I missed this as it was covered a few weeks back but further information has come to light - MS will offer advanced virtualisation features which come as a premium on other hypervisors for free, and while some reported that this free release “comes with a number of strings” it turns out that it does not. In fact MS will provide these features without the use of SCVMM! all you need is the console of the server or a free management tool which will be available for Windows 7
The original announcement was blogged by Zane Adam here.
http://tinyurl.com/c4xsnq
And an excellent follow up was posted here by Jeff Woolsey (MS Hyper-V product Manager)
http://tinyurl.com/dezg7r
Being that I deployed my first Hyper-V solution last week over my “previous” favourite hypervisor (ESX) note I said “previous favourite” I was extremely impressed with Microsoft’s first release. Performance was outstanding, manageability was good and the fact that our preferred backup application Backup Exec 12.5 can get easy access to the VM’s I am a converted man and eagerly awaiting the R2 release.
Allot of businesses look to VMware for vmotion, HA etc… and often it is a mission getting these “enterprise priced features” across the line into the SME market. I cannot help but believe VMware and some other players will need to readdresses strategies and licensing in the near future as the commoditisation of the hypervisor continues…