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Today, Microsoft announced that Hyper-V, the virtualization hypervisor for Windows Server 2008 was released to manufacturing. Customers are supposed to be able to grab the final version at http://www.microsoft.com/Hyper-V, but that page doesn’t seem to have been updated just yet. Hyper-V will appear on Windows Update for Windows Server 2008 users starting July 8.
It’s been a long hard road to Hyper-V for Microsoft’s virtualization team what with schedule slips and feature cuts, but now they get to step into the ring with the heavyweights at VMware. Still, they have one big thing going for them: Hyper-V is effectively free so it may well draw the customers for whom it is “good enough.”
Today Microsoft is cranking up the hoopla for the 2008 refresh of their mainline server and tools products: Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008. Visual Studio 2008 is already generally available and SQL Server 2008 won’t ship until 3Q, but some there is some claim to relevancy for the launch event beyond the marketing hype since Windows Server 2008 became generally available today.
Microsoft is holding a private Virtualization Deployment Summit today and tomorrow for Microsoft customers and partners. An uncharitable view is that it is all fancy footwork to distract from the late and featured reduced Hyper-V (formerly Viridian), but there was some interesting news including the acquisition of Calista Technologies.
Microsoft has completed the acquisition of Calista Technologies, a leading provider of graphics technologies for next-generation desktop and presentation virtualization solutions. Calista software improves the user experience of 3-D and multimedia delivery for Microsoft multimedia applications, virtualized desktop deployments, and server-hosted virtualized desktops or applications using Windows Server Terminal Services.
Microsoft also finally backed off on the End User Licence Agreement (EULA) prohibition of the virtualization of Home Versions of Windows Vista which had caused adverse comment when it was revealed last year and was clearly an annoyance for developers (not to mention Mac users) although Microsoft had claimed security risks. Those concerns have apparently been allayed.
Finally, Microsoft renewed their vows with satellite Citrix, the long time provider of Microsoft-based thin client solutions and proud new owner of XenSource, and promised a new virtualization marketing push based on Windows Server 2008.
Microsoft was congratulating themselves today on the release of a beta of the Hyper-V server virtualization package:
Microsoft Corp. this morning delivered a holiday surprise for customers and partners, unveiling a public beta for its hypervisor-based server virtualization technology called Hyper-V, a feature with some versions of Windows Server 2008. Customers and partners today can download Windows Server 2008 RC1 Enterprise with the beta version of Hyper-V to evaluate the new technology, test applications and plan future consolidation, business continuity and high-availability projects. The beta was previously expected to be ready in the first quarter of 2008 with the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Server 2008. The beta is available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/ws08eval.
All the schedule slips and feature paring for Hyper-V would resemble the plot of a soap opera so I’m sure the team is glad to have hit their latest milestone before the holidays.
