Virtual Machine File Format Competition

4/23/2006

Virtualization is the latest hot technology, and the main players are all trying to get their file formats to be the standard.

I have high hopes for using virtualization for digital preservation. You can save a complete environment with all the tools/fonts/drivers/etc for a piece of software.

Having documented VM file formats is a great sign.

Information Week article on Microsoft opening up the .VHD file format (with quotes from Steve Ballmer!)
Computer Reseller News article on Xen licensing Microsoft's VHD format
Page to request VMWare's VMDK format
Page to request Microsoft's VHD format
Virtualization.Info's Industry Roadmap - this is a pretty comprehensive look at what's been going on.
VMBlog - a blog focused on virtualization and another good place to find links to the various players

Tags: standard vm

File Formats: VHD VMDK