Release: Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8

Today Microsoft released to manufacturing a new version of its Server Operating System Windows Server 2012 together with a new release of its client Operating System Windows 8. Windows Server 2012 will become generally available on September 4 while Windows 8 will be generally available on October 26 this year, but sooner for MSDN and Technet subscribers as described here.

Both Windows Server 2012 as Windows 8 contain version 3.0 of the Hyper-V type-1 hypervisor for which the expected features were already covered by virtualization.info in September last year. For a quick overview of which features the Hyper-V hypervisor contains we suggest you look at the Hyper-V component architecture poster, which Microsoft released in June this year.

It is expected that Microsoft will release an update to its System Center 2012 management suite which is now in CTP 2 soon in order to support installation on top and management of the new Windows Server 2012 OS and its features.