Testing begins on Microsoft's Virtual Server

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Ok, let the carriage draw the horse

``... Rather, Microsoft is looking at Virtual Server as a means to get some customers to consolidate older servers that are running Windows 2000, Windows NT 4 and other older versions of Windows.

Berg said Virtual Server can enable companies to keep running custom programs that are designed for the older operating systems, while the businesses work to switch to a different program or migrate the software to run natively on a newer server OS, for example.''

So instead of maintaining a consistent ABI (app. binary interface) across versions of their single OS, MS is asking people to run ALL of the version simultaneously so that applications can run on the same box?

This is another step in the devolution of operating systems. ALL serious OS vendors maintain ABIs across versions of their OS, and some even maintain the SAME ABI across different h/w platforms. That means that even if the OS changes in any way, the SAME binary runs without modification. Examples, are SunOS 4 binaries runing on Solaris 2, AIX 4 binaries running on AIX 5, IRIX 5 binaries running on IRX 6, etc.All serious vendors go to extreme lengths to make sure that all binaries are still usuable without reduction (and in many cases with improvement) of performance.

MS appears to be unviling or incapable to take responsibility for its own platform and asks the user to carry the burden of the transition to their ever switching ABIs.

Imagine when (and if) the Itanium shows up, what's going to happen to all the old x86 binaries....;-)

I only wonder which virtual machine the viruses will run on? Possibly all? Then if say 4 VMs are running on a PC you will have to re-patch/re-install ALL of them....


MS windows: a virtual platform dedicated to endless pain and real trouble...

``I just cannot clean up my PC: as soon as I devirus one of my VMs it gets contaminated from the rest of them which are still running. I may have to re-install everything from scratch.''

-m

Posted by: michael-t   Posted on: 02/19/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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