Eight new ESX configurations have been approved by Microsoft for support under the Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). The new configs allow up to 64 GB memory in any virtual machine. This is an increase from the previous 4 GB limit, and will be useful to customers deploying Exchange Server, SQL Server, or any memory-intensive application. All future SVVP configs will be listed at our product’s maximum memory limit.
Under SVVP, any customer will be supported by Microsoft when running any of a long list of Microsoft products on VMware. Any version of Windows back to Windows Server 2000 SP4 is also supported, including all OS roles such as Active Directory, File Services, etc.
Four new ESX 3.5 update 2 configurations are posted now for both Intel and AMD processors. Four more ESX 3.5 update 3 configurations should appear before mid-month. ESXi configurations for u2 and u3 are in progress as well.
Microsoft’s formal support policy for virtual platforms is here. VMware’s web page describing Microsoft support is here.
These new configurations now allow full Microsoft SVVP support for maximum VM sizes on VMware’s platform. They also exceed all other competitive hypervisor certification levels. Kudos to the team at VMware for the hard work on these certification tests as well as to Microsoft for a great certification and support program. As always, I hope other large ISVs take note of this and follow suit soon.
January 7th, 2009 at 3:41 am
Nice one Mike. It's good to see that VMware are embracing the SVVP as it provides a much greater peace of mind for those customers who are running the Microsoft technologies on VMware (and other) virtualisation platforms.
I hope the other vendors are following suit and working away to get more configurations certified too!
Time will tell!
Matt
January 7th, 2009 at 6:40 am
[...] News just in from Mike D at VMware… VMware now leads the “most validated SVVP hypervisor” race with 8 new configs that have just been approved: [...]
January 7th, 2009 at 7:04 am
[...] to Mike D for posting this one . Thanks to MS for not having a RSS feed for me to follow or I would have cought it myself. [...]
January 7th, 2009 at 8:57 am
It seems to me that there is something significantly wrong with the clustering architecture of “Exchange Server” or “SQL Server” if it's better to have 1 64G VM than 8 x 8GB VMs.
(the 8, 8G VMs would be much easier to balance/fail-over).
January 7th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Deploying Exchange as 1 large VM is actually not the good way to go. It's actually better to create smaller mailbox servers. For more info go here: http://www.vmware.com/landing_pages/exchange_re....
January 9th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
There is no restriction on SVVP that says you have to create a 64 GB VM. This is just the max supported configuration under SVVP. You can create any sized VM on a sliding scale up to 64 GB with up to 4 vCPUs.
The point then becomes that you can deploy role based application servers like Exchange or SharePoint as scaled up or as scaled out as you need to meet business and technical requiments without deploying additional hardware resources. Application architects get the flexibility they need while infrastructure owners get to reduce hardware costs and operational expenses.
January 9th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
There is no restriction on SVVP that says you have to create a 64 GB VM. This is just the max supported configuration under SVVP. You can create any sized VM on a sliding scale up to 64 GB with up to 4 vCPUs.
The point then becomes that you can deploy role based application servers like Exchange or SharePoint as scaled up or as scaled out as you need to meet business and technical requiments without deploying additional hardware resources. Application architects get the flexibility they need while infrastructure owners get to reduce hardware costs and operational expenses.
January 12th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
ESX 3.5 Update 3 now on Microsoft’s SVVP List…
Hot on the heels of the Update 2’s new certified configurations comes Update 3’s inclusion on the MS-approved Virtualization Platform list. Now we’re just waiting on Mike D’s promised ESXi support!
I’m really glad Microsof…