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:
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:
- Support for installing Hyper-V on Windows Server core.
- Support for clustering of Hyper-V.
- Support for VSS backup of Hyper-V.
- 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:
- There are no .MSUs anymore. Just install Windows, select to install a new server role, and select ‘Hyper-V’.
- 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