VM and performance (was Re: [Beowulf] best Linux distribution)

[andrew holway]

> As I like to say, if Sun Microsystems had sold Unix for the Intel
> architecture for $50 full list, $25 academic back in 1988 (at which time
> it should be noted that they HAD a Unix that would run on the 386 and
> where these prices would have undercut Microsoft's prices for DOS), then
> Sun would be Microsoft and Microsoft would either be selling unix or out
> of business.  Products that never would have been developed include
> Windows, OS/2, NT, and -- Linux.  Maybe, just maybe, BSD would have
> still survived.  VMware has a similar opportunity now, but the window
> (so to speak) is rapidly closing as Microsoft is due to co-opt the
> entire VM market any day now using their standard strategy.
>
> VMware has created and proven the market, chip manufacturers have moved
> to support it, so MS will now implement their own version of VM, ensure
> that it only works well for Windows VM guests (and may not work at all
> for other guests), change their licensing to make it more or less
> illegal to run Windows guests under other VMs (already underway), use
> their sales channels to insert their product cheaply everywhere, sow
> some judicious FUD about how their product is secure, reliable, and
> supported and its competitors are not (backed up with ominous rumblings
> about license violations, DRM, and legal action).  In six months, a year
> tops, they own 70% of the market, and its open and closed competitors
> spiral down to gradual extinction as virtualization is a key component
> of modern server provisioning and failover and not even Linux can hold
> its own in the server room if Microsoft (say) makes it a license
> violation to run its Server products in a non-Microsoft VM manager.

It seems in europe at least Microsoft are talking to the likes of Xen
to get windows into hpc. After the European community's cold reception
of CCS they seem willing to float the next version of CCS on unix. No
one will trust MS with metal but the users sure do want it. The
Longhorn kernel is a lot easier to paravirtualise than previous
incarnations so maybe they are finally learning their place, as a
linux application. .

Ta

Andy