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The savvy editors of NetworkWorld chose 3 weeks before VMworld 2010 conference to publish an online tech debate between Microsoft and VMware The topic: who has the better virtualization platform. The editorial summary reads:

VMware is the kingpin of virtualization, but the game is changing fast and Microsoft is baking the technology into the very core of many products. Which company has the best approach?

Read the debate here. Following is an excerpt:

There was a perception among early adopters of server virtualization that Microsoft didn't have a rich feature set. That's not the case. More than a year ago we further simplified and expanded clustering nodes, and added live migration for zero-downtime migrations of virtual machines between Hyper-V servers.

Hyper-V also provides high availability with transparent and automatic failover of virtual machines. With service pack 1 of Windows Server 2008 R2, we're adding Dynamic Memory and a new high-fidelity remote desktop protocol.

Lastly, you should read Enterprise Strategy Group's lab results that show Hyper-V performance versus physical devices, with 95% to 99% of the performance of physical disks, and 89% to 98% of performance of the tested workloads compared to what can be achieved on physical machines.

At Microsoft we believe virtualization is so critical we've made it part of our server OS, our management tools and our cloud strategy. As a result, VMware is missing critical features: the ability to manage both physical and virtual machines; the ability to get information about the application running within the virtual machine located on-premises or cloud; the ability to manage virtual machines from Microsoft, VMware and soon Citrix.

Go vote (for Microsoft) and make yourself heard by leaving a comment.

If you're attending VMworld in San Francisco, stop by the Microsoft booth (#1431). It'll be easy to miss us in the 10x10 booth ;-), so check back here and our Twitter feed for more details on booth demos.

Patrick