Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Beta Released

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Beta is the beta release of the next generation of Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, which is a stand-alone hypervisor based product, first released in September 2008.

The new Beta contains the same virtualization feature-set as Hyper-V that is part of Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 now includes:

• Processor and memory support: Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Beta now supports up to 8-socket physical systems and provides support for up to 32-cores. In addition, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Beta supports up to 1TB of RAM on a physical system.

• Updated Hyper-V Configuration Utility: The Hyper-V Configuration utility is designed to simplify the most common initial configuration tasks. It helps you configure the initial configuration settings without having to type long command-line strings. New configuration options have been added for R2 Beta including:

• Remote Management Configuration

• Failover Clustering Configuration

• Additional options for Updates
  

• Failover Clustering: The initial release of Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 did not include support for failover clustering. However, with Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Beta, host clustering technology is included to enable support for unplanned downtime.

• Live migration: Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 includes support for live migration. Live migration enables customers to move running applications between servers without service interruptions.

With live migration and failover clustering, customers receive high availability and dynamic migration capabilities for both planned and unplanned downtime.

download Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Beta.

Source: http://vmblog.com/archive/2009/01/12/microsoft-hyper-v-server-2008-r2-beta-available.aspx