{"id":4223,"date":"2007-06-11T16:15:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-11T16:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/windowsserver\/2007\/06\/11\/service-pack-for-virtual-server-2005-r2-available\/"},"modified":"2021-09-20T15:19:26","modified_gmt":"2021-09-20T22:19:26","slug":"service-pack-for-virtual-server-2005-r2-available","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows-server\/blog\/2007\/06\/11\/service-pack-for-virtual-server-2005-r2-available\/","title":{"rendered":"Service pack for Virtual Server 2005 R2 available"},"content":{"rendered":"
Today we released\u00a0the final version of Virtual Server 2005 R2 service pack 1. Available at no charge<\/a>, this service pack adds support for hardware-assisted virtualization and improved backup services and compatibility.<\/p>\n A new feature to the service pack is Volume Shadow Services, which provides\u00a0improved support for backup and disaster recovery. Instead of scheduling downtime for backing up each virtual machine individually, you can now\u00a0take snapshot backups of physical machines, with no downtime.<\/p>\n Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 also supports host clustering, which offers customers minimal downtime depending on the speed of storage and amount of memory assigned to a virtual machine. Host clustering is storage agnostic, comes with Windows Server 2003 Enterprise or Datacenter editions, and is a high-availability solution for both planned and unplanned downtime. And with System Center Virtual Machine Manager, downloadable today as a beta 2 version<\/a>, customers will have tools for high availability migration. I’m told there’s been more than 5,500 downloads of the product in the past 30 days.<\/p>\n Virtual Server 2005 R2 service pack 1 adds support for Novell SLES 10 and Solaris 10 as a guest operating system; bringing the total to 11 non-Windows operating systems supported on Virtual Server 2005 R2. In one year, there have been more than 15,000 downloads of the Linux add-ins<\/a> for Virtual Server 2005 R2 … much better than we envisioned last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you work in Northern California, be sure to check out PG&E’s hi-tech energy efficiency incentives<\/a>. Here’s a comment from Mark Bramfitt, who runs the program:<\/p>\n \u201cVirtualizing IT equipment is one of the key recommendations PG&E makes to data center operators seeking solutions for capacity limits, or simply searching for cost savings and environmental benefits.\u00a0 Customers who use any software solution that enables equipment consolidation, such as Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Server 2005 R2, are eligible for PG&E’s incentive program for this technology, and we look forward to working with users of Microsoft virtualization products.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n We’re also seeing uptake amongst hosting service\u00a0providers. I’m told there are over 5,000 companies delivering hosted services to their customers using Microsoft products today. These services range from web hosting to high-end IT applications. Even Microsoft IT is using Virtual Server<\/a> to offer utility computing.<\/p>\n