Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Available for Download

On June 11 2007, Microsoft made available for download the final version of Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1. The Redmond Company has placed strong emphasis on the fact that the service pack comes with additional support for hardware-assisted virtualization and that it builds on the existent backup services capabilities and compatibility. Microsoft is offering for download two versions of the service pack, each one customized in accordance with the 32-bit and 64-bit architectures: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Enterprise Edition (32-bit) and Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Enterprise x64 Edition (64-bit).

One of the new features brought to the center stage by Microsoft is the Volume Shadow Copy Service, and the inherent enhancements delivered to the backup and disaster recovery processes for Virtual Server and the running virtual machines. Volume Shadow practically eliminates the need for scheduled downtime. Microsoft underlined the fact that the service pack is an evolution for the Windows Server platform, and as such, the server virtualization technology delivers enhanced functionality.

"Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 also supports host clustering, which offers customers minimal downtime depending on the speed of storage and amount of memory assigned to a virtual machine. Host clustering is storage agnostic, comes with Windows Server 2003 Enterprise or Datacenter editions, and is a high-availability solution for both planned and unplanned downtime. And with System Center Virtual Machine Manager, downloadable today as a beta 2 version, customers will have tools for high availability migration. I'm told there's been more than 5,500 downloads of the product in the past 30 days," revealed Patrick O'Rourke, senior product manager, Windows Server Division.

With Virtual Server 2005, R2 SP1 Microsoft is also offering the promise of a more efficient usage of hardware resources. The first service pack for Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 is designed to enable the consolidation of multiple workloads onto a physical server.