Giorgio Malusardi from over at Technet Blogs has blogged on the basics of the Windows Server Virtualization Architecture.

The article is in Italian (I presume) but with the aid of babelfish you can read more in his post “Windows Server Virtualization: Architettura - parte 2“, and a heavily edited snippet is below:

An other aspect to notice in the overhanging diagram is the presence of Windows hypervisor. This is a completely new element. In Virtual Server the Virtual Machine Monitor turns in Windows (this comes called virtualization hosted). With Windows Server Virtualization the Virtual Machine Monitor (hypervisor) turns “on the metal”: this is called virtualization hypervisor-based. The hypervisor she is a member who comes only installed when she is decided to install the Server role of Windows Server Virtualization, is not present for default in the installations of Windows Server “Longhorn”.

WSV-005

The Parent partition acts like owner of default of all the resources hardware. Between its typical tasks there are the management of the power management, plug and play and the events the legacies to the errors hardware. The partition is also responsible of the creation and the management of the other partitions and the allocation of the resources hardware. We enter in greater detail in the functions of the Parent partition.

A frequent question that is placed to me when it is spoken about Windows Server Virtualization is “Where I must install the driver of my card fibre channel, of my card video, of my adapter of net, etc”

Driver of the members the hardware of the system they are installs to you in the Parent partition (are indicates to you in the diagram overhanging like “IHV Drivers”). These driver are normal driver standards for Windows drivers, not driver special for the virtualization. The fact that Windows Server Virtualization does not demand driver special is fundamental if we consider the migliaia of driver available for Windows.  No driver for the hardware of the physical system host is executed in the Child partitions.

Windows Server Virtualization uses BEES WMI in order to create, to manage, to control, to shape virtual resources (”WMI Provider” in the overhanging diagram). To the state they of development puts into effect (is in phase pre-beta to the date of writing of this article) the BEES is not still complete and therefore still they have not been published. When the first beta of Windows Server Virtualization is rilasciata to the public the team of rilascerà development also one first version beta of the relative documentation to these BEES. When the product will be complete and rilasciato in definitive way to the public the WMI BEES of Windows Server Virtualization they are made available, with the relative documentation via MSDN.  Expect that BEES WMI will be used other vendors for the WSV management (example HP Openview and IBM Director)

I can’t wait for more technical posts on the upcoming release of Viridian.  Some nice meaty resources that you can really sink your teeth into — actually I’m also quite fond of the “so technical it makes your ears bleed” articles as well.  So a couple of those would be nice too :)