Microsoft TechEd North America, featured Hyper-V Server 2012. This is the free hypervisor (not to be confused with Windows Server 2012 with the Hyper-V role); although the codebase is quite similar, these are officially different products.
Hyper-V Server 2012 will bring incredible scale to the free virtualization space; no other free offering comes close. The free version of Hyper-V will support up to 4 TB of RAM on the host, individual virtual machines with 1 TB of RAM, and guest vCPU assignments up to 64 cores. This seems incredible. A free hypervisor that really seems to exceed many charegeable offerings. The capabilities of this free hypervisor are very high. Couple that with the free migration technologies that don’t require shared storage, and it’s pretty clear that Microsoft is serious in the virtualization space.
The release candidate for Hyper-V Server 2012 is available under certain access levels from Microsoft from resources such as a TechNet subscription. The release candidate installs just like any version of Windows or Hyper-V Server that is available today, quick and painlessly.
