As you may have heard Microsoft released the Hyper-V beta yesterday. You can download a 30-day trial with Server 2008 here. I know that this is "late" by the earliest release date announcements but it is nice to get it ahead of current expectations. Working for a software publisher I can empathize with efforts to predict release dates - it's tough! Anyway, for us IT geeks, this is a fun way in between (or during) college bowl games to spend some of the holiday weekends - building Server 2008 systems. If you share that twisted idea of a good-time, I also recommend using the pre-configured Server 2008 VHDs located here. Some time back we posted a Microsoft press release on a virtualization partnership. As part of that announced alliance, we have held regular meetings with Microsoft VPs and PMs (Program Managers) to solve the issue of fragmentation related I/O bottlenecks in virtual environments. Yesterday, a very busy Virtualization Program Manager took time, after working many long days and nights to get the software out the door that morning, to meet with several Diskeeper Corporation tech and executive staff for well over an hour and half. Next year, you'll see some revolutionary solutions from Diskeeper come from this partnership. We also wrapped that meeting with several other appointments at the Redmond campus with groups such as WHS, the new exFAT file system (in Vista SP1), and Premier Support.