Hyper-V RC1 Has been released for W2K8 x64

Via the Microsoft Windows Virtualization Team Blog: Hyper-V RC1 Release Available on Microsoft Download Center!.

The update can be found here: Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB950049).

Note that the x86 download is the integration and management components only.

Hyper-V is x64 architecture only.

Before starting the update for Hyper-V, make sure to properly shutdown any virtual machines on the server. Also, make sure to purge any existing snapshots as the RC0 snapshots will not be compatible with RC1.

The update initiated on one of our Server Core systems:

OK to install?

Once the update is approved, we are greeted with:

Updates are being installed

A server reboot will be required after the update process completes.

Once we were connected to Hyper-V via the Hyper-V Manager installed on our Vista SP1 system, we restarted our VMs, connected to the desktops, cancelled the New Hardware Found dialogue (very important) and proceeded to update their Integrated Services (VM Additions on VS2K5 R2 SP1 equivalent).

The Windows XP based VMs took the Integrated Services update without a problem. A reboot was required once the install routine concluded.

Prior to this, we had a lot of grief getting Vista x86 SP1 to setup properly on Hyper-V RC0, so we did nothing beyond configuring new Vista SP1 VMs with legacy NICs to get them connected.

Now, things seem to be working as they should:

Hyper-V Devices Properly Configured

We will now be able to experiment with assigning cores to the Vista VMs and measuring performance differences in the same OS as well as the performance impact on other VMs operating on the same Hyper-V server.

Thanks to The things that are better left unspoken blog: Hyper-V RC1 Released.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

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