Brian Madden (virtualisation commentator) has posted a blog entry where he discusses Microsoft’s position on client hypervisors.
I have to say, I would have liked a Windows 7 Hyper-V because I could ditch VMware Workstation. Workstation dominates the client market and rightly so. Virtual PC cannot come close in terms of functionality. My only problem with Workstation is that it can screw up the complicated Windows Vista/7 networking setup from time to time – the restoration point feature comes in handy.
I’m wondering if Microsoft even cares about virtualisation on the client. Their strategy for rapid provisioning of a “canned” client is Native VHD. Windows 7 has a tiny hidden boot partition and the usual C: drive. The default installation is that the OS goes into C: as usual. With Native VHD, you can leave the C: drive empty and deploy a VHD (virtual hard disk – the same type used with Hyper-V) manually or using WDS. You can then configure the boot partition to surface (mount) the VHD and boot from it. It’s virtualisation in a way but you’re limited to booting up into that one VM, one at a time.
I’d love to see a version of Hyper-V for the client that would allow us to boot up a limited installation, e.g. 8GB RAM of VM’s or 6 VM’s or whatever. Or maybe alter Virtual PC to make it compete with VMware Workstation which it trails by a long way right now.