We released our free-to-use virtualization hypervisor, Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 for download by poeple that don’t have the luxury of owning Windows Server 2008 R2 for it’s Hyper-V services.
It’s very cost effective for customers on Select with Windows Server 2003 that don’t have the luxury of moving to Windows Server 2008 R2, or simply don’t intend on moving to Windows Server 2008 R2 but still want to reduce the cost of server or client hardware virtualization licensing in their organizations. A quote from our product site:
With Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, customers get increased availability with support for planned and unplanned downtime scenarios with live migration and host clustering support. All of these features are available at no additional charge and enables customers to deploy cost-effective virtualization compared to competitive offerings.
- Available as a free download
- Support for live migration for “zero downtime” planned migrations
- Support for host clustering for unplanned downtime protection
- Lower total cost of ownership compared to VMware ESX 3i
And here’s some key details on the new R2 feature set:
- Support for up to 64 Logical Processors –increasing the logical processors support from 24 to 64 enables customers to achieve higher consolidation ratios and more scalable virtualization scenarios on Windows Server than ever before.
- Processor Compatibility Mode for live migration– allows live migration across different CPU versions within the same processor family, (e.g.”Intel Core 2-to-Intel Pentium 4” or “AMD Opteron-to-AMD Athlon”) enabling migration across a broader range of Hyper-V host hardware.
- VM Chimney (TCP Offload) and VMQ support are disabled by default
- Improved scalability with support for 1 TB host memory and up to 8 sockets
- Support for up to 64 Logical Processors –increasing the logical processors support from 24 to 64 enables customers to achieve higher consolidation ratios and more scalable virtualization scenarios on Windows Server than ever before.
- Processor Compatibility Mode for live migration– allows live migration across different CPU versions within the same processor family, (e.g.”Intel Core 2-to-Intel Pentium 4” or “AMD Opteron-to-AMD Athlon”) enabling migration across a broader range of Hyper-V host hardware.
- VM Chimney (TCP Offload) and VMQ support are disabled by default
- The following are new Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 features that were also in the R2 beta.
- Live Migration
- Jumbo Frame Support
- Hot Add/Remove of storage (VHDs and Pass Through Disks)
- Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) processor support for both Intel (EPT) and AMD (RVI)
- Core Parking
- Improved network performance via support for TCP Chimney and VMQ (specific hardware NICs required)
- Improved VHD performance for dynamic and difference disks
DOWNLOAD: Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=48359dd2-1c3d-4506-ae0a-232d0314ccf6#tm
LINK: Hyper-V R2 Product Web Site
http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/r2.aspx
LINK: Hyper-V TechCenter for IT Professionals (Planning, Deployment, Management, Support)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/dd448604.aspx
kurtsh
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