At the recent Microsoft Virtualization event, Microsoft announced that they will release standalone version of Hyper-V (see story in Network World) in early October 2008. By doing this, Hyper-V will be a FREE virtualization hypervisor, just like VMware’s ESXi Server is now free. In other words, to use Microsoft’s Hyper-V, you no longer have to purchase the Windows 2008 Server OS for your host system. (WOW! That’s great news!) Of course, (Microsoft quickly points out) that, just as with all hypervisors, you still need to license each Windows Operating system that you run as a guest.
Additionally, Microsoft announced that its System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) will be available in 30 days.