Windows Server 8 Beta

On the evening of February 29, the beta version of Windows Server “8” became available for download. You can download it as an ISO file (Datacenter Edition, weighs approximately 3.5 GB), or as a finished VHD. With the DVD, the distribution kit is installed in about 15 minutes. In addition, some materials on WS8 have already been posted (in English). Look in the new server is clearly on that.

There are a lot of improvements and new features in almost every direction: network support, remote access, VDI-scenarios, remote management of multiple servers, work with storages, security. But the biggest changes were virtualization and the new Hyper-V. I will note only a few:

• up to 160 logical processors per host;
• up to 32 virtual processors per virtual machine;
• up to 1 TB of RAM per virtual machine;
• up to 64 nodes in a cluster;
• NIC teaming native support (which, strictly speaking, refers to the server as such, and not just to Hyper-V);
• Live storage migration;
• Live Migration support on non-cluster hosts
• virtual Fiber Channel adapters in virtual machines;
• Hyper-V replica for site / data center resiliency.

This is far from an exhaustive list of possibilities, and it is also quite probable that some, for example numeric, parameters will be changed by the time the final version of the product is released.

A number of the listed Windows Server “8” features, primarily in the context of private cloud building, will be discussed in more detail at the ITCamp event. It is also planned to broadcast reports to the Internet. There will be time - come.