Virtualization launch day

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Today is (was) Virtualization Launch day. Although the keynote presentations were streamed live (in fact I'm just watching Bob Muglia finish up as I'm typing this), they will be available later this afternoon for on-demand viewing here.

Some of the highlights:

  • Microsoft Hyper-V Server is coming within the next 30 days and will be free
  • System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (SCVMM) is coming within the next 30 days.
  • Live migration will be in the next release of Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 codename "R2"

Microsoft Hyper-V Server
There's more information on Microsoft Hyper-V Server here as first announced back at TechEd last year. It will be available for free. Microsoft Hyper-V Server contains the same fundamental technology present in the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2008, but Hyper-V is the only capability of Microsoft Hyper-V Server. It must be managed remotely. You may have noticed if you've watched the streaming media, the screenshot showed a command-line configuration utility - this is a simple way of configuring the server for things such as IP configuration, computer name, enabling remote desktop etc. More on that to follow soon.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008
There's more information on SCVMM here. The main announcement today was that SCVMM 2008 will be available within 30 days. The demonstration showed SCVMM managing Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1; Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V; Microsoft Hyper-V Server and VMWare ESX 3.5.

Live Migration
This was the first time we've made any announcements about the feature set in Windows Server 2008 codename "R2". Live migration is the ability to move a running virtual machine from one physical server to another with little or no perceptible downtime from an end user perspective - today's keynote showed a video being played while the virtual machine on which Windows Media Player was running was "live-migrated". Although there are many more improvements in the next release that we've been working on for many months now, there will be a fuller disclosure at the PDC conference at the end of October this year, and also at WinHEC in November.

Cheers,
John.