What should you be thinking about Virtual Server? There are four areas to consider when evaluation Microsoft's virtualization solution for your infrastructure. Let's take a look.
Hardware support
Beta 2 of Service Pack 1 rounds out the new support for the virtualization technologies shipping on today's server-oriented processors. The Intel Virtualization Technology is chip-based instruction support for software on the host system to run multiple operating systems and applications in independent partitions, each getting an equally deep slice of the CPU pie. It effectively takes the whole of the system's processor or processors and divides them among all virtual machines running on a host. This native hardware support for virtualization performs significantly better than pure emulated, software-only virtual machines. (It's essentially the same concept as the old Virtual 8086 mode, whereby you create DOS-based virtual machines in parallel.)
AMD has a similar set of instructions for its newer processors, a technology code-named Pacifica, that accomplishes much the same result. Virtual Server takes advantage of these new sets of instructions to improve the performance, reliability and resource usage of large nuMBers of virtual machines running in tandem across one host. Of course, you can turn support for these instructions on and off on a per-VM basis using the administrative interface.
Volume Shadow Services
Perhaps the most useful new feature in Service Pack 1 is support for Volume Shadow Services. VSS is a component introduced in the original version of Windows Server 2003 that allows the OS to take "snapshots" of folders, files and disks at certain times throughout the day-effectively, another form of backup, although one that doesn't require shutting down a server and running and time- and processor-intensive full backup.
While other server applications have begun riding on top of VSS to provide their own instant backup abilities, Virtual Server hasn't had the support until now. VSS within Virtual Server will allow all of a host's virtual machines to be backed up simultaneously, and recovery from an error is equally simple-select a snapshot, restore it, and the process is complete.
Manageability and usability improvements
Beta 2 of Service Pack 1 makes Virtual Server as a product a little easier to administer and use. New Active Directory integration allows Virtual Server to publish its binding information in AD as a service connection point (SCP) object. This makes it easy to see any Virtual Server services residing within a given forest.
In addition, the file-based disks of virtual machines, known as virtual hard drives (or VHD), can now be mounted outside of the Virtual Server environment as regular disks, enabling files and folders to be copied to and from the virtual disks. This makes it much simpler to deploy scripts, run malware scans and archive files on virtual machines than it was with previous versions of the product.
Licensing costs
Because of the white-hot competitive landscape, Microsoft recently slashed the prices of both editions of its existing version of Virtual Server. In December 2005, the company cut $800 off the price of the Enterprise edition -- down from $999 to $199 -- while dropping the price of the Standard edition from a rather expensive $499 to an eminently affordable $99.
It also recently announced its client virtualization software, Virtual PC, would be given away for free via its Web site, a move made in response to VMware offering its Workstation product gratis as well. VMware also offers its Server product on a complimentary basis as well, although its heavy-duty ESX Server remains a pay-for product. The bottom line: enterprise virtualization, at least from Microsoft, has gotten far more affordable over the last nine months.
All in all, the first service pack for Virtual Server 2005 R2 brings the product more in line with current hardware offerings, improves its integration with Active Directory, makes it easier to manage large farms of VMs and their associated virtual drives, and generally improves the value of the product. A worthy service pack effort, and one you should begin testing now, whether Virtual Server is currently on your radar or you're just getting interested in what virtualization can do for you.
For more information:
- Download the service pack (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/downloads/servicepack.mspx)
- About Virtual Server (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/default.mspx)
- Licensing details and other host/guest OS information (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/news/bulletins/datacenterhighavail.mspx)
- "Microsoft releases Beta 2 of Virtual Server update" (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9002935)
- "Microsoft makes Virtual Server R2 free" (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=110168)