Windows Server 8 Hyper-V Sneak Preview

The first sneak peek at Windows Server 8 is now available (just watch the video embedded below).

Microsoft showcased the next iteration of Windows Server last week at its Worldwide Partner Conference 2011, as some Softpedia readers know by now, demoing one of what the company promised will be hundreds of new features.

In the video embedded at the bottom of this article (also available here), fast forward to 36:50 in order to get a taste of what Windows Server 8 will introduce.

At WPC 2011, Jeff Woolsey, Microsoft Group Program Manager, demoed Hyper-V Replica, a new feature to make its debut in Windows Server 2008 R2’s successor designed to streamline virtual machine replication.

“Today, replication is complex to configure and often requires expensive proprietary hardware. Hyper-V Replica is asynchronous, application consistent, virtual machine replication built-in to Windows Server 8,” revealed Microsoft’s WIlfried Schadenboeck.

“With Hyper-V Replica, you can replicate a virtual machine from one location to another with Hyper-V and a network connection. Hyper-V Replica works with any server vendor, any network vendor and any storage vendor. In addition, we will provide unlimited replication in the box.”

The video offers just a sneak preview of Windows Server 8. The promise from Microsoft is that as with Windows 8, additional insight into Windows Server 8 will be provided at the BUILD conference in September.

Windows Server 8 seems to fit into Microsoft’s vision of having customers embrace either private or public Clouds though the technologies it’s providing.

“Windows Server 8 virtual machines will help you build private clouds of greater scale by supporting (at least…) 16 virtual processors fully loaded with business critical workloads like SQL Server. Then we show you how you can deliver improved fault tolerance and flexibility, without the added tax or complexity of additional hardware, tools and software licenses, by using the new built-in Hyper-V Replica feature. All it takes is a few clicks, a network connection and Windows Server 8,” a member of the Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform Team said.