Hyper-V has RTM'd and is Available!

Today, Microsoft released Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the hypervisor-based virtualization technology that is a feature of select versions of Windows Server 2008. I've been using Hyper-V for some time, and it is rock solid, easy-to-use, and scalable. As I blogged previously, both the TechNet (1 million hits a day) and the MSDN (3 million hits a day) Web properties are running inside of Hyper-V and have been for weeks, without any issues.

Since then, because things went so well for TechNet and MSDN, Microsoft Operations migrated 25% of the Web servers running microsoft.com, one of the world's largest Web properties, to Hyper-V. We've not encountered any performance, stability, or availability issues at all. More Web servers for microsoft.com will be deployed in Hyper-V once the needed hardware arrives. For more details on this, see https://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2008/06/25/microsoft-com-powered-by-hyper-v.aspx.

Hyper-V is quite flexible, supporting a number of virtual machine (VM) guests, such as:

  • Windows Server 2008
  • Windows Server 2003
  • Windows 2000 Server
  • Windows Vista
  • Windows XP
  • Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux

See https://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv-supported-guest-os.aspx for specific details.

As the Exchange team announced at Microsoft TechEd recently, Microsoft will be publishing a support statement with respect to Exchange Server within 60 days of today. While you're waiting, if you have a server that is a 64-bit environment and supports hardware-assisted virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-V) technology, I highly recommend download and trying Hyper-V. Hyper-V is available for download at https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F3AB3D4B-63C8-4424-A738-BADED34D24ED.  Hyper-V is also expected to be available on Windows Update/Microsoft Update on July 8, 2008.

For other information about Hyper-V, see the Virtualization Team blog at https://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2008/06/26/wu-hoo-only-12-days-to-wu.aspx.

Below are some Hyper-V resources:

Blogs:

Webcasts:

 

For news about Hyper-V, see: