Got an e-mail about Hyper-V...

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What did we ever do without e-mail? From the ol' mail bag...

I just received this e-mail, and thought I'd share it plus my response here on my blog:

Hi Kevin,

I find your virtualization webcasts very good. I plan to investigate setting a DR solution using Hyper V with our systems in a different site Currently we have approx 12 physical boxes (mainly windows boxes) and I would like to setup some sort of failover mechanism which ideally would form as a DR solution or individual node failover.

I was wondering whether there are any limitations with using this new technology as to system incompatibilities or will it be pretty solid. I guess the answer is to test although for this we will have to purchase a 64 bit machine.

If you have any further info which could help me it would be great. We’re currently running a HP EVA SAN.

Many Thanks,

Stan the Bat **

( ** Not his real name.. but you get extra credit if you can tell me in a comment here just where a "Stan the Bat" reference might come from.)

Well Stan (if that is your real name), I have to first remind you that, it is indeed a very new technology (as you say).. so new in fact that I can't officially recommend that you run it in production just yet.  It is still in RC0 (RC1 may be coming soon), and is on track to release "within 180 days of the release of Windows Server 2008", which was February 5th.  That said, I'm hearing GREAT THINGS about its stability.  Microsoft is indeed using it in production to host some very public customer facing applications (I don't know that I'm allowed to share with you specifically which ones they are, so I'll err on the side of keeping my job <grin>). 

As for resources, I definitely hope you took advantage of the resource links I created for that webcast.  Those can be found here.  You'll find links to related resources there. 

I would also add that a good blog to watch is the Windows Virtualization Team Blog.  In particular (with regard to your question on Disaster Recovery), here is a post entitled "Disaster Recovery - not a nightmare with virtualization"