Hyper-V RC is a feature-complete version and has three main enhancements from the beta release:

• An expanded list of tested and qualified guest operating systems including: Windows Server 2003 SP2, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1, Windows Vista SP1, and Windows XP SP3.
• Host server and language support has been expanded to include the 64-bit (x64) versions of Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter - with English, partial German, and partial Japanese language options now available and the ability to enable the English version of Hyper-V on other locales.
• Improved performance & stability for scalability and throughput workloads.

With less than 10% of all servers virtualized, Microsoft has a broad set of cost-effective products (spanning the desktop to the datacenter) that position the company to take advantage of significant growth opportunities in the virtualization space. Hyper-V provides customers with efficient and cost-effective virtualization infrastructure software, and now with the availability of the latest test code, Microsoft is one step closer to making virtualization a reality for customers.

For more information on the announcement visit:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/mar08/03-19RCHyperVPR.mspx

Windows Server Division Weblog 

Windows Virtualization Team Blog