Even though we have a well-ordered list of more pressing things to do, we couldn’t resist taking a little bit of time yesterday to pull down the newly released Windows 7 beta to give it a whirl on NxTop Engine, our bare metal client hypervisor.
It took a “hammer tap” or two from a couple of the smart guys we have roaming the halls here, but within a couple of hours of download we had it running on a bare metal laptop concurrently with XP and Vista virtual machines. I will try to shoot some video later and post it.
Exercises like this, while admittedly of little short-term significance, really drive home why bare metal client virtualization will become the predominant method of executing end-user desktops. I have seen a fair bit of commentary on whether enterprises running XP should move to Vista as a hardware/application compatibility stepping stone or skip Vista and wait for Windows 7. With a product like NxTop, this becomes purely a business decision rather than a technology decision. There are two key reasons for this:
Full Hardware Abstraction
By fully abstracting the hardware from the operating system, the process of certifying an operating system becomes orders of magnitude easier. NxTop Engine houses the various physical hardware drivers in the virtualization layer, presenting a generic set of virtual hardware to the operating system regardless of underlying physical hardware. The IT team will no longer need to worry about drivers, and Virtual Computer will do all of the work required to make our virtual hardware compatible with new operating systems like Windows 7 as they are released.
Point-and-Click Deployment of Multiple Operating Systems
Today, rolling out a new operating system is a major project for most IT organizations. Very few IT teams are willing to flip a switch and move all users simultaneously to a new operating system–for good reason. The potential pitfalls include hardware compatibility issues, incompatibility of key applications with the new operating system, and end-user training just to scratch the surface. Even if all of the issues can be solved, there is also that minor issue of reimaging every PC in the organization. Even with PC imaging tools, this would take more time than most IT teams can afford.
With NxTop, the IT team would simply create a new master virtual machine on NxTop Center and publish it to their users to run alongside the existing operating system. At this stage, users can become acclimated with the new operating system but are still able to access their existing desktop environment. After a reasonable transition period, the IT team can simply unassign the legacy operating system. Or, if certain users require ongoing access to their legacy operating system for lagging incompatible applications, the two desktops can run concurrently to provide a longer-term application compatibility solution.
I am looking forward to playing around with Windows 7. It took service pack 1 and maxing out my RAM to get me there, but I am actually starting to prefer Vista to XP. I am interested to see if Windows 7 delivers further improvement.
