Microsoft beefs up virtualisation portfolio

The company has also released a new server virtualisation product, and an updated version of its tools for delivering virtual applications to client systems.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 enables firms to centrally deploy and manage virtual machines running on Microsoft's own virtual server platforms or those of VMware.

The product is designed to offer capabilities approaching that of VMware's server management tools. It will be released within the next 30 days.

Also announced is Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, a standalone server virtualisation tool that enables firms to consolidate Windows and Linux workloads onto a single physical server.

Hyper-V Server 2008 will be available to download at no cost within the next 30 days, Microsoft said.

Microsoft has also demonstrated for the first time the live migration of workloads between servers running Windows Server 2008 R2, and said that this capability will be added to the next version of Hyper-V Server.

In a related move, Microsoft last week released to manufacturing Application Virtualisation 4.5, the latest version of its SoftGrid product for deploying applications without installing them.

The new version adds greater flexibility in how applications are deployed, including a more lightweight delivery infrastructure and the option to deploy without streaming from a server.

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