Word of the Day: Microsoft Hyper-V

Hyper-V is Microsoft's server virtualization software for Microsoft Server 2008.

Hyper-V is a native, or bare metal, hypervisor that runs directly on server hardware. Virtual machines are hosted as guest operating systems, one level above the hypervisor at the virtualization layer. Hyper-V supports these hosted OSes by partitioning a given hard drive.
Hyper-V runs in the root partition as the "parent" and then creates "child partitions" to host each virtual machine. Hyper-V can create and run as many child partitions as a given system's memory and processor can support.
According to Microsoft, in addition to the systems requirement for Windows Server 2008, the two key requirements for the Hyper-V platform are the need to ensure that the server is a 64-bit environment and supports hardware-assisted virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-V) technology.

Microsoft originally bundled beta versions of Hyper-V with Windows Server 2008 under the codename Viridian.