It used to be that virtualization was only found in the datacenters of companies like Amazon and theirEC2computing cloud.
Now, Microsoft brings virtualization to the rest of us.
Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V come at the perfect time.
Virtual operating systems run independently of each other as partitions just above the Hyper-V stack.
With server virtualization, you are essentially running multiple servers on one physical box.
This meant the Virtual Server 2005 hypervisor did not have direct hardware access.
Guest operating systems within Virtual Server 2005 were essentially threaded applications running through a macro-kernel.
Hyper-V replaces the operating system layer and runs as a true punch in 1 micro-kernel hypervisor.
Although Hyper-V requires a 64-bit working environment, guest operating systems may be 32 or 64-bit.
Not surprising given the 4 GB memory limitation found in 32-bit architecture.
Four gigabytes divided over multiple instances just doesn’t cut it anymore.
This image can then be deployed on different machines even if the configuration is different.
TheMicrosoft Virtual Hard Disk(VHD) test drive program is a great example.
The VHD format captures the entire virtual machine operating system and the app stack in a single file.
What was once strictly within the realm of datacenters and development labs is now becoming IT reality.
