New Beta of Windows Server 2008 Supports Vista SP1 and XP SP3

Despite the fact that Microsoft released Windows Server 2008 to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and that the latest iteration of the server operating system was officially launched on February 27, the company has yet to finish certain aspects of the product. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V managed to reach only beta-stage at the end of 2007, and the feature-incomplete build was included in the final Windows Server 2008 product. On March 19, Microsoft made available yet another Beta build of Windows Server 2008, with support for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3, taking Hyper-V one step further.

According to Microsoft, Hyper-V, formerly codenamed Viridian is the next-generation hypervisor-based server virtualization technology, included in Windows Server 2008 as a server role. As of March 19, Hyper-V is in fact feature-complete, the version carrying the label of Release Candidate.

Brittany M., a member of the Microsoft Server and Tools Business team, has revealed that there are "three main enhancements from the beta release. An expanded list of tested and qualified guest operating systems including: Windows Server 2003 SP2, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1, Windows Vista SP1, and Windows XP SP3. Host server and language support has been expanded to include the 64-bit (x64) versions of Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter - with English, partial German, and partial Japanese language options now available and the ability to enable the English version of Hyper-V on other locales. Improved performance & stability for scalability and throughput workloads."

At this point in time, Microsoft estimates that Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V will be made available in August 2008. The company pointed to the delivery of Hyper-V at 180 days after the release of Windows Server 2008 since 2007. "With less than 10% of all servers virtualized, Microsoft has a broad set of cost-effective products (spanning the desktop to the datacenter) that position the company to take advantage of significant growth opportunities in the virtualization space. Hyper-V provides customers with efficient and cost-effective virtualization infrastructure software, and now with the availability of the latest test code, Microsoft is one step closer to making virtualization a reality for customers," Brittany M. added.

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