14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is close to wrapping up the first upgrade to System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2.
The Release Candidate of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 has been finalized and deemed ready for public testing.
As is the case with other technologies from the software giant, the RC represents a milestone indicative of the product’s proximity to RTM (release to manufacturing).
Starting with early December 2010, customers running System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 are able to take SP1 RC out for a spin.
“SC VMM 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 RC is now ready for the general public! This release adds support for Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 RC,” revealed Wilfried Schadenboeck, an Infrastructure Architect in Microsoft Saudi Arabia.
“It is being uploaded to Microsoft Connect now. Since this is a pre-release version, usage of this is limited to test environments.
“Customers are encouraged to ask questions via the SC VMM forums on TechNet. Feedback can be submitted directly to the product team via Microsoft Connect,” he added.
Customers should obviously not deploy SC VMM 2008 R2 SP1 RC into production, despite the RC label.
However, they need to get ready for the RTM of the service pack, and they can do this by grabbing the SP1 RC bits from Connect and start testing.
The Redmond company has worked to ensure that existing SC VMM 2008 R2 installations will upgrade seamlessly to SP1 RC.
At the same time, the promise is that SC VMM 2008 R2 SP1 RC to SC VMM 2008 R2 SP1 RTM upgrades will also be possible.
“Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 helps enable centralized management of physical and virtual IT infrastructure, increased server utilization, and dynamic resource optimization across multiple virtualization platforms,” Microsoft notes.
“It includes end-to-end capabilities such as planning, deploying, managing, and optimizing the virtual infrastructure.”