Here's a situation that's affecting more and more beta testers as the shift in operating system generations continues: You have the latest beta of Windows Server 2008 R2, a product which may ship next year but could conceivably ship sooner if Microsoft keeps it in sync with the Windows 7 roadmap. And you're used to using Virtual Server 2005 R2 (Microsoft's fond of that little add-on phrase, "R2") for testing new builds of Windows Server...but now you can't. You see, Virtual Server only works with 32-bit guest OSes, and there's no such thing as 32-bit Windows Server any more -- not with R2. What's more, you may only be running a 32-bit OS on the physical host platform.

How do you test WS2K8 R2 without installing it on a physical 64-bit platform all to itself? As of just a few weeks ago, Sun endowed its VirtualBox 2.1.0 host environment with a way to host 64-bit guests in a 32-bit system. This weekend, I put that feature to the test, with some surprisingly good results. As the photo shows above, I can run WS2K8 R2 very smoothly, without slowing down the rest of my testbed system.

So what are we looking at? This is a feature that's hard to test just yet, because it requires some further input from Microsoft. But this is a new system for packaging Troubleshooting scripts, that should also appear in Windows 7. Essentially, the scripts check for common problems (such as not being able to get onto the network), and attempt to resolve them as though there were a support personnel member on the other end of the system. It's an interesting idea, and I've already tried disconnecting the network to see if it could resolve that for me...no dice yet.

Sun VirtualBox 2.1.0 for Windows is available now from Fileforum, as is the first Windows Server 2008 R2 public beta.