William Lam, who runs the virtualGhetto blog has discovered more than 1200 undocumented VMware .vmx parameters. Using UNIX/Linux utility strings Lam discovered the parameters in the /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx binary which is used to load a VM configuration file.
Based on the contents he discovered Lam makes the following speculations:
- VMware vSphere is going to support virtual Hypervisors, specifically Microsoft and Xen.
- vSphere is going to support Mac OSX, by providing EFI Support and support for Darwin as guest OS.
"…vSphere is hypervisor aware?
%s: %s detected by CPUID
%s: VMware detected
Microsoft Hyper-V
%s: Xen detected by hypercall
Xen detected but hypervisor unrecognized (Xen variant?)
I noticed the following strings around detecting certain guest hypervisors, is this a hint that VMware is going to support other virtual "hypervisors", specifically Microsoft and Xen?…"
If these features will actually make it into a released version of VMware vSphere can’t be said. But VMware is exploring the possibilities, that’s for sure.