Virtual Server 2005 R2 has RTM'd, and boy, it is cheap!
This is quite unbelievable. Virtual Server 2005 R2 has been released.... and the price is pretty amazing. During the beta period for what was then known as SP1, when the change to R2 was announced, there was much complaining about the fact that customers would have to buy R2. Well, Microsoft has made the prices such that anyone making those arguments is doing so simply to whine, because the pricing is crazy cheap... http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/11/15/493174.aspx has it, although I had seen it at the main Virtual Server site already earlier today: $99 for Standard, $199 for Enterprise. That's right, for less than the cost of Windows XP, or Office 2003, or even Streets and Trips 2006 with GPS, you can have Virtual Server 2005 R2 Standard Edition.
And, R2 includes clustering support on host and guest (so you can do something like patch the host without killing the guests by rolling them over, or you can survive a host crash, or .....), as well as x64 host support, improved performance, PXE support, and on and on. It's pretty clear that in many ways this gets Virtual Server up to VMWare in terms of capabilities. (Some things are missing - for example, VMotion moves VM's (somewhat) faster, and on the high-end product you don't need an OS underneath, and you can run x64 guests in the Workstation product. But, jeeze, it's $99!)
This also makes Virtual Server 2005 R2 Standard Edition less expensive than Virtual PC, which seems like an odd situation. I have to believe that the price of Virtual PC will be dropping.