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Windows Server 2008 RC0 With Viridian Preview Released

Wednesday, 26 September 2007 by Michel Roth

In case your Internet connection had some problems today, let me bring you up to speed in one word: RC0 ..or WsV or Viridian.. you get the idea right?. Yup, it's out there folks. Today Microsoft officially announced the availability of Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 0, and with it...the very first public release of Windows Server virtualization (codenamed Viridian). No before you wet yourself and call in sick for a week just to try out WsV, hold your horses. Windows Server virtualization is contained in RC0 but there are some buts, ifs and maybes. Consider:

� RC0 is a preview release for WsV- the performance of this build is not anywhere close to what it will be at the RTM release of Windows Server virtualization.
� Installing the CTP of "Viridian" will prevent you from upgrading to a newer build of Windows.
"Viridian" requires you have a pIntel VT or AMD Pacifica enabled CPU
� You also need to have NX (also known as XD for eXecute Disable) turned on in the BIOS.
� "Viridian" is only available on x64 versions of Windows Server 2008.

So forget about trying out WsV in your favorite other OS virtualization (desktop) product on your laptop. Do also note that this release has been capped somewhat:

� Clustering of virtual machines
� Clustering of the physical servers
� Compacting of virtual hard disks
� Backing up guest operating systems using volume snapshot (VSS)
� Maximum of 64 GB memory (this will be a problem for most beta testers NOT)
� Maximum of one virtual SCSI controller per virtual machine.
� Maximum of one virtual network controller per virtual machine.
� Maximum of one legacy virtual network controller per virtual machine.

There's like a gazillion resources on the subject but I found this post from Sander Berkouwer to have the most interesting collection of links. So now you know al this, go ahead and download it.