Microsoft officially launches Windows Server 2008

Microsoft has officially launched Windows Server 2008 and Windows Visual Studio 2008 and announced SQL Server 2008, which is due to become available in the third quarter of this year.

At an event in London on Wednesday, Microsoft revealed that Windows Server 2008 is going to be available in eight different versions with release dates staggered over the year.

The three main versions of Windows Server 2008 will be Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter. All three will have the Hyper-V virtualization hypervisor and will cost £477 (US$945) for Standard with five client access licenses (CALs), £1,912 (US$3,787) for Enterprise with 25 CALs and £1,434 (US$2,840) for Datacenter, priced per processor. There will be various other versions available, depending, for example, on whether the customer wants the Hyper-V element.

Hyper-V is a key element of Microsoft's virtualization strategy and is included in beta form in the release version of Windows Server 2008. Microsoft says that within 180 days, the production Hyper-V will be released and distributed online through the auto-update system.

As well as Hyper-V's OS-level virtualization, Microsoft has labeled other services as virtualization components. Terminal Services now provides "Presentation virtualization" and thin-client access to server-based applications, while "Profile virtualization" involves loading a working environment onto a client over the network. Application and desktop virtualization are also included, with all types managed by Microsoft System Center.

Larry Orecklin, general manager for the server and tools division of Microsoft, told ZDNet Asia sister site ZDNet UK that this was wasn't over-complicating the definition of virtualization. "The different profiles cover the different situations in which you will use virtualization," he said. Virtualization of storage was different from server virtualization. "You will have different requirements and these different ways of looking at virtualization are covered."

Although VMware is one of Microsoft's major competitors, Oreckin said, System Center would support VMware and XenSource, the open source virtualization company now owned by Citrix, among other third-party products.

At the launch on Wednesday, Microsoft also had a number of prominent U.K. users for the company's new products including the recruitment agency Reed, EasyJet and the University of Cambridge.

Dr Andrew Hopkirk, head of projects at the National Computing Center, was also at the event and praised the problem-solving ability of virtualization. He said it can help to deal with the challenge of "complexity, agility, security and manageability in enterprise computing".