It is time once again for my annual look at what has happened and will happen in the server virtualization space. For the historical record, check out the comparison of VMware vs. Microsoft vs. Xen from 2008 and the same virtualization vendor comparison from 2007.In the past year, Microsoft has come out with Hyper-V, a free add-on to Windows Server 2008 for its 64-bit versions only. VMware has revamped its pricing and also gone through a couple of releases of various products. And Citrix, which owns Xensource, continued to expand its alliances.

Others, such as VirtualIron.com and Sun’s Virtual Box, are still hanging in there. And Cisco is starting to compete in this space with its Unified Communications platform that will run both HyperV and ESX on a new collection of hardware that integrates storage and switching.

You can read the full article in Datamation here.