Microsoft Virtual Server will merge Automated Deployment Services

Automated Deployment Services (ADS) is the new Microsoft free solution to deploy a Windows image onto large bare-metal server farms (like Symantec Ghost and Drive Image do).

One thing every virtualization technologies enthusiast tried to do is to use ADS to achieve (today quite expensive) Physical to Virtual (P2V) migration. But actual ADS 1.0 cannot do that (usual HAL problems prevent successful migration).

But Microsoft now announced a new strategy for advanced server deployment and management called Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), where, among other things, ADS and Virtual Server cooperate achieving eventually free P2V migration and server consolidation.