Microsoft Hyper-V Goes RTM

By Greg McNevin

June 30, 2008: Microsoft’s Hyper-V technology has finally been released to manufacturing (RTM) - a full two-months before it was originally predicted to be released, although it is missing a few key features.

Microsoft originally said its Hyper-V technology would be out within 180 days of the launch of Windows Server 2008, however, the thanks to the feature culling and what has been described as an ‘exceptionally smooth testing process’, the virtualisation technology has been delivered early.

The company says that Hyper-V offers a reliable, scalable and high-performance virtualisation platform that plugs into existing IT infrastructure. Additionally, Microsoft says that the System Center product family offers a single set of integrated tools to manage physical and virtual resources, for a more agile and dynamic datacentre.

“Customers who buy Windows Server 2008 are not only getting the scalability benefits, the high performance and reliability,” said Bill Hilf, general manager of Windows Server Marketing and Platform Strategy at Microsoft. “[A]s of today they can benefit from integrated virtualisation with Hyper-V.”

Microsoft says that 1 million evaluation copies of Hyper-V have been downloaded to date, and more than 250 customers have participated in early adopter programs.

These early adopters will be able to update their software when Hyper-V is rolled out on the Windows Update service on July 8, while new Windows Server 2008 customers can download Hyper-V now.

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