
That's right...the product group has finally moved to a Release Candidate version of Virtual Server 2005. Virtual Server is a datacenter-class virtualization product - the big brother of Virtual PC. Both Virtual PC and Virtual Server (then a beta product) were purchased by Microsoft from Connectix some time ago. And while VPC 2004 was released last year, we're still waiting for Virtual Server to see the light of day. Release Candidate status means it's very close, though...
You can download the release candidate version of Virtual Server 2005 here - https://profile.microsoft.com/RegSysProfileCenter/wizard.aspx?wizid=3469ef56-530d-4a16-aab5-04369763a66d&lcid=1033. You'll need a passport account to get access. This preview is a time-bombed version that expires on January 1st, 2005 and includes the Enterprise Edition of the product, the Getting Started Guide, the Administrator's Guide, the Programmer's Guide and the Release Notes. The site says you'll need 550MHz or faster and 256MB of RAM as well as a flavor of Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP to run it. My experience is, though, that there's no use in loading it up unless you have a 1+ Ghz P4 512MB of RAM.
Some additional resources you might find useful:
This means I can start putting together some information concerning Virtual Server - similar to what I've done for Virtual PC 2004.