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MS Releases Evaluation Version of Virtual Machine Manager
System Center VMM 2008 R2 available for 180-day trial
Microsoft today announced the availability System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (SCVMM 2008 R2) evaluation version.
The evaluation version, which is good for 180 days, can be downloaded here. Microsoft's blogs describe this new data center management solution for virtual machines as being at the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) stage. It's essentially a final product release for Microsoft's vendor partners. General availability will start on Oct. 1 for customers who purchased Microsoft's volume licensing.
Microsoft has been testing SCVMM 2008 R2 in conjunction with Windows Server 2008 R2, according to a blog by Rakesh Malhotra, a Microsoft group program manager. Microsoft released the RTM of Windows Server 2008 R2 in July and made it available to TechNet and MSDN subscribers and volume licensing customers earlier this month.
According to the product's description, SCVMM 2008 R2 works with the following operating systems: "Windows Server 2008 Datacenter; Windows Server 2008 Enterprise; Windows Server 2008 R2; [and] Windows Server 2008 Standard."
SCVMM 2008 R2 also works with competitor VMware's virtualization product. Microsoft's server and tools blog states that "One key additional feature of SCVMM08 R2 is the ability to manage VMs running on VMware vSphere 4.0."
SCVMM 2008 R2 includes a few new features that were described in June, which is when Microsoft announced the release candidate version of the product. These new features include storage migration, live migration queuing, rapid provisioning, host compatibility checks, support for third-party clustered file systems and support for the Veritas Volume Manager.
For more details about the features in SCVMM 2008 R2, Microsoft is offering a technical overview Webcast on Sept. 9, and you can sign up for it here.