Volish virtualisation remains virtual

MICROSOFT'S FIRST public beta of its Windows Server virtualisation, currently known as Viridian, has had its released push back by months and will now be available in the second half of 2007 instead of the intended first, reports eweek.com.

Viridian's a bit of a Red-Hat-a-like, in that it will run hypervisor technology that operates underneath the OS and will sort out resources for a number of virtual machines.

According to Microsoft, Viridian simply ain't ready just yet, and has performance and scalability issues that need to be worked on. "We still have some work to do to have the beta meet the 'scale up' bar we have set," says Microsoft's Mike Neil.

Although the official word from Microsoft is that Viridian's public beta will be doing the rounds in 07's second half, the Vole still stands by it being available within 180 days of the release of its spanking new Windows Server "Longhorn." which should reach its third beta by the end of 2007.

Also delayed is the service pack for Virtual Server 2005, which will now be released at the end of June 2007, says Vole. An RC version, however, will be available by the end of April. µ