Virtual Server 2005 R2 in time for the holidays

There are some partners and customers with beta code of Virtual Server 2005 SP1 that is set to expire at the end of the month, and they need to know where to get their hands on the RTM version of Virtual Server 2005 R2.

As an aside: I’m assuming you all know that Virtual Server 2005 SP1 was renamed as an “R2” back in August/September timeframe, and that the product was released to manufacturing days ago.

With that said, if you’re a volume license customer, the product is available from the VL site.  If you were on the official beta (through Betaplace) then you will receive an email in the next week with how to download the final bits as a thank you. The last option is to download a 180-day Eval version.  Please note that there are two Eval downloads, one to run on x64 (64-bit) editions of Windows and one to run on x86 (32-bit) editions of Windows.

And for those who can wait for February, Dell said they’ll offer customers Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition jointly with Dell PowerEdge Servers. Along these lines, you’ll be interested to read InfoWorld’s Oliver Rist reviews of Windows Server 2003 R2 and Virtual Server 2005 R2.

Patrick