and Xen are architecturally very similar. Both use a privileged VM; Microsoft calls it the parent partition, Xen calls it dom0. In both cases, I/O is routed through this privileged partition and only the privileged partition has access to the physical hardware. Microsoft believes the hypervisor should be as thin as possible; Hyper-V is only about 600K worth of code. The networking stack and the storage stack are pushed up into the parent partition to keep drivers out of the hypervisor. Jeff referred me back to his session earlier in the day, where he discussed the need for the parent partition (my summary of that session is here). ESX puts all the drivers in the hypervisor, which means that they have a harder time providing support for new hardware (the example given was 4Gbps Fibre Channel HBAs vs. 8Gbps Fibre Channel HBAs). In talking about the placement of device drivers, our discussion naturally led us to the next question.

How would you respond to the concerns about the quality of the device drivers in the parent partition affecting the stability of the hypervisor?

Jeff doesn’t buy into this argument. Unlike desktops or workstations, administrators don’t typically go willy-nilly with drivers on production servers. Drivers are generally provided by the hardware vendors. In addition, because Hyper-V requires the x64 edition of Windows Server 2008, this is even less of an issue; it’s impossible to use unsigned drivers with x64 Windows. This means that any driver that can be used with Hyper-V will be WHQL-tested. Supposedly, this will keep out potentially faulty device drivers. Jeff pointed to the exclusive use of Hyper-V to power the MSDN and TechNet web sites at Microsoft as proof. I can see his point, but I still have to wonder if another level of qualification and validation shouldn’t have been established to ensure that everything works as expected with Hyper-V. It still seems possible to me that organizations stepping outside the “Big 3? server vendors—Dell, HP, and IBM—could run into issues.

Read the rest (3 more questions) here.

Microsoft Hyper-V RC1 Now Available Through Windows Update

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A little over a week ago, Microsoft announced that Hyper-V (RC 1) was available through MS Download Center. The company has now let us know that the first Release Candidate for the much anticipated hypervisor is now also available on Windows Update.

“To install the update open the Windows Update control panel and click “View available updates” under the “Install Updates” button. Then check the Update for Windows Server 2008 (KB950049) and click install.”

Hyper-V RC1 Release Made Available on Microsoft Download Center

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Taylor Brown of the Microsoft Hyper-V Test Team has formally announced the availability of Hyper-V RC1 on Microsoft Download Center in a post on the Windows Virtualization Product Group team blog.

There’s a Hyper-V RC1 package for Windows Server 2008 x64, which must be installed on Hyper-V server’s (physical machines). It includes the Hyper-V Server components for Full and Core installs, the Hyper-V Integration Components for Server 2008 x64 and the Hyper-V Management Components for Full Windows installs.

Microsoft also released the Hyper-V RC1 package for Windows Server 2008 x86. This package includes only the Hyper-V Management Components for Full Windows installs and the Hyper-V Integration Components for Server 2008 x86. It does not contain the Hyper-V Server components (Hyper-V is x64 only).

More here.

Hyper-V Quick Migration Breaks Network Connections, Says VMware

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Check out the following demo by Blip.tv account ‘VMware TV‘, expressing the difference between moving a VM from one physical server to another with downtime (Hyper-V Quick Migration) and VMware’s Vmotion, which offers zero downtime when transferring virtual machines.

Keith Ward over at Virtualization Review picked up the demo and writes about what happens in the video:

“The demo shows a Quick Migration of a Windows Server 2003 VM from one physical machine to another. At the same time, a Microsoft Dynamics client is trying to access a database residing on the VM. Through a constant ping of the VM, we can see how a) the connection to the VM is dropped for a time, and b) how the Dynamics client fails in its attempt to get the database information (an error box pops up, showing a TCP failure). Shortly thereafter, another popup informs us that the VM has actually been deleted. It’s re-started a few moments later.”

To be balanced, here’s what ‘Jeff’ recently posted on the Windows Virtualization Team blog:

After my last blog I received almost two dozen email telling me that VMotion was far superior for unplanned host downtime and that it was a much better HA solution because it could live migrate virtual machines. I’ve heard this fallacy espoused for many years and, folks, this simply isn’t the case.

In the case of unplanned downtime, VMotion can’t live migrate because there is no warning. Instead you must have VMware HA configured and the best it can do is restart the affected virtual machines on other nodes which is the same as what is provided with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Failover Clustering.

Here are a couple of quotes from VMware’s own document, Automating High Availability (HA) Services with VMware HA.

Page 1 paragraph 2 states:

Using VMware HA, virtual machines are automatically restarted in the event of hardware failure…

Page 8 states:

How does VMware HA work?

VMware HA continuously monitors all ESX Server hosts in a cluster and detects failures. An agent placed on each host maintains a “heartbeat” with the other hosts in the cluster and loss of a heartbeat with the other hosts in the cluster and loss of a heartbeat initiates the process of restarting all affected virtual machines on other hosts.

HA monitors whether sufficient resources are available in the cluster at all times in order to be able to restart virtual machines on different physical host machines in the event of host failure.

The point being VMware HA and Hyper-V with failover clustering accomplish the same thing: virtual machines are RESTARTED on another node. No better, no worse. If you still don’t believe me, find one of your ESX Servers and go pull out the power plug. (Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

So what do you think about all this?