Today was the first day of the general sessions at IT Forum, Microsoft's annual convention for IT Pros. Me and my colleagues went to several sessions, mainly about Windows Vista.

I also attended a session called "Transitioning to Windows Server Virtualization" by Mark Kieffer, Group Program Manager. The session was interesting because it provided a general overview of the features of Windows Server Virtualization.

I am not going into the details of these features because they have already been described at many other places. However, some statements were made that might be of interest to you.

The first one is that, according to the presenter, Virtual Server 2005 R2 currently cannot provide the expected performance levels. This is a well accepted fact but it is good to hear it from the vendor itself.

For Windows Server Virtualization in Longhorn, the presenter stated that the product has the ability to virtualize workloads with few or no limitations as to what workloads can/may be virtualized. Indeed, with support for up to 8 cpus, >32 GB of RAM and pass-through access to storage, that might well be the case.

One of the key points that Microsoft tends to emphasize is the fact that Windows Server Virtualization is just a part of the operating system. In this case, that operating system is Longhorn Server Core, a cut-down version with a smaller footprint, less components, smaller attack surface and so on. Another key point, is that, because the parent partition (that runs the child partitions or guests) is Windows, you have all the Microsoft tools at your disposal to manage the virtual environment. These tools include MOM, System Center, Group Policy management with Active Directory and so on.

Those two points, virtualization built into the OS and the use of familiar tools to manage it, might be big selling points for those having to choose a virtualization technology.

What is also clear is that Microsoft has looked hard at VMware, to match or surpass the feature set provided by VI 3. The presenter, naturally, focused on these features. They include live migration, load balancing using System Center and failover using Longhorn MSCS clusters.

Actually, when I say they looked hard at VMware, I might need to adjust that statement a bit. When an attendee asked why he would choose Windows Server Virtualization and not VMware's VI 3, the presenter stated that the main reason was the live migration feature. The reason was (watch out now) that VMware's VMotion required "much more" hardware similarity where the Longhorn solution only requires CPUs to match.

Besides that "slight" mishap, what I took away from the session was that Microsoft is working hard to get to a product that can compete hard with VMware's VI 3. They are also working hard to spread the story about Windows Server Virtualization and a beta will be available soon. What VMware should do is to present a very clear roadmap of where they are headed. This roadmap needs to include new features (such as hot-add memory, CPUs, etc...) and a clear timeline of approximately when these new features will be available. Just my two cents...