14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is planning to start the distribution of its hypervisor as a Windows Update for all Windows Server 2008 editions starting on April 9, 2008. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V was initially served via the Microsoft Download Center starting with mid-March 2008. At that time, Microsoft revealed that it had reached a major milestone in virtualization development and that the hypervisor-based virtualization solution designed as an integral part of the Windows Server 2008 operating system hit feature-complete stage. This is why, in March Hyper-V received the Release Candidate label.
"As you may know, Hyper-V Release Candidate (RC) was made available on March 19th via the Microsoft Download Center. Tomorrow, we are making the RC package available as an Optional Update via Windows Update for all Windows Server 2008 SKUs, available for interactive download. It will also be published (classified as an update) to WSUS. Hyper-V RC is a feature-complete version that provides improved stability, usability and performance and enables users to test the support for additional guest operating systems," said a member of the Microsoft Update team.
The Release Candidate of Hyper-V comes to the table with support for a range of operating systems, including Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2), Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, Windows Vista SP1 and even Windows XP SP3. The RC build of Hyper-V followed the RTM version of Windows Server 2008 at over a month and a half, and users still have to wait quite a while for the final version.
"Hyper-V is now closer to RTM, but do note that it is still a pre-release version and is only intended to help evaluate the scenarios and get ready for the RTM version. Hyper-V is still on target for RTM within 180 days of Windows Server 2008 (i.e. by August 2008). The big benefit of applying this update is that systems wit Hyper-V RC can now smoothly upgrade to Hyper-V RTM when that becomes available," the MU team member added.
Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 1 Enterprise with Hyper-V Beta can be downloaded from here.