Yesterday Microsoft announced the availability of the RTM version of Hyper-V, the new virtualization component of Windows Server 2008.

I'm a huge fan of Virtual PC. I use it more or less every day for development tasks and training because it's so easy to use. Having a way to deal with different environments without messing up your main configuration is priceless.

I've tried to use Virtual Server much the same way on a server scale but compared to VM-Ware it's quite limiting when it comes to guest OS management, such as resource sharing, support for physical hardware (where's the USB support?) and image handling. Hyper-V will likely change this so that we now can use the same infrastructure for virtual images both on desktops and servers.

And as for Team Foundation Server? It's supported as well! TFS 2008 still requires 32-bit OS on the application tier but a 32-bit OS can of course be hosted in Hyper-V on a 64-bit system. Brian Harry wrote about the implications of using TFS with Hyper-V technology in this post.

I've concidered using Windows Server as the OS for my laptop for a while. With Hyper-V now out the door my next laptop will run Windows Server 2008!

Virtual PC 2004 has been available for free for a while. Now the updated version (that also support 64-bit windows) is available:

Virtual PC 2007 page:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

The Virtual PC 2007 download:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=04D26402-3199-48A3-AFA2-2DC0B40A73B6&displaylang=en

And if it's needed, the Virtual PC 2004 SP1 download:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6d58729d-dfa8-40bf-afaf-20bcb7f01cd1&DisplayLang=en

Last week I was interviewed by the Swedish Microsoft Partner program about my thoughts regarding the MCP program, why we focus on certification and what the value of it is. The article can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/sverige/partner/callista_mcp.aspx (in Swedish).

This year we attended the European TechEd in Barcelona, Spain. Tons of fun stuff and many Swedish colleagues.

Our impressions from TechEd can be viewed on the Swedish Microsoft MSDN web, found at http://www.microsoft.com/sverige/msdn/teched_2006.aspx (in Swedish).

The PDC'05 is over! It was as usual a very intense and overwhelming event. Many concepts that were already presented at the previous PDC ('03) were re-iterated but there where also new goodies, like for instance the LINQ framework.

While attending the 2005 Microsoft Professional Developer's Conference in sunny Los Angeles we also wrote a day-per-day report for the Microsoft MSDN web in Sweden. The reports can be read here: http://www.microsoft.com/sverige/msdn/features/2005/pdc_2005_start.aspx (in Swedish).