Hyper-V Beta now available for download!
Go and get it while it's hot:

HERE

This is Windows Server 2008 RC1 with the Hyper-V Beta components.

Lots of changes since the preview, huge improvements in performance, stability and compatibility as well as:

Support for installing Hyper-V on Windows Server core.
Support for clustering of Hyper-V.
Support for VSS backup of Hyper-V.
Integration Services are now part of Windows Server 2008 (which means that if you use the CD image of this beta to install Windows Server 2008 inside a virtual machine - Integration Services will automatically be there with no need for you to perform extra steps).

I will post detailed installation instructions soon - but two pointers to get you started:

There are no .MSUs anymore. Just install Windows, select to install a new server role, and select 'Hyper-V'.
You need to install using 'English (United States)'. If you install with any other language (or flavor of English) Hyper-V will not work. However - you can change the local / keyboard preferences for your user after installation without any problems.

Cheers,
Ben

Published Thursday, December 13, 2007 9:21 AM by Virtual PC Guy

Virtual PC Guy

These release notes address known issues about this Beta release of Hyper-V™.

Requirements and usage considerations

Hardware requirements
Hyper-V requires an x64-based processor, hardware-assisted virtualization, and hardware data execution protection. The following hardware has been tested extensively and is suitable for use with Hyper-V. Some of the hardware requires an update to the BIOS, as noted. This list does not imply support of the platform for Hyper-V by the respective vendors.

Release Notes

That fun didn't last long



The AMD x64 CPU I have (in the Test Rig) is not new enough it appears, nothing in the BIOS for hardware Vitalization

So what all does Hyper-V do?

Nativedude wrote:

So what all does Hyper-V do?

Thank you for asking Adam


From: The Hyper-V Installation Prerequisites


Overview of Hyper-V

Hyper-V™ provides software infrastructure and basic management tools in Windows Server® 2008 that you can use to create and manage a virtualized server computing environment. This virtualized environment can be used to address a variety of business goals aimed at improving efficiency and reducing costs. For example, a virtualized server environment can help you:

• Reduce the costs of operating and maintaining physical servers by increasing your hardware utilization. You can reduce the amount of hardware needed to run your server workloads.

• Increase development and test efficiency by reducing the amount of time it takes to set up hardware and software and reproduce test environments.

• Improve server availability without using as many physical computers as you would need in a failover configuration that uses only physical computers.

• Increase or reduce server resources in response to changes in demand.

For more information about Hyper-V, see the Windows Server 2008 TechCenter
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=93752

We're getting ESX at our work; essentially taking our current 21-25 physical servers and drop down to 7 physical boxes running the same number of server OS's virtually........... I can't wait to start working on it (With the network admin) The Hyper thing sounds pretty cool though; I presume this is more geared toward desktops..??

Isn't Hyper-V designed to be used with each of the Terminal Server's clients?