Yesterday it was announced that Hyper-V is finished...

Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB950050)

Updates Hyper-V, the Hyper-V Manager UI and integrations components...

Update for Windows Server 2008 x86 Edition (KB950050)

Updates the Hyper-V Manager UI and the integration components...

Please read the post of Taylor Brown in which he has more downloads (language packs) and a complete list of supported guest operating systems.

Yeah... can't wait until RTM...

The update "provides improvements to security, stability, performance, user experience, forward compatibility of configurations, and the programming model."

Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB950049)
As written in the KB article "This package includes the following items:

• Updated version of Hyper-V technology
• Updated version of the Hyper-V Manager console and of the Virtual Machine Connection remote connection tool for x64-based versions of Windows Server 2008
• Updated version of the Integration Services for the following operating systems:
  
  • Windows Server 2008, x86-based versions and x64-based versions
  • Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2), x86-based versions and x64-based versions
  • Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), x86-based versions only
  • Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), x86-based versions only"

Update for Windows Server 2008 (KB950049)
As written in the KB article "This package includes an updated version of the Hyper-V Manager console and the Virtual Machine Connection remote connection tool for x86-based versions of Windows Server 2008."

If you are looking for improvements over RC0 please read the post of Taylor Brown from the Hyper-V test team.

The last time I talked about enabling Bltuetooth under Windows Server 2008.
This time I would like to introduce Hyper-V.

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is the Hypervisor based virtualization function
of Windows Server 2008. As you know virtualization has a lot of
advantages like running more than one server on a physical machine or
higher security when separating server functionality. Hyper-V is a role
that can be turned on if your Windows Server 2008 installation meets the
following requirements:

• The OS runs on a machine with a x64-based processor.
• Your machine supports hardware-assisted virtualization.
• You have hardware data execution protection turned on.

Hyper-V uses the native virtualization method where the Virtual Machine
Manager runs directly on the hardware. This is a huge performance gain
compared to hosted virtualization where the Virtual Machine Manager gets
the ressources from the operating system.

If Hyper-V is activated the partition with the host operating system
(parent partition) is treated like the partitions with the virtual
machines (child partitions). Both of them consume ressources from the
Hypervisor. The virtualization stack, the process and the wmi provider
for managing the virtual machines are located in the parent partition.
And btw: A virtual machine running Linux and the Xen virtualization can
communicate with the Hypervisor.

So why should I use Hyper-V instead of the (technically advanced) VMware
ESX Server?

• The Price!!!!!
• New functionality over time
• Microsofts long-run strategy challenging a market leader ;)