Microsoft Virtualisation Hits Public Beta Testing

December 14, 2007: It’s been talked about, hyped up, touted as a serious threat to VMware and dismissed, rubbished and huffed at but Microsoft’s Virtualisation offering has hit the public domain in an open beta test.

Hot on the heels of the Microsoft Server 2008 public beta release comes the release of Hyper-V for public evaluation. The virtualisation technology is a feature of Windows Server 2008 that wasn’t included in the release version but is now available for download here.

“Delivering the high-quality Hyper-V beta earlier than expected allows our customers and partners to begin evaluating this feature of Windows Server 2008 and provide us with valuable feedback as we march toward final release,” said Bill Laing, general manager of the Windows Server Division at Microsoft.

The virtualisation technology of the new operating system is a key selling point and one of the most talked about features. Whether or not it ramps up against existing products remains to be seen, though VMware aren’t daunted by the prospect and consider their well established ESX offering to be far more mature than the Microsoft beta product.

There is more competition coming into the virtualisation space, such as Oracle VM which is a free downloadable product and Microsoft’s entrance is likely to heat things up.

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