On the February 27 Microsoft officially launched Windows Server 2008 and Windows Visual Studio 2008 and announced SQL Server 2008, which is due to become available in the third quarter of this year. Windows Server 2008 is going to be available in eight different versions with release dates staggered over the year and is designed to run on 32-bit and 64-bit processors from both Intel and AMD.

Unfortunately the launch version of Windows Server 2008 was missing Microsoft’s much talked about Hyper-V virtualisation hypervisor, which is due for release in August. A beta version of Hyper-V is currently included on the x64 version of the Windows Server 2008 installation media. Microsoft says that within 180 days, the production Hyper-V will be released and distributed online through the auto-update system

At the launch in London on Wednesday, Microsoft also had a number of prominent UK users for the company’s new products including the recruitment agency Reed, EasyJet and the University of Cambridge.

As well as supporting the latest hardware technologies, from my experience of the beta product Windows Server 2008 is easier to install and manage than Windows Server 2003.

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