Hyper-V Beta released, Microsoft’s tries to catch up

Last Thursday Microsoft released the first public Beta of Hyper-V (a.k.a. Viridian or Windows Virtualization).

This is the link to Windows Server 2008 RC1 with the Hyper-V Beta components:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8F22F69E-D1AF-49F0-8236-2B742B354919&displaylang=en

A couple of video’s with Hyper-V Beta Demo’s:

Video: Symmetric Multiprocessing with Windows Server virtualization (Hyper-V)

Video: Virtual networking with Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V

Video: Virtual storage for Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V

Lots of changes since the preview, huge improvements in performance, stability and compatibility as well as:

1. Support for installing Hyper-V on Windows Server core.
2. Support for clustering of Hyper-V.
3. Support for VSS backup of Hyper-V.
4. Integration Services are now part of Windows Server 2008 (which means that if you use the CD image of this beta to install Windows Server 2008 inside a virtual machine – Integration Services will automatically be there with no need for you to perform extra steps).

I will post detailed installation instructions soon – but two pointers to get you started:

1. There are no .MSUs anymore.  Just install Windows, select to install a new server role, and select ‘Hyper-V’.
2. You need to install using ‘English (United States)’.  If you install with any other language (or flavor of English) Hyper-V will not work.  However – you can change the local / keyboard preferences for your user after installation without any problems.

Thanks to Ben’s Virtual PC Guy, watch his posts for more about Hyper-V…

Source: Virtual PC Guy’s WebLog