Microsoft pulls Viridian features

The nixed features are live migration and the ability to hot-add storage, networking, memory or processor upgrades. The ceiling configuration has also been moved down to a maximum of 16 cores, four example a four-way quad-core system.

Just a month ago, Microsoft said that a Viridian beta would arrive in the second half of the year rather than the first so this is the second piece of bad news to be issued in quick succession. Odd timing you might think, why not just do the two together and be done?

When you're in a hole, stop digging, is the usual advice, but Microsoft adds some detail for its reasoning.

"The focus for the release of Windows Server virtualisation is quality and timeliness. To meet those objectives, Microsoft has made some hard decisions and now plans to defer some features to a later release."

Hmm, what's the good news?

A public beta of Viridian, will be available with the RTM of Windows Server Longborn, sorry [http://www.microsoft.com/longhorn] Longhorn, later this year, according to the latest plans. This will “enable customers to broadly test the integrated virtualisation feature before deploying in production”, it suggests.

A Microsoft bog also puts a brave face on things and provides a lot of detail on what is making progress in Viridian, as well a sproviding more context for the postponed features that it says are being saved up for a future release.

And Longhorn itself is still set for this year with Viriridan to follow within six months of that release. µ