Microsoft finally launched its hypervisor technology, Hyper-V today, 144 days after the February launch of Windows Server 2008 (WS 2008).

Microsoft's general manager for the Windows Server Division Bill Laing, said, "The final version of Hyper-V is now available for customer download at 8:00pm GMT, from the Technet and MSDN download centres." Laing added that Hyper-V will be available from 8 July through Windows Update, which he called "our main distribution mechanism of making it available to anybody running Windows Server 2008."

Although Microsoft has delivered the virtualisation platform earlier than the self-imposed 180-day time limit set out when WS 2008 launched, the suite of management tools, System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), is still only available as a beta release. Asked when SCVMM would be available, Laing said that it would be made available in "the next few months".

Neil Macehiter, research director at analysts Macehiter Ward-Dutton said that firms would be ill-advised to embark on production deployment with Hyper-V, but added, "it should not prevent them evaluating the technology with a view to production deployment once VMM is generally available. That being said it is somewhat unfortunate that Microsoft was unable to co-ordinate RTM of the two products, given that management is so critical to the effective exploitation of virtualisation technologies."

Industry analyst Freeform Dynamics' programme director Tony Lock agreed, pointing out that Hyper-V would probably be heavily downloaded, but mostly for evaluation purposes with live deployment. "Ramping up progressively as all management tools improve their capabilities quite rapidly over the coming months," he explained.

Laing said that Microsoft's goal in producing Hyper-V was, "To make it very easy and cost effective for Windows customers to use virtualisation. One of the strongest pieces of feedback we've had from customers is how easy it is to deploy Hyper-V – if you know how to set up and install Windows, and you know how to configure roles in WS 2008, that's about everything you need to know."

As for customers, auto manufacturer BMW is evaluating Hyper-V – "For its dealer network - they've been rolling out Virtual Server and they're going to migrate to Hyper-V over the course of this year," added Laing.