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Microsoft releases Hyper-V 2.0 and Remote Desktop Connection Broker 1.0 betas

Posted by Alessandro Perilli   |   Monday, January 12, 2009   |   7 Comments

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The second version of Hyper-V is much awaited as Microsoft promised to introduce with it a virtual machine live migration technology that could rival with VMware VMotion and Citrix XenMotion.

As it seems that customers can’t live without this capability, the news that Microsoft won’t deliver Hyper-V 2.0 before 2010 immediately put the company out of competition for another year.

But Microsoft learned from the errors of the past and it’s trying to announce less and deliver more. So, with much surprise the new version of the hypervisor came out last week, as part of the Windows Server 2008 R2 beta.

This first build, available for download to the general public, includes all the features already announced in a whitepaper in November 2008 plus some more:

  • Live Migration (here a 5 minutes video showing it in action)
  • Virtual disks hot plug
  • Support for 32 logical processors
  • Support for Second Level Address Translation or SLAT (usually known as Nested Page Tables or NPT
  • Support for TCP/IP Offload Engines (TOEs) and Jumbo Frames
  • Extended PowerShell support (with 240 new cmdlets for hard core scripting)
  • CPU Core Parking

Along with Hyper-V 2.0, Windows Server 2008 R2 includes another much awaited virtualization component: the VDI connection broker.

Microsoft has in fact extended the Terminal Server (now called Remote Desktop services or RDS) capabilities to include a connection broker: the Remote Desktop Connection Broker.

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7 Comments

Blogger Tamás Monday, January 12, 2009 11:59:00 PM  
Have you seen the recent MS Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Beta1? Now it is derived from Enterprise Edition, which means Live Migration for everybody for free of charge!
Blogger bambam Tuesday, January 13, 2009 8:02:00 AM  
Ok thats it then. For the Open source community there is KVM and for the Windows guys there is Hyper-V. Why should someone in this finacial situation spend thens of thousands of bucks for VMware? Forget about added functionality its not the time to build a rolls royce. If I would be in their shoes I'd quadrupled the licenses both of existing and future customers. Existing would be sucked deeper into VMware world and new ones would get more bang for the buck.
If they dont act now they are in real trouble.
Anonymous Anonymous Tuesday, January 13, 2009 10:28:00 AM  
It's now time to take Microsoft seriously. They may not overtake Vmware just yet but with free live migration they will do some damage to any competitor.
Anonymous Anonymous Tuesday, January 13, 2009 11:44:00 AM  
Some good points , but for the centre where I work, Vmware still outperforms and is easier to maintain, especially with linux vm's, and we still have quite a few of the older server hardware which still performs well, as in not supported by Hyper-v, so its cheaper for us to stay with Vmware, than have to go out on a spending spree and upgrade the servers and the labour involved and lack of support for linux.
Anonymous Paul Tuesday, January 13, 2009 12:40:00 PM  
We are talking about one function here that Microsoft is going to Introduce. Everyone thought that VMware was doomed when Microsoft introduced Hyper-V for free, and they are still here. VMware will still be here even if Microsoft gives this function away for free. Why? Because they innovate (rather than copy) and continue to provide value across a broad front (vs one function) that customers are willing to pay for. VMware came out with VMotion in 2004 (Live Migration will come out in 2010?). ESX4 will be out before R2 and will continue to add additional value.

So, agree that this closes a huge gap for Hyper-V, however I don't think it spells disaster for VMware given their roadmap and broad portfolio.
Anonymous Anonymous Tuesday, January 13, 2009 6:08:00 PM  
Be careful with this kinf of announcement... First, it is only a Beta version of HyperV v2. Furthermore, who tried Live migration yet?
This feature is very important because it is used for critical VMs that should never be stopped. Who is enough confident with Microsoft technologies to put Live migration into their production environment?
I will take time !!!
Sure Live migration will work someday but when... and what about the reliability...
Anonymous Anonymous Wednesday, March 25, 2009 4:48:00 PM  
Yes, queue up the VMWare defenders and the Microsoft bashers. I'm tired of everything being about this comparison of VMWare versus Hyper-V. Look at each product for what it has to offer and choose the one that makes the most sense for you. And just leave it at that, the market will let us know which one is prefered.

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