Breaking News: Want Hyper-V for free?

Microsoft announced that we’re making yet another product available for free.  Microsoft Hyper-V Server, which originally was said to be roughly $28, is now going to be a free download.

“Free is good.. but what is it?”

I’m glad you asked.  As you may know (and if you don’t, you should go HERE and find out), Hyper-V is our new virtualization platform that comes with Windows Server 2008.  Extremely efficient, high-performing micro-kernalized hyper-visor-based virtualization. 

Microsoft Hyper-V Server  is just the virtualization part.  That’s it.  No operating system. 

“Really? No OS?”

No.. not really.  It’s a VERY SMALL operating system, of course.  But its main purpose is to host “guest partitions” – that is to say, virtual machines.

“Oh.. you mean like running a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008, and running Hyper-V on it?”

Actually, NO.  You’d think that, because Server Core is a minimized, optimized installation of Windows Server 2008.  But remember: Server Core can be a domain controller.  It can be a web server.  It can be both.. plus play several other “roles”.  Microsoft Hyper-V Server cannot.  It’s just virtualization.  That’s it.  (You’ll notice that it’s not even called “Windows Hyper-V Server”.. there are no windows.)

If you’d like, you can check out the virtualization announcements that were delivered yesterday: