Microsoft is committed to virtualization for the long haul, with a focus on democratizing the technology. As far as the Redmond giant is concerned, with the debut of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, its efforts to make virtualization mainstream have been kicked up a notch.

 

But the hypervisor in the Windows Server operating system will go well beyond Windows 7, to Windows 8, according to Microsoft's current plans. This move is of course understandable considering that Windows 7 Server is nothing more than a minor update to the current version of the Windows Server platform, namely Windows Server 2008.

 

"Virtualization is emerging as a core bet across the industry to enable scenarios such as server consolidation, business continuity, and deployment/testing of complex applications and solutions. Viridian is a mix of a very diverse set of technologies. Our UI is written in C#. Our management service is written in C++ and exposes a WMI API. We have kernel mode drivers and a hypervisor that sits beneath the kernel itself," revealed a member of the Microsoft Virtualization team.

 

Microsoft is currently hammering away not only at the next generation of Viridian, the codename for the hypervisor technology in Windows Server 2008, but also on Windows virtualization in general. According to Microsoft, all members of the Virtualization team will have the "opportunity to contribute to future releases such as Win8."

 

Since Windows 7 Server is in fact the codename for Windows Server 2008 R2, Viridian/Hyper-V is bound to get nothing more than a minor update. However, things will be different with Windows 8 Server, which will in fact qualify as the next major version of Windows Server. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V was released to manufacturing and made available as an update to Windows Server 2008 at the end of June 2008.