Hyper-V

Here at PhillipsTaylorBrown we have been using Microsoft's new HYPER-V product since its early beta stages. We decided years ago that virtualization was going to play a huge part in the future of network computing and as such we have invested time an effort in learning these technologies.

Microsoft Hyper-V is the current-generation hypervisor-based server virtualization technology. This new product from Microsoft enables you to make the very best use of your often underused server hardware resources by consolidating multiple server roles as separate virtual machines (VMs) running on a single physical machine.

There are currently 2 flavours of Microsoft's Hyper-V product. The primary version is simply a role that can be added to any x64 Version of Windows Server 2008 and the other is a standalone product ideal for basic test scenarios and low level consolidation. The latter version is incidentally free from Microsoft and can be downloaded here - link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6067CB24-06CC-483A-AF92-B919F699C3A0&displaylang=en

Microsoft's virtualization offering is competitive with VMWare's products and we find it more logical in functionality for the typical IT administrator. See below for a feature matrix: