The buzz this week is that the launch of Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM2008) is imminent.
VMM2008 is part of Microsoft’s System Center management platform, which until now has been focussed on managing Microsoft server systems. However, VMM2008 is set to change all that. Besides managing Microsoft Virtual Server and Hyper-V, it will also integrate with VMware Virtual Center 2.5 and manage VMware ESX3 and ESX3i hypervisors.

Microsoft previewed a pre-release version of VMM2008 to The Hypervisor in London last week. This latest build included integration with System Center that could build graphical hierarchies of Microsoft services running on ESX3 virtual infrastructure.

However, although VMM2008 includes migration features that could be used instead of commercial alternatives from specialists such as Platespin and Vizioncore, the Microsoft migration tools work only with Windows systems. VMM2008 includes migration facilities to convert physical Windows Server 2003 Servers and XP desktops to Hyper-V format, but it does not support the migration of Linux systems. Likewise, VMM208 can convert Windows based VMs running on VMware systems to run on Hyper-V, but it cannot convert Linux based VMs.