I was jubilant to discover on MicrosoftPost.com that Microsoft has done JUST that!  You can find the Download Link for Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 HERE! The Free download is an obvious response to VMWare’s free HyperVisor product ESXi. At first glance, however, it looks like Microsoft needs to streamline the Hypervisor.  The download page is showing the Hyper-V Server 2008 download as a WHOPPING 1 GIG! and the Requirements Page says 2 GIG’S for a full install. That’s a huge gap from VMWare’s free Hypervisor ESXi which has just a 32 MEG disk footprint.  It looks like the Redmond boys need to drop some of the FAT! Here’s a few Exerts from the Download Page: It will be fun to play with, and I’ll be sure to start posting some How-To Tutorials once I have time to pull up my sleeves and get this bad boy installed. The standalone hypervisor-based virtualization solution  Hyper-V Server 2008 provides a simplified, reliable and optimized virtualization solution, enabling improved server utilization and reduced costs. Microsoft® Hyper-V™ Server 2008 is a stand-alone product that provides a simplified, reliable, cost-effective and optimized virtualization solution enabling organizations to improve server utilization and reduce costs. It allows organizations to consolidate workloads onto a single physical server and is a good solution for organizations who want a basic and simplified virtualization solution for consolidating servers as well as for development and test environments. Low utilization infrastructure workloads, departmental applications and simple branch office workloads are also candidates to virtualize using Hyper-V Server 2008. Hyper-V Server 2008 is a cost-effective solution that is convenient because it plugs into existing IT infrastructures enabling companies to reduce costs, improve utilization and provision new servers. It allows IT professionals to leverage existing patching, provisioning, management and support tools and processes. IT Professionals can continue to leverage their individual skills and the collective knowledge of Microsoft tools, minimizing the learning curve to manage Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008. In addition, with Microsoft providing comprehensive support for Microsoft applications and heterogeneous guest operating systems support, customers can virtualize with confidence and peace of mind. To obtain a license for Microsoft Hyper-V Server, you must:

Review the Microsoft Hyper-V Server license terms .Print and retain a copy of the Microsoft Hyper-V Server license terms for your records.Accept the license terms. By downloading, installing, or using Microsoft Hyper-V Server, you agree to accept the license terms. If you do not agree to the license terms, do not use the software.

System Requirements Tags: hyper-v, server 2008, freeware, hypervisor PISSED! Comment

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