Microsoft Releases Virtualization Technology

Microsoft has released Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the hypervisor-based virtualization technology that is a feature of select versions of Windows Server 2008.

Nearly 1.5 million copies of the Hyper-V beta version were distributed ahead of the launch.

Virtualization can help companies maximise the value of IT investments; from decreasing the server hardware footprint, energy consumption and the cost and complexity of managing today’s IT systems, to increasing the flexibility of the overall environment. Microsoft’s strategy and investments in virtualization, which span from the desktop to the data centre, help IT professionals and developers move toward Microsoft’s Dynamic IT initiative whereby they can build systems with the flexibility and intelligence to automatically adjust to changing business conditions by aligning computing resources with strategic objectives.

Hyper-V offers customers a reliable and scalable virtualization platform with high performance that plugs into customers’ existing IT infrastructures and enables customers to consolidate some of the most demanding workloads. In addition, the System Centre product family provides customers with a single set of integrated tools to manage both physical and virtual resources, enabling customers to create a more agile and dynamic data centre.

You can download Hyper-V here.

More information is available from the Windows Server 2008 Web site.