Hyper-V RC Arrives -- Early!
You've probably noticed by now, but the release candidate for Hyper-V is
out now. Kudos to Microsoft for releasing it so quickly and allowing admins (and the rest of us geeks) to start playing with the near-final code.
It looks like at this point that there won't be any more features added, so what you see with the RC is what you get. It will support Microsoft's updated desktop OSes, Windows Vista and Windows XP, along with SUSE Linux 10 (that still puts it nearly a generation behind Novell, which is set to release SUSE 11 sometime soon -- at least we hope.)
It's another strong sign of Microsoft's desire to get into the enterprise virtualization game. As I pointed out in the news story, the first public beta was months ahead of schedule, and the RC means I'll be shocked if we have to wait until August to get the final bits -- although Microsoft is still holding to that timeframe. Microsoft knows it has a lot of catching up to do, and it needs to get this first rev of Hyper-V out before it can start adding more functionality that will allow it to more directly compete with VMware, Virtual Iron, XenServer and the Xen variants by Novell, Sun, Red Hat, etc., etc. First on my list, and those of most, I'd imagine, is the death of "Quick Migration" and the birth of "Live Migration."
I would guess that when R2 of Windows Server 2008 comes out, we're likely to see a v2 of Hyper-V that includes Live Migration and other upgrades. BTW, a great review of Hyper-V is going to appear in the launch issue, due out within the next week or so (I'm hoping). In it, analyst Chris Wolf dives into the deep end of the pool to give you the straight scoop.
Posted by Keith Ward on 03/19/2008 at 12:48 PM