The fun bit in Microsoft Scotland is working with customers to discuss how Microsoft solutions could have a positive impact on their business.

Words and pictures can only go so far. And a powerpoint presentation is often a better way to induce sleep than induce a vision of a future business enabled by powerful software tools.

So my colleagues and I generally demonstrate how the products work in real customer scenarios with real data. Rather than finding lots of hardware to run lots of Microsoft products on, we obviously use hardware virtualisation to support this - and for a few months now we have been using Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V.

Our trusty Scottish Shuttle Quad-core mini-server workhorse (pictured) was just painlessly upgraded to Hyper-V RC1.IMAGE_009 Last week we ran a 2 hour session around Microsoft Unified Communications and Collaboration technologies for a customer based in Aberdeen - over LiveMeeting. This environment was supported by 2 virtual machines images of Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2003. Our main impression is of a highly performant hardware virtualisation platform, supported by a well-executed and simple to use admin toolset.

Hyper-V is scheduled for release up to 180 days after RTM of Windows Server 2008, which by my reckoning takes us to August 2nd 2008.  With RC1 now available, things are clearly going well in John Howard's Hyper-V development team.

For many customers and partners starting consolidation and Virtualisation projects, that means they can now go into a test phase with a solid release candidate, in the knowledge that the fully supported release version will be available at the start of August, if not before.

If any readers are tempted to evaluate Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008, some simple things to watch out for which will save you time:

  • Upgrade to RC1 from RC0 is painless - as long as you have gracefully shutdown all your virtual machines and none are in a saved state
  • If you want full integration of your Guest VM, and highperf network connectivity you will need to install Hyper-V integration services - this is helpfully available to all virtual machines as a "dummy" CD
  • This is only supported on Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2003 SP2, so another alternative is just to install an emulated "Legacy Network Adapter" to the VM - not so performant and won't give you mouse integration
  • I found that after updating my Vista guest, I needed to use MSCONFIG.EXE to force HAL detection at reboot before the VMBUS was detected - after that network, mouse integration etc worked well

As our Shuttle is a shared resource the next step is to install the System Center Virtual Machine manager 2008 beta to utilise the virtual machine library functionality - more on that soon.

John Howard : Hyper-V RC1 is available for download