Microsoft has released Virtual Server R2 to manufacturing and also announced pricing. The prices are extremely low:

- Standard edition (up to 4 CPUs): $99
- Enterprise edition (up to 32CPUs): $199

The only difference between the versions is the amount of physical CPUs that are supported. There is no SMP support within a guest OS on Virtual Server R2.

With features like this and an incredibly low price, it will be hard to convince customers to use VMWare's GSX Server. I still prefer GSX because of the performance, ease of use by providing both a web interface and a GUI, and the flexible networking features.

VMWare has also cut the price of GSX Server. The price is not as low as the R2 price, but definitely a big difference compared to the previous price points.

Some of the new features in the R2 release:

- Host clustering: see earlier post
- iSCSI support: allows you to create a "guest" cluster accross two R2 boxes
- x64 support: host only (you cannot run 64-bit guests)
- many others such as improved PXE support etc...