We, here at the virtualization team, have been digging around and testing some of the development options you have for the automation of virtualized environments.

Developers might be waiting for that famous Microsoft Hypervisor that will be available with Windows Server "Longhorn". In the meantime, there are still tools you can use. The Virtual Server COM API is one of them.

You can instantiate this object on a local server where Virtual Server is up and running and you can then have access to its properties and procedures. But if you want to develop something a bit more dynamic you might be interested on creating a centralized management tool for a group of Virtual Servers. This can be accomplished by initializing the Virtual Server Object remotely. Learn more about this by accessing the Virtual Server Programmers Guide, included in your Virtual Server installation.

What I want to point out on this entry is that if you are planning to use the remote access, beware you are going to need your Virtual Server on the same domain where the application is running, or as a difficult alternative you can set up a trusted link. Also, the user executing the code must be added to the Administrator's group on the remote Virtual Server. Failing on doing this will lead to runtime security issues that will simply prevent the object from having access to the remote server.