Did you get the chance to try on the free Hyper-Visor released by Microsoft a few months ago, Hyper-V Server 2008?.

Don’t get confused, this is not a version of Windows Server 2008, it’s just the hyper-visor released as a "bare-metal" operating system, based significantly on remote administration (nothing much to do locally), but the great feature is that is completely free.

Now they’ve also released the R2 version of this operating system, and you can download it from here (~1.2gb).

The main improvements from the previous versions:

• Hyper-V clustering supported!
• Live Migration.
• Processor and memory upgrades (up to 32 cores and 1TB of RAM).
• Includes an Hyper-V configuration utility.

I had the chance to work with the first version and it’s been a great experience. Since it’s just an hyper-visor with a really small footprint, has an awesome performance on their virtual machines, including a small attack surface design.

One of the significant drawbacks that I found on the first version is that Hyper-V clustering/failover was not supported, but this new release sounded like a great news when I saw that is going to support this feature. Making this free operating system with a great performance, high-available and scalable design.

Give this one a chance to test it, you won’t regret it.

Check a previous guide I’ve made regarding Hyper-V Server 2008 (applies as well for the R2 version):

“Hyper-V Server: Installing, Configuring and Troubleshooting”

Cheers!