Two long-awaited Microsoft releases are now available in trials. The Redmond, Washington-based company made the first release candidate of Windows Server 2008 available for downloading on Tuesday, following the start Monday of beta examining for Vista Service Pack 1.

The company said in a statement that the Windows Server 2008 release candidate indicates that “engineering, development, and beta checking are making meaningful advancements” and that the server cipher is entering final evaluating.

The new server features Web data Services (IIS) 7.0 and enhanced network and clustering technologies. One of the most anticipated new features is its virtualization technology, codenamed Viridian.

Viridian and Virtualization

Viridian’s hypervisor, a layer of software that operates amidst the hardware and the OS, will be less than a megabyte in size. Customers will be able to tryout Viridian as part of the Community Technology Preview. “Now is the date for organizations to start evaluating with key virtualization scenarios,” Microsoft’s Ward Ralston

wrote Monday on the Windows Server Division Weblog, “such as server consolidation.”

Microsoft said that Windows Server 2008’s virtualization is highly scalable, permitting multiprocessor guests, large memory allocations of increasingly than 32 GB per machine, and integrated virtual switch support. Supported storage protocols includes iSCSI and fibre channel SAN.

Ralston indicated that Microsoft is working with PHP provider Zend to “enhance the reliability and performance of PHP” on Windows Server 2008, as well as on Windows Server 2003.

Chris Voce, an analyst with Forrester, pointed out that that release candidate is “effectively a prebeta,” but that Microsoft feels it is crucial to demonstrate to customers that Windows Server 2008 is on track and ready for feedback. In August, Windows Server 2008’s release instance was rescheduled for the first quarter of next year, instead of later that year.

Scaled-Back Plans, SP1

Microsoft is fully aware of the importance of virtualization, Voce…

Original post by Chris Maxcer