As readers probably noticed during years virtualization firms and IT press still use different terms to refer about various virtualization tecnologies.
A clear example is given by the last ComputerWorld article I posted.
I strongly disagree on naming convention used there.
The article reports “Software VM” for products like VMware GSX Server/Microsoft Virtual Server, “Hardware VM” for products like VMware ESX Server/Xen, and “Application Containers” for products like SWSoft Virtuozzo/Sun Solaris Containers.
Actually there isn’t a common agreed naming convention about these three kind of virtualization, and the one choosed there s unfair since it puts too much difference in terms between products like VMware GSX and ESX server, and because it cut off real hardware virtualization.
I know many players are reading virtualization.info: for sure Microsoft, VMware, Xen, IBM, SWSoft, PlateSpin, Leostream. I’m unsure if Sun also read the blog.
For all of them I propose a single, simplier naming convention, based on where the hypervisor resides:
Hardware Partitioning or Hardware Hypervisor for products like IBM, Intel, AMD virtualization technologies.
Kernel Partitioning or Kernel Hypervisor for products like VMware ESX Server or Xen.
OS Partitioning or OS Hypervisor for products like VMware GSX Server or Microsoft Virtual Server or SVISTA.
Application Partitioning or Application Hypervisor for products like SWSoft Virtuozzo or Sun Solaris Containers.
Session Partitioning or Session Hypervisor for products like Microsoft Terminal Server or Citrix Presentation Server.
It’s an open discussion, please give virtualization.info some feedbacks.