OStatic

Although several open source virtualization applications exist, and some proprietary players are taking a bruising, it's still common for businesses deploying virtualization to face vendor lock-down and inability to move their application workloads between environments. However, Citrix, which owns XenSource and is behind the Xen project, has just announced a novel spin on the problem, to arrive as a preview in September. Project Kensho will distribute open tools for deploying virtualized application workloads. Applications will be runnable under the Open Virtual Machine (OVF) format, and IT managers and others will be able to run them across Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMWare ESX virtual environments.

Lately, we've written quite a bit about virtualization, including Red Hat's entry into the race, and virtual data center strategies.? Today, on our sister site GigaOm, Stacey Higginbotham has an interview with Citrix CTO Simon Crosby. Crosby was the former CTO of open source virtualization company XenSource (which Citrix acquired). He discusses Xen, Microsoft, VMware, cloud computing, and more. Check it out.

There's no stopping the virtualization race. Microsoft has just released to manufacturing WIndows Server 2008 Hyper-V. The Release Candidate of its? virtualization application is found here.? Hyper-V is hypervisor-based virtualization software that allows you to run multiple operating systems concurrently, including Linux, on one installation of Windows Server.