Microsoft strips features from 'Viridian'

Microsoft said on Thursday it is pulling features out of the initial version of its 'Viridian' hypervisor to avoid having to delay the virtualisation technology.

The company is changing three key features of the hypervisor technology to try to stick to its schedule of releasing the technology within 180 days of completing its Windows Server 'Longhorn' operating system, due to be finalised before the end of the year.

The features will be included in a future version of Viridian, formally called Windows Server Virtualization, the company said.

The first feature that is being taken out of the initial Viridian release is so-called live migration, which enables people to move a running virtual machine from one physical server to another.

The initial release of Viridian also won't support on-the-fly, or 'hot', adding of memory, storage, processors or network cards. And it will only support computers with a maximum of 16 processing cores-for example, eight dual-core chips or four quad-core chips.

The move limits Viridian's initial scope and gives more breathing room to competing projects - most notably Xen and VMware.

Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff said: "Those guys just can't get a product out the door to save their lives. Not having live migrate a year from now - talk about 'behind the times'. Windows development is just broken."

He added: "For a (version) 1.0 virtualisation offering to be missing critical features a year hence puts Microsoft in a truly bad market position, perhaps to the point where they should seriously consider partnering with VMware."

In a blog posting, the general manager of virtualization strategy at Microsoft, Mike Neil, said the company is making some "tough decisions" to meet its schedule. He said: "Shipping is a feature too."

Ina Fried and Stephen Shankland write for CNET News.com