Stripping Down Longhorn Virtualization
Tuesday, 31 October 2006 by Michel Roth
While a full or stripped down version of Longhorn server is required to make virtualization happen, technically the hypervisor is a separate software layer. Microsoft's current virtualization offering, Virtual Server 2005, does not run directly on the hardware but on top of a host Windows operating system.

This is similar to what VMware offers with its free Virtual Server product. In contrast, a hypervisor is a software layer that sits on the "bare metal," providing virtualization services without the need for an underlying host operating system (the approach taken by VMware's ESX Server). A hypervisor approach has less overhead and is therefore more stable and efficient (read: faster). Windows Server Longhorn will use a hypervisor but preserve the requirement for a dedicated instance of Windows Server to orchestrate it.

Microsoft's model is different from that pursued by VMware with its ESX Server hypervisor. While there is no host OS under the hypervisor, you still need a dedicated copy of Longhorn running on top of it.

Read the entire article at Computerworld.com.

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