Windows 7 on Hyper-V

Here is something neat about the Windows 7 beta release.  Professional versions of Windows 7 (Business, Enterprise and Ultimate) as well as all versions of Windows Server 2008 R2 already come with integration components installed.

But - it gets better - these integration services work with Hyper-V on both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.  On either platform, it just works out of the box:

Capture Capture2 Capture3

This means that even if you are not able to upgrade your Hyper-V servers to the beta release - you can still use Hyper-V to evaluate Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2.

Note that integration services are not available during the early stages of installation - but by the time you get to the post-installation configuration wizard (where you configure the computer name, etc... - this is the second picture above) you will have integrated mouse support and support for all of the high performance devices provided by Hyper-V - all with no extra steps required on your behalf.

Cheers,
Ben