Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate
I read today on Microsoft’s virtualisation team blog site that the free version of Hyper-V 2008 R2 has now reached release candidate and can be downloaded by clicking on the link below.
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate
The interesting news is that Live Migration, Clustered Shared Volumes and High Availability will be available as part of this free version when it reaches RTM. What isn’t clear is whether these features are included in this release candidate.
So what strings are attached I hear you ask? Well according to Microsoft absolutely none, they genuinley appear to be giving away these features for nothing. I myself thought that the management for Live migration and HA would require a cost as you’d need an implemetnation of System Centre Operations Manager (SCOM) and System Centre Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). However this is not the case, I actually verified this today with a Microsoft Employee at an event I was at this morning.
The following extract from the Microsoft Virtualisation team blog tells you how you can manage these features. The first requires a Windows 2008 box so there is a licence cost, the second requires SCVMM which will obviously cost you money. The third option however is free, as long as you have Windows 7.
Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Live Migration and High Availability can be managed in a few different ways:
- Failover Cluster/Hyper-V Manager from a Windows Server 2008 R2 Server OR,
- System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 OR,
- Using the FREELY (there’s that word again) available Failover Cluster Manager/Hyper-V Manager for Windows 7.
So, as you can see, there are a few different options depending on your needs and option three gives you Live Migration and High Availability at zero cost.
Will this be serious competition for ESXi? well I’d say in the home lab and SMB Sector it probably will. VMware have come in for some criticism following the launch of their new vSphere product and licensing. A lot of people feel SMB’s are not well covered for some of the more advanced features such as vMotion in the vSphere essentials offering. Microsoft have probably picked up on this fact, after all they’re not daft. They probably see this as the perfect oppurtunity to win some of that SMB market and get a stronger foothold in the virtualisation market, from there they can start up-selling SCOM and SCVMM.
