Third-party guest operating systems that are supported for use with Virtual Server 2005 R2 (917437)

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Microsoft is committed to testing and supporting many third-party operating systems for use as guest operating systems on Virtual Server 2005 R2 virtual machines. To help make sure that you have a favorable experience when you run third-party guest operating systems in Virtual Server 2005, Microsoft Product Support Services (PSS) has created a product support model for these third-party guest operating systems. This support model is consistent with the support model that is used for Virtual Server 2005.

Microsoft provides technical support for third-party guest operating systems by using the standard Premier and Professional channels. If you report an issue that occurs while you are running a supported third-party guest operating system in Virtual Server 2005, you are directed to a team of Microsoft support professionals. These support professionals are trained to troubleshoot issues that are related to that particular third-party guest operating system.

Microsoft supports the following third-party operating systems for use as guest operating systems in Virtual Server 2005 R2.

Supported Linux operating systems

Microsoft support for Linux guest operating systems is currently limited to the following list of qualified and tested operating systems:

Enterprise distributions

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 (update 6)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (update 6)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
• SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9

Standard distributions

• Red Hat Linux 7.3
• Red Hat Linux 9.0
• SuSE Linux 9.2
• SuSE Linux 9.3
• SuSE Linux 10.0

Microsoft has performed a significant amount of interoperability testing of these distributions on virtual machines that are running in Virtual Server 2005 R2.

Virtual Machine Additions information

To improve the interoperability between a virtual machine that is running a Linux guest operating system and Virtual Server 2005 R2, Virtual Machine Additions are available for Linux guest operating systems. You can install the Virtual Machine Additions components in Linux guest operating systems to improve the following operating system capabilities:

• Guest and host synchronization for time synchronization, for heartbeat generation, and for coordinated shutdown operations
• Mouse driver
• Graphics adapter driver
• SCSI hard disk emulation
  
  Note The SCSI hard disk Virtual Machine Additions component requires Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1).

Microsoft plans on making Virtual Machine Additions for Linux guest operating systems available as a free download. Microsoft supports these Virtual Machine Additions for use with the Linux distributions that appear in the previous lists.

The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products.