Windows Server 2008 RC0, Viridian CTP Released Tomorrow

Despite denials from members of its own server development team on blogs last week, Microsoft announced today that it is indeed making Release Candidate 0 of Windows Server 2008 available for download tomorrow, if not sooner, as a community technology preview.

With it, multiple sources are confirming that the first preview code for Viridian, Microsoft's highly anticipated built-in hypervisor platform for what will be called Windows Server Virtualization, will be included as part of RC0.

"With Windows Server Virtualization CTP, customers will now be able leverage the scalability of hypervisor-based platform and features," Microsoft senior technical product manager Ward Ralston wrote today, "including multi-processor guests, large memory allocation (more than 32 gigabytes per machine) and integrated virtual switch support that enables IT organizations to virtualize most workloads."

It's a very sketchy features list Ralston presented today, though the good news may be that it hasn't apparently been scaled down any further since the first news of Viridian's delay last May. Based on what we know today, the first edition of WSV will be limited to a maximum of 16 processor cores. Most modern data center servers feature eight cores, usually in a four-way dual-core configuration, though the first two-way quad-cores have made swift headway in recent months.

There's no word yet as to whether new roles have been added to Server Core, the server OS' text-only installation option. This breakthrough feature for Windows Server enables a very thin OS to manage servers that will spend most of their time standing alone - so they don't need interactive features like DirectX and 3D audio drivers. Roles enable Server Core systems to be rapidly installed and configured with basic system services - for instance, as a print, Web, or DNS server.

At the time of this writing, only Beta 3 - released last April - was the latest preview edition to be publicly available. There appears to be no further delay for the release window of Windows Server 2008, which was bumped last month to the first quarter of next year.