the auto-scaling stuff is--largely--already here, though, while I think this *sounds* like a great deal and something that we want, I'm not sure that it is. In point of fact there are now, more than ever, more small and moderate sites and applications that can easily live on a very small number of persistent instances (1-5), and the biggest gain of virtualization is that these small number of servers are now *incredibly cheep*. Is automating large amounts of potential infrastructure a good idea? Is running fully dynamic database-driven sites the best way to serve mostly static information? Is creating an environment where, instead of killing your server and running up your bandwidth bill, a DDoS attack dosen't break your system, but increase your infrastructure costs by a hundred times?

well, and I think you need *much* better ACPI support in hypervisors.

this sounds like an elaborate setup for desktop virtualization, and I think desktop virtualization is sort of not terribly ready for prime time in terms of the ways people use computers. server stuff, on the otherhand, is much simpler, and I think xens stability, flexibility and minimalist approach will win. Also, I think shared memory blocks across vm is a weakness.

stuff like samba and ldap and citadel (and soforth) seem like pretty mature replacements for the "Windows Enterprise" Stack or whatever. I mean I've not worked with those kinds of deployments, but I'm not sure if the argument is convincing... I can see keeping some legacy stuff around for a while, but if you're moving to KVMs, why not just you know, do it the cheaper + better way?

but it should, damnit! ;) To be fair, I'm not entirely sure how this benefits linux, but hey. you're right. it's going to get done regardless.

for the record, latest versions of virtual box have dual core support and can address 2 gigs of ram comfortably. If your hardware is beefy enough, performance is quite good. It's a different game from this, of course from this desktop virtualization, though I've heard KVM (and to be honest, I'm a Xen guy) is pretty sweet, even for desktop stuff.

I've always found qmail pretty uncompelling, but that's just me. it strikes me that virtualizing windows for the purpose of running a desktop database with a shoddy record of keeping data integrity is sort of silly. Both from a system resources perspective, and from a development time. Getting virtualization right is a much bigger project than getting an app or two right. But that's almost secondary, becasue... AI'm pretty sure that the whole virtualization stuff, particularly for redhat, isn't to run access in terminal server environments, but rather to run MS SQL and Exchange and IIS under Linux Hypervisors so you don't have to run Hyper-V. Which is fucking nuts.

I suppose this is a good thing, and I'm a big fan of the virtualization, but really, why? Windows fails to compel.