Despite efforts in pushing a standardization in server virtualization market, VMware seems not able to drive community towards its direction.
At Ottawa Linux Symposium 2006 the company has not even been mentioned among best suited candidates for Linux kernel inclusion.
VMware is finding problems also with Microsoft, which not only wouldn’t adhere suggested standards but it’s actively working to impose its own with an agreement with XenSource.
Solid on its market leader position VMware will unlikely change its mind, embracing someone else standards, so the company seems to have no other choice to further permeate the market than supporting competitors implementations.
An hint in this direction comes from an old interview (it should be before VMWare Infrastructure 3 release) VMware president, Diane Greene, granted ComputerWorld and published today:
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ComputerWorld: Infrastructure 3 supports Microsoft virtual machines. Do you plan to support Xen?Diane Greene: That’s one reason we want to see the standards out there. If customers want it, we’re happy to support it. Just like we support all operating systems, all hardware, all storage. We’ll support all hypervisors…
It would make perfectly sense if ESX Server 4.0 (or VMware Infrastructure 4 if you like more) would support virtual machines natively running on Xen and upcoming Microsoft Windows Server Virtualization hypervisors. Beating Redmond giant at its own game.