Microsoft announced that we’re making yet another product available for free. Microsoft Hyper-V Server, which originally was said to be roughly $28, is now going to be a free download.
“Free is good.. but what is it?”
I’m glad you asked. As you may know (and if you don’t, you should go HERE and find out), Hyper-V is our new virtualization platform that comes with Windows Server 2008. Extremely efficient, high-performing micro-kernalized hyper-visor-based virtualization.
Microsoft Hyper-V Server is just the virtualization part. That’s it. No operating system.
“Really? No OS?”
No.. not really. It’s a VERY SMALL operating system, of course. But its main purpose is to host “guest partitions” – that is to say, virtual machines.
“Oh.. you mean like running a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008, and running Hyper-V on it?”
Actually, NO. You’d think that, because Server Core is a minimized, optimized installation of Windows Server 2008. But remember: Server Core can be a domain controller. It can be a web server. It can be both.. plus play several other “roles”. Microsoft Hyper-V Server cannot. It’s just virtualization. That’s it. (You’ll notice that it’s not even called “Windows Hyper-V Server”.. there are no windows.)
If you’d like, you can check out the virtualization announcements that were delivered yesterday:
Absolutely Full of I.T. 
Microsoft announced the much anticipated Hyper-V Server Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) last week and they intend
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