Sep, 2008 : Microsoft Offers Free Hyper-V Server 

📅 September 8, 2008 - As part of its world-wide "Get Virtual Now" (getvirtualnow.com) events, Microsoft (microsoft.com) has announced it will be releasing several virtualization products including the new Hyper-V Server 2008 for free in the coming weeks, elevating analysts' predictions of virtualization adoption and helping Microsoft's goal of making virtualization ubiquitous.


According to Microsoft, its System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, Application Virtualization 4.5 and Hyper-V Server 2008 software will be available for download within 30 days of the announcement Monday.

The Canadian leg of Microsoft's global launch was held in Toronto at non-profit, science and technology innovation center MaRS (marsdd.com), where several Canadian IT professionals, analysts and journalists met for a roundtable presentation and discussion.

Microsoft Canada chief security advisor Bruce Cowper led the discussion and introduction of Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, the latest hypervisor-based server virtualization product evolving from ESXi. System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 will also be released in the coming weeks to manage Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 or VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.



Microsoft Canada chief security advisor Bruce Cowper and WSIB sofware services manager Vince Jordan

According to Cowper, Microsoft has incorporated support for VMware (vmware.com) products because they acknowledge that many companies have already invested in virtualization platforms other than its own. Understanding its role as an eager, but late entry into the virtualization sector, Microsoft has also announced plans to provide Citrix support within the month.IDC Canadian security and software research senior analyst Kevin Restivo said companies of all sizes are finding advantages to virtualization, with half of companies doing so because of mission-critical applications, although reasons for implementation are becoming more diverse. However, more than one third of IT managers are still not familiar with the technology.

Representing the Canadian IT community as a Canadian Information Processing Society (cips.ca) national board member, Adam Cole said virtualization is something IT professionals need to be aware of now. Cole, who is also director of specialty technology solutions at McKesson Canada said, "[Virtualization is] a concept that has been around for a long time and will have a lot of impact for CIPS members."

The flexibility of virtualization was a theme of discussion, but also that deployment takes great skill and planning. As CMS Consulting (cms.ca) president Brian Bourne said, "It's not plug and play ? there are perils and pitfalls," noting that the proliferation of virtual machines could easily become a mess.

While it may not work for everyone, the trend for adoption, according to Restivo, is going strong. "It's a game-changing technology," said Restivo, who said businesses are going to adopt virtualization to cut support and administration costs.  According to IDC statistics, 99 percent of businesses in Canada are small and medium-sized, making enterprise solutions less relevant for the Canadian market. Cowper said smaller businesses looking for managed hosting solutions will benefit from virtualized hosting because they will get services that were previously only enterprise corporations could afford.