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Virtual Server Evaluation Edition Available

Microsoft this week released a 180-day evaluation edition of Virtual Server 2005, its first-generation product for running several virtualized server environments on one physical machine. General availability of Virtual Server 2005 is set for mid-October.

Virtual Server 2005 was released to manufacturing in early August. Along with the announcement of the evaluation edition and the general availability dates, Microsoft disclosed its much anticipated pricing structure for the product.

Virtual Server 2005 Standard Edition, which supports up to four processors, will carry a list price of about $500. An Enterprise Edition supporting up to 32 processors will cost about $1,000.

Microsoft has pledged that Virtual Server, which it developed from pre-release technology acquired from Connectix Corp., would be the lowest-cost way of virtualizing servers in the industry. The Microsoft list price for Virtual Server compares to about $2,500 for a two-processor license for the market leading product, VMWare's GSX Server, which is a version 3.0 product.

The Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 evaluation kit includes several evaluation editions of Microsoft products: Virtual Server 2005 Enterprise Edition, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition and Microsoft Operations Manager 2005. The kit also contains getting started, administrator's and programmer's guides to Virtual Server 2005 and Microsoft Solutions Accelerator Guides. A CD-based version of the evaluation kit will be available after October.

About the Author

Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

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