Yesterday, the General Manager of Microsoft’s virtualization strategy Mike Neil used his blog to announce that a number of features would be missing from the initial release of Windows Server Virtualization (aka Viridian):

• Live migration of virtual machines between physical servers
• Online addition of storage, network, memory and processor resources
• Support for more than 16 processor cores

No doubt Microsoft’s competitors will see this announcement as an opportunity to raise FUD regarding Microsoft’s virtualisation credentials (“We already do live migration and Microsoft’s years behind”).

It’s certainly true that this does weaken Microsoft’s credibility. However, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that these capabilities are not required for mainstream use cases such as server consolidation – and it’s the mainstream that Microsoft is targeting.