Microsoft’s Hypervisor Technology Gives Customers Combined Benefits of Windows Server 2008 and Virtualization - RTM!

Article
06/26/2008

Hi All,

Following the launch of Windows Server 2008, Microsoft reached another milestone today with the release of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the hypervisor-based virtualization technology that is a feature of select versions of Windows Server 2008. The nearly 1.5 million copies of the Hyper-V beta version that have been distributed demonstrate how customer interest in virtualization is moving from evaluation to production environment deployments.

Virtualization can help companies maximize the value of IT investments, decreasing the server hardware footprint, energy consumption and cost and complexity of managing IT systems while increasing the flexibility of the overall environment. Microsoft’s strategy and investments in virtualization — which span from the desktop to the datacenter — help IT professionals and developers implement Microsoft’s Dynamic IT initiative, whereby they can build systems with the flexibility and intelligence to automatically adjust to changing business conditions by aligning computing resources with strategic objectives.

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V supports virtual machines with up to four virtual cores, 32-bit as well as 64-bit operating systems, and up to 64 GB of RAM.

Hyper-V offers customers a reliable, scalable and high-performance virtualization platform that plugs into customers’ existing IT infrastructures and enables them to consolidate some of the most demanding workloads. In addition, the Microsoft System Center product family gives customers a single set of integrated tools to manage physical and virtual resources, helping customers create a more agile and dynamic datacenter.

“Customers who buy Windows Server 2008 are not only getting the scalability benefits, the high performance and reliability, and all the great things that Windows Server is known for; as of today they can benefit from integrated virtualization with Hyper-V,” said Bill Hilf, general manager of Windows Server Marketing and Platform Strategy at Microsoft.

The Road Ahead

Customers can now download the final version of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

“There have already been over 1 million evaluations of Hyper-V, and with this release IT organizations everywhere can move it from the lab to production to fully experience the benefits that Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 can bring,” Hilf said. He added that customers can also use System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, now in beta, to help them best configure and deploy their hypervisor-based environments.

New customers and partners can download Hyper-V at https://www.microsoft.com/Hyper-V. Customers who have deployed Windows Server 2008 can receive Hyper-V from Windows Update beginning July 8.

For the full press release, please go here.

Related Links

Videos:

•TechNet Edge Interview: Hyper-V Overview with Mike Neil

•TechNet Edge Interview: Hyper-V Program Managers Interview Part 1

•TechNet Edge Interview: Hyper-V Program Managers interview Part 2

Microsoft Resources:

• Hyper-V Download Web site

• Windows Server 2008 Web site

• Microsoft Virtualization Web site

• Microsoft Servers Newsroom

Other Resources: