Microsoft finally released Service Pack 1 for Virtual Server 2005 R2. I agree with Josh that “Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1″ is not really an ideal product name. Considering the new features, Virtual Server 2007 might have been better name.

Volume Shadow Service (VSS) Support: This allows you to perform live backups of virtual machines by creating snapshots. Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2007 will support such online backups of Virtual Server machines.

Support of AMD Virtualization Technology (AMD-V) and Intel Virtualization Technology (IVT): Essentially, this will improve performance. If you want to learn more about this topic, I recommend this Wikipedia article.

Offline VHD Mounting: You can now mount a VHD file even if the virtual machine is offline. This is useful for detecting and removing viruses and rootkits.

Active Directory integration: Virtual Server can now store its binding information as a Service Connection Point (SCP) in Active Directory. This enables you to search for Virtual Server installations in the forest.

Improved scalability for 64 bit hosts: x64-based hosts can now run up to 512 VMs using 256 GB memory. 32-bit hosts still only support up to 64 guests.

Host clustering: This feature is interesting if you have non-cluster-aware apps. You can improve the availability of those apps by clustering guest systems. Please, check out this new white paper for more information.

The most interesting feature is the VSS support, in my view. Until recently, live backups of virtual machines were a feature of expensive high-end virtualization solutions. We are still using VMware Server, but VSS support for Virtual Server might be a knock-down feature for us since we are also planning to use DPM 2007 as soon as the final is available.

Leave a Comment | Subscribe RSS | Newsletter |