back to article Microsoft holds peace talks after Hyper-V booted from OpenStack

Microsoft is in talks for its Windows hypervisor to be readmitted to the Linux-for-the-cloud project OpenStack. Rackspace, one of the prime movers behind OpenStack, said the cloud team is working with Redmond after Hyper-V was removed from the project's code because nobody was maintaining or updating it. Microsoft's software, …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Essex?

    What happened to bloody release numbers? At least with them you know (usually) that 3.6.8 came after 3.5 and before 4.0.

    Does Essex come before Manky Meercat and after Tepid Twat or is it an offshoot of Snow Squint, Bangladesh or Pristine Pube?

    Mine's the one with "I know it is all about the letters but even so" on the back.

    1. C Yates
      Trollface

      Maybe they'e copying Apple?

      Imagine how good all this would look on Apple's new Mountain Yak OS (TM) :D

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmm

    "Microsoft's software, branded "dead wood""

    In general terms, they're not far from the truth there!

  3. uksysadmin
    Flame

    Microsoft's software, branded "dead wood"?

    Microsoft's software, branded "dead wood".

    Think you'll find the code surrounding Hyper-V integration within OpenStack was branded dead wood because nobody was actively maintain it, not Hyper-V. Good project management - imminent release can't go out the door just because it's a major software label.

    Anything for some sensationalism or excuse to reignite the Windows Vs Linux debate that ended a few years ago.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Meh

      > the Windows Vs Linux debate that ended a few years ago

      I remember this! Wasn't that shortly before the War on Terror was won?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Microsoft's software, branded "dead wood"?

      Windows vs. Linux debate died a few years ago? I must have missed that memo.

      One assumes there was no customer requirement for Hyper-V, hence the code to support it was not maintained, so by extension branding Hyper-V dead wood isn't so far from the truth. At least until Microsoft presumably presented a good business case for the inclusion of Hyper-V in OpenStack.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Re: Microsoft's software, branded "dead wood"?

        Anyone who brands Hyper-V as 'dead wood' is seriously deluded. It is the specific support for Hyper-V on OpenStack that was left unattended for too long.

        Most shops run Hyper-V on one of the many options from Microsoft, including the free Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.

        Hyper-V on Linux is a lower priority, but worth maintaining so the options are there.

        Hyper-V has actually matured into a very nice product - sufficiently capable for us to ditch VMWare, which was previosuly the obvious choice.

  4. Doug 3

    Microsoft hired a co to do the Linux work and that co was purchased by Citrix

    Citrix stopped the support for the Microsoft technology and Microsoft must have forgotten that they had hired that company to do their work because it floundered and got booted and they never noticed.

    This all makes me wonder how good really is anything Linux based which reliant on Microsoft in any way shape or form?

    1. John Sanders
      Thumb Down

      Re: Microsoft hired a co to do the Linux work and that co was purchased by Citrix

      @Dough 3

      I can tell you: Hyper-V's Linux support goes from mediocre to plain bad, period.

      Most of the job of integrating and producing kernel modules based on MS's released source code has been done by third parties, and feels more like "let see if it works" than anything else.

      After two years now is when some kernels are appearing with clipboard and mouse support.

      Pathetic.

  5. Homer 1
    Windows

    The "Plan"

    "[Microsoft] approached us and asked if could we put our heads together and come up with a plan."

    How's this for a plan: pull your finger out your arse and maintain your own bloody code?

    Or is that too obvious?

    "Come up with a plan"... LOL! Classic.

  6. Kirbini
    WTF?

    I've asked this before but here I go again...

    What's the big deal here? So what if they're hypervisor is not supported. Aren't their operating systems supported on XenServer and KVM already? And I thought Hyper-V was a give away anyway. So, unless I'm wrong (that'd be a first ;-), MS can still sell Windows into OpenStack clouds even without Hyper-V support.

    1. John Sanders
      Linux

      Re: I've asked this before but here I go again...

      In my opinion Micros~1 will do mankind a favour if they quit making hypervisor's for the enterprise, Hyper-V is based on VirtualPC, a very mediocre product for tasks other than emulating legacy NT4 AD controllers back in 2006.

      Micros~1 is doing to Linux support what they always do to any competitor, it runs sort-of, it is supported partially, it gets updates... when somebody else codes them.

