Hyper-V launches
Hyper-V, which you know I’m excited about and have discussed on this blog, has been released to manufacturing (RTM) early. Instead of the planned Aug time-frame RTM (Windows Server 2008 RTM + 180 days), it was officially put on the Microsoft Download Center last Thursday (6/26). And, it should be available through Windows Upgrade after July 8th.
As most of you know, Microsoft has been ahead of its scheduled timetable for Hyper-V availability, and we even made the unprecedented move to include the beta of the technology in the RTM version on Windows Server 2008. Obviously, Microsoft is very confident and pleased with the progress of Hyper-V thru the beta program.
Just as a quick review, Hyper-V is a bare-metal hypervisor, meaning it sits directly on hardware and controls the creation and operation of virtual machines (VMs). It’s “thinner” than other hypervisor technologies and potentially more secure because of all the code, like drivers, it doesn’t contain and for the same reason would logically require less maintenance or updating. Of course, we are somewhat new to the virtualization game, so to make it worth the while of customers to try, it’s being priced very aggressively (essentially $28) and requires no additional licensing over the basic server licensing. Although some other vendors tout the fact that they are more “mature” technology, I believe, in this case, that building a “new”, smaller, simpler Hyper-V (using a microkernel architecture) may well prove a more compelling story, and given Hyper-V’s track record in beta, I think we’re off to a good start.
BTW, did you know that three of our major websites (Microsoft.com, MSDN.com, and Technet.com, with a combined 42+ million page views per day) have been running on Hyper-V for months now.
Stay tuned for more blogs on Hyper-V in the coming months.