Microsoft Tuesday made available for download the latest beta of its virtualization add-on for Windows Server 2008.
The company said Hyper-V Release Candidate (RC) 1 is feature complete, but it did add on additional Windows guest operating system support and integration features.
A Release Candidate signifies the software is out for final beta testing before final release. The previous RC, RC0, was released two months ago.
“This is the last planned Hyper-V milestone before RTM,” says Jeff Woolsey, senior program manager for Windows Server virtualization. RTM stands for Release to Manufacturing, which signifies the software development process is complete.
Microsoft said in April that it was ahead of schedule on the new timetable for release of Hyper-V and that the technology would likely show up in June or July.
The company has said since the May 2007 decision to cut Hyper-V from Windows Server 2008 that the virtualization technology would ship within 180 days of the release of the server, which was Feb. 28.
“We are feeling pretty good that it won’t be up to the full 180 days,” said Dai Vu, director of virtualization products and solutions in Microsoft’s server and tools division, at Microsoft’s Management Summit in April.
The RC1 code of Hyper-V adds support for Windows 2000 Server SP4 and Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP4. Both of those configurations are one-way and support emulation mode only.
Hyper-V supports a number of guest operating systems: Windows Server 2003 SP2, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1, Windows Vista SP1 (x86) and Windows XP SP3 (x86).
In addition, RC1 simplifies the process for installing integration components for Windows Server 2008 guest systems. Integration components are sets of drivers and services that help ensure virtual machines have a more consistent state and perform better.