"Microsoft Wants To Create A Complete Virtualization Stack With Linux"

[phoronix]

Phoronix: "Microsoft Wants To Create A Complete Virtualization Stack With Linux"

Microsoft engineers are sending out new kernel patches in looking to expand the Linux support around the Microsoft Hypervisor (Hyper-V)...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Microsoft-Linux-Root-Partition

[Slithery]

The root partition in the context of the Microsoft Hypervisor is similar to Xeon's Dom0

Typo - Should be Xen's.

[onlyLinuxLuvUBack]

Reminds me of the saying "Keep your friends close..."

[wswartzendruber]

Reminds me of the saying "Keep your friends close..."

Is Japan an enemy of the United States?

[edwaleni]

Is Japan an enemy of the United States?

He didnt finish the line...

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

[starshipeleven]

Hmm, this is interesting. From what I understand, the "root partition" is running on top of the tiny proprietary Hyper-V microkernel but is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, actually providing hardware drivers and such, similar to the host system in KVM. I have no experience with Xen.

a bit more reading about Hyper-V's architecture. https://subscription.packtpub.com/bo...-1-hypervisors

I don't see how this could hurt Linux, it seems it's just a maneuver to ditch Windows as virtualization "host", and a step toward Winux.

I've actually had decent experiences with Hyper-V, much better than with VMWare's ESXi, so I don't mind seeing it ported to Linux as first-class citizen, even if the hypervisor microkernel itself remains closed source.

[starshipeleven]

Is Japan an enemy of the United States?

Is United States an enemy of everyone else?

[marios]

Is United States an enemy of everyone else?

Yes.
However I do not find this conversation constructive. Maybe all these post about USA and Japan (including this post, I do not consider myself immune) should be deleted as off topic.

[elatllat]

Why would they not just use/extend KVM?

[starshipeleven]

Why would they not just use/extend KVM?

The Hyper-V micro kernel (which is the hypervisor's core) is still closed source, so while the root partition becomes Linux, they still maintain full control over who can use Hyper-V and who cannot.
It is still "their own product".

KVM isn't their own product and they have no such control over who can use it, evil companies like Oracle could come out and just plain rip off everything, change the company logos and make their own KVM host, and make money off it.

Which is exactly what happens with oVirt (RedHat's KVM virtualization host), Oracle takes it and rebrands it to make their "Linux Virtualization Manager" https://docs.oracle.com/en/virtualiz...ger/index.html

While RedHat is more or less used to Oracle rebranding everything they make, for Microsoft this is very scary.

Also, Hyper-V isn't a bad product at all, its main drawback was its dependence on Windows for the "root partition".