Virtual Server 2005 R2 available to MSDN Subscribers

Well it is not really a VSTS post but given the fact that I have made extensive use of Virtual Server 2005 during the past year or so while evaluating each of the Team Foundation Server Betas and CTPs I thought I would post this piece of news.

The Second Release (R2) of Virtual Server 2005 is a marked improvement from the first release and I have found it to be quite a bit more responsive to boot. I have it running in the office on a server with an Intel Dual Core CPU and Windows Server 2003 64bit. It runs the three server TFS stack (App/Data & Build) very well and the Virtual Server API makes it easy to right simply controller apps to start the stack up in sequence, suspend state when needed and back the servers up easily. 

Some of the significant enhancements include;

  • Virtual Server host clustering
  • iSCSI support
  • x64 support (runs natively within a 64-bit Windows host OS)
  • Enhanced PXE booting
  • Improved hyperthreading

If you are not an MSDN subscriber, you can download a 180 day evaluation version from the Microsoft Website Download