Today I got an early Christmas present, a server 2008 virtual server tour. If you are like me, and there are a lot of us, you are a programmer / network admin for your company. I get to spend half my time working code and the other working network issues and development. That is why you will see a lot of post from me that involve a lot more than programming.

Well Microsoft finally did the readiness Live Meeting for server 2008 virtualization. Now let me tell you have have played around with 2008 a little bit and I like it as much as I like Vista. I dont. It seems bloated and very cumbersome to me. I have a very hard time doing some of the most simple tasks. I really hated it and swore it would be in SP1 before I started to install it on my network. Well that is not longer true. I have been getting more and more involved with virtual servers ever since MicroSoft came out with MSVS 2005 R2. That was a uge step in the right direction for MicroSoft and there virtual server platform. You see, I once got a chance to play with VMWare aka my Cadilac. And man what a dream to get behind the wheel of a WMWare ESX server. It has everything I could ever need. It was fast, smooth and packed with goodies. But dad wouldn’t give me the money to buy that Caddy, I only had enough money to buy the Yugo, and it was what I thought it was. So I crowned it’s ass. It was slow and unimpressive but good enough to get me to work. It worked, and that was it.

But now that Yugo has turned into a 2008 Corvette. And man is it sweet!!! Dad gave me the keys Microsoft Server 2008 virtual server which is now built into Windows Server 2008. It has everything you need and it is a direct attack on VMWare stake of the virtual server market.

Virtual Server 2008 now directly links to Intel VT and V-AMD chip’s virtual technology to allow the guest server direct access to hardware. The hard drives are now writing data directly to the host hard drives. Not thru a software layer in the host os, slowing it down. Guest servers can now be clustered with other host servers for a fail over of the guest OS. Handling the fail over of the host OS is still up to you. You can now move a live guest server from one server to another to load balance the host server at will. I am sure that like VMWare they will build a utility that will move the guest server for you for an automated load balancing platform. Multi processors are now supported inside the guest server. 64 bit is also supported in the guest servers now. VS2008 will let you take snap shots of your guest severs for a scheduled backup. The snapshots are a lot like DPM 2008 in that it is a byte level backup of the data on the disk on a changing bytes basis. I haven’t loaded any virtual servers up on 2008 yet because all of my 64bit servers are in production use. I only have older 32 bit servers for my testing. But now seeing this, I will get a 64 bit server in to load up with RC1 2008 and test out the servers. I am sure I will love what I get, fast, easy and reliable.

We currently have about 30 servers in our company. In the last year I have created 10 virtual servers and saved my company about $20,000 in needed hardware. With VS 2008 I am hopeful to get one more AD, Exchange 2007, SharePoint, TFS and some dev servers into VS enviorment. This is going to be a great year. Below are some images from the preview.