Breaking News: System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is RTM!

(RTM = Released to Manufacturing – otherwise known around here as “SHIPPED!”)

Finally, the latest tool in the virtualization arsenal is here.  System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 was released today. 

“But what is it?”

Here’s the text from the System Center Virtual Machine Manager product site:

“Microsoft is pleased to announce the release to manufacturing (RTM) of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 – the next generation of Microsoft’s solution for managing the virtualized infrastructure. A key member of System Center – a centralized, enterprise-class suite of data center management products -- Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 enables customers to configure and deploy new virtual machines and centrally manage physical and virtual infrastructure from one console. New to this version of VMM is multi-vendor virtualization platform support, Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) and enhanced support of ‘high availability’ host clusters, among other new features.”

“Wait a sec.. ‘multi-vendor’? Does that mean that it can..”

Yep.  SCVMM 2008 can manage Virtual Server 2005 servers and virtual machines like it did in SCVMM 2008.  But it now adds support for managing both the new Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V servers, and for FULLY managing VMWare virtualization also.

For a good summary of the new features, check out this PDF file.