Microsoft has finally added a pre-release version of its Viridian hypervisor to its Windows Server 2008 software, offering users a first glimpse of Microsoft's much belated entry into the virtualization game.

eWeek put Viridian to the test, and found that it has it's basic bases covered.

VMware however has nothing to fear. For starters, Microsoft won't ship Viridian until 180 days after the release of Windows Server 2008. Secondly, Viridian is merely a version 1.0 product that lacks advanced features such as Vmotion or Hot Add capabilities. VMware is still years ahead.

29 Sep 2007

For now, the software supports only a limited number of guests and in the eWeek test "panicked" when asked to run an rPath (Linux) appliance. So far for virtualization providing a standards based environment that runs any operating system.

The eWeek screenshots show an easy to use interface with enough handholding to lead a 6-year-old through a maze. But it's not like VMware Server is difficult to use. In fact, we've been able to install numerous virtual machines on the free version of the product without much effort.