You now probably have heard about Microsoft’s SVVP (Server Virtualization Validation Program) under which Microsoft provides support for its server products running on third-party hypervisors. You also have probably heard that VMware ESX Server, XenServer or Suse Linux are now supported under this scheme (that’s what we originaly wrote after talking with the various providers).
What has been carefully kept under the rug is that SVVP is not a blanket insurance from Microsoft : each hypervisor manufacturer has to certify its products by CPU architecture, by number of sockets and for specific memory configurations…
A careful reading of the certified SVVP systems shows that VMware ESX Server is so far only certified on AMD CPU’s (what about that wonderful partnership with Intel ?) with a max of 4 CPUs and 4 GB of memory (what a wonderful invention is that overcommit thing, it will be needed…). Novell does a little better with SLES 10 which is supported on Xeon and Opteron chips with up to 4 CPUs and 14GB of memory per system.
Citrix seems to have been more thorough in its validation : XenServer 5 is supported on both AMD and Intel servers with a max of 8 CPUs and 30 GB of RAM.
(Note : This article has a follow-up on the following page : More on Microsoft, VMware and the SVVP)
VMware has sent some clarification out to their sales team about what this means, and has asked me to pass on the information to you.
http://dantedog29.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-deal-with-svvp.html
Basically, the 4GB of RAM is set for the size of the VM, NOT for the size of the physical box, and we are in the process of certifying ESX Server 3.5 as well as ESXi 3.5 to support the maximum amount of RAM that those products will support within a VM and also on both Intel and AMD processors.