I plan to live forever. So far, so good.

The Microsoft Virtualization Team blog has recently announced that version 2.1 of the Linux Integration Services has been released. Quoting from their website, the following features are included in the 2.1 release:

• Driver support for synthetic devices: Linux Integration Services supports the synthetic network controller and the synthetic storage controller that were developed specifically for Hyper-V.
• Fastpath Boot Support for Hyper-V: Boot devices take advantage of the block Virtualization Service Client (VSC) to provide enhanced performance.
• Timesync: The clock inside the virtual machine will remain synchronized with the clock on the host.
• Integrated Shutdown: Virtual machines running Linux can be gracefully shut down from either Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
• Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) Support: Supported Linux distributions can use up to 4 virtual processors (VP) per virtual machine.
• Heartbeat: Allows the host to detect whether the guest is running and responsive.
• Pluggable Time Source: A pluggable clock source module is included to provide a more accurate time source to the guest.

This version of the integration services for Hyper-V supports Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP3, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 / 5.3 / 5.4 / 5.5. You can obtain the Linux IS’s via the Microsoft Download Center.

I’ve been told that this realease also fixes some major time drifting issues on Linux guests running with the SMP (multiprocessor) option activated that were present in the RC version. On this note, I’ll also be releasing a screencast (in Romanian) on running Linux under Hyper-V soon, along with some best practices.

Microsoft has recently announced the end of support for Windows XP SP2 (which means it won’t be receiving any more updates).

Vista RTM is also scheduled to enter end-of-support in April 2010. More details on the Microsoft website.

Ben Armstrong recently announced that the previous Hyper-V R2 limit of 64 VMs per node in a cluster has been increased up to 384 VMs (which was the existing limit for any non-clustered node). The “Requirements and Limits” page on TechNet has also been modified to reflect the new changes.

A quick note here: even with the newly introduced support for more VMs per node, you’re still limited to 1000 VMs per cluster.

Following an article in the Financial Times where Google states they’re dropping Windows all across the company, out comes the response of the Windows Team, on their official blog. In short, Google are blaming Windows for the China attacks in January, and they’re ditching it in favor of Linux and MacOS. But is really blaming a 9-year-old browser the way to go?

To be honest, I find that the biggest security problem with Windows is actually it’s popularity: in the long run, using Linux or MacOS might in fact be less secure if attacked directly, even if there really are more known attacks/viruses/worms/trojans built  for Windows than there are for MacOS or Linux. After all, the security of a computer system depends very much on it being up to date and properly configured, while also running latest versions of any software being used. Having an outdated and/or badly configured version of any OS is a dangerous thing to do, no matter which OS it is. And switching to another OS simply because you can’t properly and securely configure the previous one is a really dumb move.

In any case, both links above are worth a read.

Later edit: Google have also announced that ChromeOS will be out “later this fall” -  do you really think this is just a coincidence?