Deployments of Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 are set to sky rocket following the launch of Hyper-V 2008 R2, which we expect will be announced by Microsoft next week. Last month the Redmond software giant delivered a prelease version of Hyper-V 2008 R2 to third party developers for testing, which suggests the software is nearly ready for […]

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I recently finished a review of Vizioncore vOptimizer Pro 2.1, which has been published on ZDnet. The suite will be a great help to many IT managers because it automatically adjusts the size of the virtual hard disks of VMs running Windows and hosted on VMware ESX Server. As we reported earlier, several third party […]

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Last week VMware released update 4 of its ESX hypervisor. The upgrade includes several new or updated components that many users will want. But VMware has also removed some vital functionality that could leave users of its free ESXi hypervisor stranded. For example, the PowerShell interface has been switched to what VMware calls “read only” […]

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Tests in The Hypervisor lab show that although VMware ESXi is extremely quick and easy to deploy, it currently lacks support by several leading third-party tools. ESXi is the embedded version of VMware’s industry leading ESX Server hypervisor. ESXi is often stored on a Flash memory module fitted in the server chassis. This enables vendors […]

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Microsoft Windows and Office software licenses are likely to be the most expensive elements in any virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) roll-out, according to The Hypervisor research. VDI systems replace traditional PCs with virtual machines running desktop software. Each user has their own dedicated virtual machine (VM), and users connect to their VM using one of […]

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Last week VMware showed some impressive hypervisor benchmark figures at the VMworld Europe 2009 conference in Cannes. The numbers suggest it makes more sense to run applications like Microsoft Exchange or Oracle databases in a virtual machine than on physical servers. VMware says this is because such enterprise applications are not designed to run efficiently […]

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Having seen a demonstration of how an iPhone could be used to manage virtual machines at last year’s VMworld conference in Las Vegas, I was disappointed that VMware executives didn’t have any news on the matter at this week’s VMworld Europe 2009 in Cannes. However, when I asked VMware vice president of emerging products, Dan […]

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This week virtual server management specialist Vizioncore launched a new suite of automation tools. The news follows hot on the heels of moves by the two giants in the world of server virtualisation. Market leader VMware recently announced a free version of its enterprise grade hypervisor called ESX3i. Last week Microsoft followed suit by announcing […]

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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 […]

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In head to head benchmark tests of Microsoft Hyper-V compared to VMware Workstation, The Hypervisor test results indicate virtual machine (VM) performance using Hyper-V is below that of VMware Workstation. Our tests compared the time taken to install various operating systems into VMs hosted by the two hypervisors. Thus our test results focus on the […]

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