So what IS “Hyper-V Server 2008”? Well, first off, it’s not Windows Server 2008. It’s basically Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, minus the Windows part. It’s a hypervisor product without a GUI. Think VMware ESXi but without any fancy features.
Microsoft recommends this product for situations where customers do not need clustering, Quick Migration, more than 32GB per VM, or more than 4 CPUs on the host. The company recommends the product for server consolidation (well maybe), testing, and development (more likely). In fact, it’s almost as though the Microsofties have been reading this blog. It wasn’t all that long ago that I lamented the fact that the only way to get Hyper-V was to buy the 64-bit flavor of Windows Server 2008. Sometimes my crystal ball actually works! (It runs Linux.)
This product has a command-line user interface, but most of the work you’ll do with it will be done remotely: building VMs, configuring them, administering them. Remotely, that is, from a Windows Server 2008 machine, or Vista SP1, or System Center Virtual Machine Manager. The product is available Any Day Now as a free download; I don’t know if the final product will cost money, but MS says it will be available through retail channels, so that probably signifies a “yes.” Still, it’s something Microsoft needed in order to get Hyper-V out into the market more quickly. It will be fun to test, and to write about.
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