Mike Laverick over at RTFM Education has posted about something very dear to my (sometimes bitter and twisted) heart:  Support for software under Virtualization.

My current project is a doosey: create a Virtual Sandpit for 500 Developers using SCVMM — but a big dependency of this is moving a lot of core systems from Lotus Notes to Exchange 2007 + MOSS.  Those systems are hosted by a different business unit, and are in VMware VI3.

Naturally, the migration is never smooth, so in recent months I’ve had to manage multiple calls to Microsoft Support.  I must admit, without Premier Support, there have been mixed results - but that is a blog post for another time.

Instead, I’ll cut straight tot the chase, and point you to Mike’s post “The Old Chestnut Microsoft Support for Virtualisation“, and a snippet is below:

Windows IT Pro has an interesting blog entry from Karen Forster which outlines her woes in getting support for ISA Server and RRAS in a VM. You can read the full article here:  Virtualization Support….

What I thought was interesting about Karen’s article was a couple of things. As you might imagine WindowITpro is quite “pro” (if you forgive the pun) Microsoft, but even these guys are getting frustrated with Microsoft level of support. Secondly, Karen’s article has generated an offical MS responses - and lastly that response does appear to suggest that MS is moving to a more “privileged” level/quality of support for people who run Windows in a MS VM, as opposed to a “3rd Party” virtualisation layer (read: VMware!).  The two KB articles are these:

….

For Microsoft customers who have a Premier-level support agreement, Microsoft will use commercially reasonable efforts to investigate potential issues with Microsoft software running in conjunction with non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software. As part of that investigation, Microsoft may require the issue to be reproduced independently from the non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software. Where issues are confirmed to be unrelated to the non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software, Microsoft will support its software in a manner that is consistent with support provided when that software is not running in conjunction with non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software.”

No doubt many corporates will continue to sign “end-to-end” agreements with their hardware vendors - so their hardware, VMware and VMs are fully supported by one vendor - rather than having to wade through the mine-field of MS support.

So what are my feelings on this?  Well one day soon (I reckon no more than 5 years from now) I believe some sort of hybrid Virtual Machines will be the defacto for 98% of all new software/server/applications.  I really hope by then we will be over this “finger-pointing” and have some decent support channels!!!  …A product is only half the solution, without support and proper implementation you got nothin’.

Ok, so I’m off for a coffee before I say something I shouldn’t =)