Prerequisite Agreements
A vendor that wishes to participate in SVVP must have:

• a VeriSign-provided Microsoft Authenticode certificate
• an account with the Microsoft Submission Portal organization
• signed the Logo Test and Logo Use agreements
• membership in the TSANet Mission Critical Community

Program Agreement
A vendor who provides a virtualization solution must also sign the Server Virtualization Validation Program agreement. In the agreement the vendors agrees to run, submit and pass the validation suite and continue to follow the requirements of the program (particularly in terms of updates and the support they provide customers).

An agreement is necessary to provide customers who buy third-party solutions with the expectation that they will receive on-going access to support for Windows and the virtualization software. The agreement commits the virtualization vendor to continuing testing of their solutions as they release new versions of their machine virtualization software, as well as when Microsoft makes new releases.

Costs
The costs associated with the program include membership in TSANet at Mission Critical community, so that the vendor and Microsoft can share support information, incremental costs, if any, to perform the validation tests, and a nominal expense (currently $250) to qualify each 'configuration' that is submitted for validation. There is no cost for a vendor to participate in the SVVP program.

Validation Suite
The validation suite is designed to exercise virtualization products in the same way that hardware server systems are, using many of the same tests. This provides confidence that the Windows Server operating system, as well as applications, will function correctly in the virtualized environment.

Contact
Please Contact the Server Virtualization Validation Program Feedback and Questions team at svvpfb@microsoft.com for more information on how to join.