Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is designed to provide a reliablevirtualization environment and integrated management solution that enables customers to virtualize their infrastructure and reduce costs. A great value, it will be available as a feature of Windows Server 2008 and will easily plug into your IT infrastructure, letting you take advantage of existing management tools and skill-sets with broad support from Microsoft and our partners.

With virtualization built into the operating system and with simpler, more flexible licensing policies, it's easier than ever to take advantage of all the benefits and cost savings of virtualization. Windows Server 2008 will provide the flexibility to create an agile and dynamic data center to meet your changing business needs. Four core scenarios are enabled by Hyper-V: server consolidation, business continuity, test and development, and dynamic data center. Combined with Microsoft System Center, this provides a complete and integrated server management solution that works with virtual machines and physical servers and helps extend the capabilities of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

Key Hyper-V capabilities include:

1. New and improved architecture: New 64-bit microkernelized hypervisor architecture enables Windows Server virtualization to provide a broad array of device support and improved performance and security.

2. Broad operating system support: Broad support for simultaneously running different types of operating systems including 32-bit and 64-bit systems across different server environments, such as Windows, Linux, and others.

3. SMP support: Support up to four symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) processors in a virtual machine environment to take full advantage of multithreaded applications in a virtual machine.

4. Memory support: Support for large memory allocation per virtual machine enables you to virtualize most workloads, making Windows Server virtualization an ideal environment for enterprises and small to medium-size businesses.

5. New hardware sharing architecture: With the new virtual service provider/virtual service client (VSP/VSC) architecture, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V provides improved access and utilization of core resources such as disk, networking, video, etc.

6. Quick migration: Rapidly migrate a running virtual machine from one physical host system to another with minimal downtime, capitalizing on familiar, high-availability capabilities of management tools in Windows Server and System Center.

7. Scalable: With support for multiple processors and cores at the host level and improved memory access within virtual machines, you can vertically scale your virtualization environment to support a large number of virtual machines within a particular host and continue to take advantage of quick migration for scalability across multiple hosts.

8. Extensible: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V standards-based Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interfaces and application programming interfaces (APIs) enable independent software vendors (ISVs) and developers to quickly build custom tools, utilities, and enhancements for the virtualization environment.

A customer technology preview version of the Hyper-V feature is now available as a part of Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate (RC0) version. Evaluate this new platform and experience how it is easy to adopt, learn, and use, provides for easy migration from Virtual Server 2005 environments, and works with your existing IT infrastructure and management tools.

For more information on the Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V feature, please visit:http://www.microsoft.com /windowsserver2008/virtualizati on/default.mspx

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