Open Sauce Software
Tasty titbits from people using Linux and other open source software in business.
Thursday 20 March 2008, 5:00 PM
Why Novell is happy with Hyper-V
Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualisation technology is becoming less virtual by the moment - in the sense that its delivery is approaching. But as it comes into focus, its Linux support is coming in for criticism.
The software is now a "feature complete release candidate", which means it's nearly ready. But it is being criticised for not supporting the leading Linux versions.
A major point of virtualisation is allowing guest operating systems alongside a host. In practical terms, on customer sites, that is going to mean Linux and Windows.
However, Hyper-V's Linux support is limited to SUSE. That's no surprise, given Microsoft's relationship with Novell, but more users have Red Hat, and other distributions. They won't be able to use Microsoft's virtualisation technology - though to be fair, they will probably be more interested in VMWare or Red Hat's own virtualisation technology.
"We're pleased with Hyper-V," says Justin Steinman, director of Linux marketing at Novell. "SUSE Linux is a first class guest on Microsoft Windows Server." Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has shown SUSE Linux running as a guest, which was "cool", said Steinman.
Novell has its own virtualisation technology, "At Brainshare we returned the favour, and showed Windows Server 2008 running on top of Suse using Xen."
Steinman told us how much Microsoft has done to boost Novell's Linux business - suonds like he expects Hyper-V will boost that.
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