Microsoft Hyper-V Leaves Linux Out In The Cold

whitehartstag writes to mention that Microsoft has announced their new Hyper-V as feature-complete. Unfortunately the list of supported systems is disappointingly short. "No offense to SUSE Enterprise Server crowd, but only providing SUSE support in Hyper-V is a huge mistake. By not supporting Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS, and BSD, Microsoft is telling us Hyper-V is a Microsoft only technology. More Mt. Redmond, Microsoft center of the universe thinking. That's disappointing. Sure, if you are a Microsoft only shop, Hyper-V will be an option for virtualization. But so will VMware and XenServer. But if you run a mixed shop, Hyper-V won't solve your problems alone — you'll have to also add VMware or Xen to your virtualized data center portfolio. Or just go with VMware and Xen and forego Hyper-V."

Define 'Suppported'

[kneecap]

Could it be that only SUSE is 'officialy' supported and that other Operating Sytems will work anyway? It seems that the major requirement for Linux (including SUSE) is a 'Xen-Enabled' kernel.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv-faq.aspx [microsoft.com]

Re:shooting selves in foot

[ArsonSmith]

And looking at VMWare's new beta 3i product it gets rid of the host OS completely and loads nothing but the vmware hypervisor. It's designed to be only 16M and fit in a flash chip.

Have a VMWare cluster setup with vmotion and you want to upgrade hosts. Slap in another 3i box, pre-configured, turn it on and let VMWare rebalance the hosts.

Compatibility and support

[LLcj]

there's a difference. folks, the listed OS's are supported by MSFT...ie, you can call them up for support. there's a difference. The other OS's operate just fine in many cases. They just haven't gone through qualification and you can't call MSFT for help. umm, how many folks out there run apps that currently aren't "supported" on VMware and Xen?

Re:Par for the course.

[PitaBred]

You realize that Microsoft BOUGHT the Virtual Server [wikipedia.org] product from Connectix? They didn't actually make it. The quality of Virtual Server has no bearing on the quality of Hyper V, since they were developed by completely different companies, let alone teams.

Given that Hyper-V doesn't actually support virtualization except under Microsoft's shroud (Novell is part of it now), I see no way that it is going to actually do anything other than try to lock people into yet more Microsoft proprietary incompatible bullshit.

Re:BSD

[LWATCDR]

I know it is a joke but they could emulate the old Windows API aka WINE and come up with a new clean API. Just like Apple did with OS/X.

Re:WTF does Microsoft know about virtualization?

[dhavleak]

If a user cannot call the Hyper-V tech support regarding an issue they are having running RHEL on Hyper-V and receive a proper response other than "we don't support that," then it is effectively useless and cannot form any part of that company's virtualization strategy. It may work just fine, but there are many companies with specific corporate policies prohibiting use of unsupported software, and in some cases, running into a serious problem with unsupported software can be seen as a violation of Sarbanes-Oxley and may be construed as negligence.

You're correct that for most companies, not supported = cannot use.

You're not correct in assuming that MS can take the lead in supporting RHEL (and other linuxes) on Hyper-V.

To support something, you need to test it thoroughtly and be sure yourself that it works. Then at least when a customer calls with an issue, you know that their scenario is supposed to work.

Now Novell has been partnering with MS for about 2 years now. One of the things they will have done, is to run the gamut of their test automation on Hyper-V virtualized instances of SUSE. Based on this they will give MS the 'green-light' saying 'you are ok to support SuSE on Hyper-V'.

RH has no such working relationship with MS. They may want to (I have no idea), but based on the community reaction to Novell's partnership, I doubt they would enter into one even if they wanted to. Without that, how is MS supposed to validate RHEL?

That's not MS-bashing or Linux-fanboyism, it's just plain fiscal responsibility.

I understand. And I'll point out that this isn't MS-fanboyism either (since I'll probably get crucified if I don't). It's just reality -- to support s/w you need to test it first. RH is in the best position to test RHEL.