Yes I know this is getting out on a limb. If one would look at history then the chances are slim that Microsoft will deliver a product ahead of their own schedule. But I think Hyper-V is different. Ever since Microsoft pulled / had to pull some key features from Hyper-V back in May 2007 , I guess things started to heat up over at Microsoft. I'm sure that a lot earlier the battle plan had been made to set out and dominate the (server) virtualization market. I mean, how could Microsoft take themselves seriously if they did not play a role in the biggest IT cash cow in the decade? So Hyper-V is different. They want to make sure that they get Hyper-V out there as soon as they can (perhaps to give VMware as little time as possible to counter-act?).

So first there was the inclusion of the Hyper-V beta in the RTM build of Windows Server 2008. It sounds OK when you say it really fast but let's be honest... it's nuts. It's actually quite weird for the worlds leading software company, who also happens to be working on their "stability" image, to include a beta component of a server role that's ties into the OS very deep. It's just weird, or at the very least uncommon. In any case, it demonstrates Microsoft's drive to get Hyper-V out there as soon as possible. 

The next piece of evidence is the fact is that  one month and fifteen days after Microsoft included the Beta of Hyper-V into the RTM of Windows Server 2008 , they announced the first release candidate of Hyper-V. My guess is that Hyper-V is not going to go trough 2 or 3 release candidates before it RTMs.

So I am very sure that Hyper-V will be released before the current release that Microsoft is supplying : the 25 of August 2008 (180 after the release of Windows Server 2008). My guess is that Hyper-V will be released June 10 (2008). Why? Because. If not June 10, I'm sure it will not be a lot later. Microsoft is on the fast track with Hyper-V and they won't get of until the reach the station.

I think Microsoft is looking to get Hyper-V out there as soon as they can. They have already sparked some sincere interest in the market. (on a side note - I was surprised that Microsoft mentioned that one of the three most popular server roles to virtualize was the Terminal Server role ) By the time that everybody has gotten to know Hyper-V and is starting to complain about (the) missing (enterprise) features, they will have the next version ready that could deliver those features. By then, System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) "vNext" will also be ready providing Virtual Center advanced management capabilities for server virtualization infrastructures.

Anyway, enough of me looking into my crystal ball. The Hyper-V release candidate is available and it's feature complete. It adds support for the following operating systems (guest):

• Windows Server 2003 (x86) SMP
• Windows Vista SP1 (x86) and Windows XP SP3 (x86) with integration components (Hyper-V's "VMware tools")

In addition to the added OS support there have been overall performance fixes and enhancements. This new Hyper-V build show be more scalable and have better throughput. In any case installing Hyper-V via a PXE boot initiated deployment should be a lot faster. And finally they've also removed the limitation of only supporting the EN-US locale. The improved language support in the RC of Hyper-V also provide a small hint to me that Microsoft is in a hurry. They have managed to put in partial localization support for Japanese and German. Note the word partial. They did not even get the time to finish the translation of all the text strings. Someone is in a hurry....

"Customers and partners can download the release candidate at http://www.microsoft.com/Hyper-V by 10 a.m. PDT today[ 19 March 2008]". Right on track .....