      The market has a big demand for cheap Linux VM's, if those VM's do not run fast under hyper-v, the market will move away from Micros~1.

      If Micros~1 does a good job with their hypervisor and allow Linux to run fine, they lose Windows licenses and pave the way for even more Linux in the DC.

      Whatever they do they are losing relevance fast.

      1. Hans 1
        Headmaster

        Re: Re: I've asked this before but here I go again...

        Hyper-V is based on VirtualPC, a very mediocre product for tasks other than emulating legacy NT4 AD controllers back in 2006.

        AD and NT4? Think again ...

        But you are right on one thing: VirtualPC and HyperV are crap.

        1. John Sanders
          Paris Hilton

          Re: Re: Re: I've asked this before but here I go again...

          Oops, I meant Microsoft Domains in NT4!

  7. T J
    Childcatcher

    Why bother?

    Why would Openstack even bother? Hyper-V is a heap of junk, everyone knows it, and it wont be around more than another year. Why would Openstack bother going to the effort of maintaining an interface to it? Especially when the big 3 are really where its at - Citrix Xenserver, VMWare and whatever KVM offering IBM can get together. Keeping an interface umbrella fresh over those 3 is going to take enough work without worrying about every little toy hypervisor effort that comes along.

  8. Robert Heffernan
    WTF?

    Hyper-V Junk?

    I wouldn't call Hyper-V junk. It's actually based on a rather clever micro-kernel with enough of the Windows Driver Model built into it to allow regular Windows drivers to work. The Windows Server instance you see when you login to a Hyper-V system locally is actually an instance of Windows Server running as a guest in the Hyper-V environment. It has nothing to do with the old piece of crap VirtualPC effort. Infact, I would call Hyper-V more of a Bare Metal hypervisor than Xen or KVM since you can't actually directly interact with Hyper-V like you can with Xen or KVM.

    And for the record, I use Citrix XenServer on my own virtualised systems but only because Microsoft won't maintain the Hyper-V drivers for Linux guests.

    1. John Sanders
      Linux

      Re: Hyper-V Junk?

      A rather clever micro-kernel with enough of the windows driver model built into that doesn't prevent it from having all sort of weird issues very now and then, which causes unexplained performance degradation from time to time and with a certain tendency to forget about VLAN tagging information.

      I could go on forever, but the driver bit is just too much, care to explain what are the advantages of that?, In practice can not find those advantages anywhere.

      It is slower than the competition, much more incompatible than the competition, and waaaaaay less flexible than the competition.

  9. Hydrazine

    hypervsectomy

    Snip

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hey! You! Get off of my cloud!

  11. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
    Devil

    Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

    Oooooohhhhh lets build some relatively cheap Linux VMs and use Hyper-V to manage them, Errrrrrr… that’s not working too well, what can we replace them with? Well we know Hyper-V so let’s replace them with windows servers……

    Suspicious? Moi? Never.

    1. John Sanders
      Linux

      Re: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

      @Field Marshal Von Krakenfart

      Trust me when I say that that technique it is backfiring Micros~1 big time, we're not in 1992 anymore and the kind of people who will use the product are not home-user customers, users that do not know any better when they go to comet to buy a regular PC.

      The kind of people virtualizing Linux servers knows that the Linux server runs stable and fast when:

      A) is running on hardware

      B) It is running in the hypervisor, if the hypervisor is any good, AKA anything but Hyper-V.

      The admins will not go back to daddy and say, look daddy this Hyper-V thing doesn't work as it should, lets drop the Linux VM and migrate to a nice windows.

      In any company, they will come back to management and say things along the lines: We need another hypervisor, Hyper-V is shit and can not be trusted/gives us too many headaches/is not well supported. Specially when there are free alternatives XEN/KVM or Paid ones Citrix Xenserver & VMWare that run almost anything just fine. It is either that, or we spend an enormous amount of time and money porting custom-made apps and scripts (that are working perfectly on Linux) to Windows, or we spend peanuts (in comparison) on another Hypervisor.

      There is really a big demand for cheap Linux VM's in the market, because they use fewer resources, do not impose arbitrary artificial restrictions, and more importantly run just fine.

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