One of the attendees from the Costa Rican Airlift event inquired on how he could get to test drive Windows Server HPC Server 2008. Would he need to download a trial version of the HPC OS? Would he need to buy Windows Server 2008 in order to test drive it? The good news is that you do not have to shell out a dime (at this point) if you want to test drive any of these technologies:
- Windows Hyper-V
- Windows HPC Server 2008
How, you ask? Here is what you need to do.
First, go and download a trial version of Windows Server 2008 64-bit. Yes, 64-bit – neither Hyper-V of HPC 2008 works with 32-bit editions of the software. You can use enterprise, datacenter, or standard. I’ve done all my tests with Enterprise.
Once you download the ISO, burn it and install Windows Server. One of the things that I like about these trial versions is that you do not need to input a key in order to test them. When you get to this screen:
Just click Next and click on NO when asked if you would like to enter a key.
This will give you 60 days of trial version. If you are running out of time, then you can extend the 60 day trial time 2 more times (for a total of 180 days).
Ok, that takes care of the base OS / host. You can now install Hyper-V and run your own VMs to run a virtual cluster.
