Share via

SCVMM and the Hyper-V Beta

  • Article

I've been getting lots of questions about SCVMM and the recently announced Hyper-V beta (more info about that here).

 The version of SCVMM that we released a couple of months back supports Virtual Server running on Windows Server 2003 only. Support for Hyper-V and Windows Server 2008 is being worked on as we speak and we plan to have a beta out in the second quarter of 2008 and the final release will coincide with the final release of Hyper-V. We're working as fast as humanly possible to release the Hyper-V support (and the VMware support) . You don't need to wait though, start kicking the tires on Hyper-V now and when you're ready to set up a large Hyper-V environment, I promise that we'll have your back with a sweet management solution that snaps seamlessly into place. We will of course continue to support Virtual Server so you'll be able to manage Hyper-V, VMware and Virtual Server with a single management tool and a single Powershell scripting interface. Our engine will abstract the differences between the platforms but will still allow you to take full advantage of the distinguishing features of each.

If you're wondering why the beta of SCVMM isn't available at the same time as the Hyper-V beta, let me give you some background. We had two options with respect to delivering SCVMM to the market:

1) Deliver a V1 based on Virtual Server and then a V2 roughly a year later with Hyper-V support

2) Deliver a V1 aligned with the Hyper-V schedule (which includes both Virtual Server and Hyper-V support)

Had we chosen option 2, we probably could have aligned the betas of SCVMM and Hyper-V more closely. That's because we could have kept writing more code for longer chunks of time instead of stabilizing the product and running the vigorous test processes that are required at the tail end of the software release cycle. There is a fixed cost associated with the "end game" or "home stretch" of a release (particularly with Enterprise software) and the more releases you do in the same period of time, the fewer features you ultimately can include since you have less time to write new code. We ultimately decided to chose option 1 because, frankly, customers were screaming for a management solution and they couldn't afford to wait an extra year so neither could we. Also, we're still aligned very well with the final Hyper-V release but unfortunately the betas don't align as nicely as we would have liked. With that said, I haven't heard too many people complaining about Hyper-V beta being release earlier than expected ;-)

Bottom line - we're working on it and nothing is higher in priority for our team than to deliver a world-class management solution for Hyper-V so stay tuned.

 Rakesh

Comments