HYPER-V
There's little doubt that Hyper-V is the coolest new feature addition to the Windows Server 2008 product line. And while ESX Server and XenServer are still some distance away, we have no doubt that Hyper-V's release will bring server virtualization to masses of IT shops that have been skeptical of its value to date.

We loved how easy it was to implement Hyper-V in the lab--it was really easy. Hyper-V installs as just another server role in Server 2008, and assuming you meet all of the requirements to run Hyper-V--the most important of which is the need for true 64-bit hardware--you can start building VMs within 5 minutes.

In the lab, we could quickly allocate the storage, memory, and processing resources for eight virtual instances of Server 2008 and Server 2003, using both 32- and 64-bit versions. We banged away at the lab environment for weeks without a hiccup.

The first-generation release of Hyper-V appears to be stable, but it lacks the enterprise management and disaster-recovery features that VMware has had for years. VMware has the edge whether you're talking about rapid provisioning and enterprise management, or zero downtime failover, or shared single LUN support.

To be fair, Hyper-V is catching up fast. Third parties and Microsoft internally are building up Hyper-V's disaster-recovery capabilities as we speak. And with the general release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 scheduled for November, Microsoft will address many of its high-availability, rapid provisioning, and interoperability shortcomings.

More widespread short-term adoption will depend on how well Virtual Machine Manager 2008 lives up to its claims when released in November.

Given that the first generation of Hyper-V was only released in late June, aggressive adoption of production workloads carries some risk for IT. Wait for more success stories to surface before putting Hyper-V into production. But IT shops that have Hyper-V on the long-term radar should start training on Hyper-V now.

WINDOWS POWERSHELL
PowerShell is Redmond's answer to the request by many power administrators for unified scripting and Unix shell-like management of Windows Servers.

What makes PowerShell worth learning is its ability to blend and support many scripting languages in a single shell, including WSH, VBS, ADSI, and ADO. The other thing we really loved about PowerShell was that you really don't need to have a development background in order to use it. Microsoft has supplied many prebuilt functions, called CommandLets and known as CmdLets, that let you perform a large number of system administration tasks out of the box. By stringing several simple commands together, you can perform powerful tasks such as querying a remote computer for all running services and processes, while simultaneously launching Excel to display that data. If you''re a hands-on administrator who's seriously considering making the jump to Windows Server 2008, learn PowerShell now, because it's a required component of Exchange 2007.

SERVER CORE
Server Core thins out the base operating system build for Server 2008 by eliminating Internet Explorer, 35 services, the .Net framework, and even the Windows shell itself. For all intents and purposes, a Server Core build is DOS with all the underlying binaries required to run the core server roles supported in this new installation scenario: namely, AD, ADLS, DHCP, DNS, IIS, Hyper-V, file/print services, and Windows Media Services.

In the lab, the full version of Server 2008 Enterprise required around 6 GB of disk space and dropped 105 services onto our lab server, with 46 in the running state. The Server Core build of Enterprise Server 2008 required 2 GB of disk space and dropped only 70 services onto the box, with 38 in the running state. We have to give credit to Microsoft for building what appears to be a truly thin operating system.