Microsoft Says Hyper-V Beta Now 'Feature Complete'

Microsoft said Wednesday that it is moving its Hyper-V virtualization technology into a "feature complete" release candidate phase, and said it was now officially supporting several guest operating systems.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant said Hyper-V, which has been available as a beta and integrates with Windows Server 2008, can work with several "tested and qualified" guest OSes, including Windows Server 2003 SP2, Novell SUSE Enterprise Server 10 SP1, Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3.

The company also said host server support will include Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter editions. Hyper-V is built to work in only 64-bit platforms.

Hyper-V will allow Server 2008 deployments to create multiple virtual machines through a streamlined Server Manager. Though Server 2008 has officially launched, Microsoft has said Hyper-V will not release to manufacturing for several more months.

The entry of Hyper-V into the data center virtualization arena has begun setting a wave of competitive fires between Microsoft, VMware and Citrix, which, after acquiring XenSource, now distributes virtualization technology via XenServer. Executives of all three companies have recently begun waging a heated debate over the return-on-investment metrics each company's virtualization technology brings to market.

Through a spokeswoman, Microsoft said that the market "can now start to evaluate the final implementation scenarios with the knowledge that the upgrade path to the RTM of Hyper-V will be largely non-disruptive in terms of VM settings, VHDs, etc."