Computerworld this week released a very positive review of Microsoft's just-released SCVMM 2008. This update to System Center Virtual Machine Manager among other things adds support for managing Hyper-V servers. It also improves clustering support for Windows Server 2008 virtualization hosts. While SCVMM 2008 is no VMware VirtualCenter in terms of its load balancing feature set, features in other areas are pleasently equivalent.

If you're an IT shop of really any size, I think you'll be pleasently surprised at the capabilities you'll find in SCVMM (for the price) as compared with VC. One caution: The author incorrectly reports that SCVMM doesn't include Live Migration support. It does. As has been spoken of here as well as elsewhere, Hyper-V's Live MIgration support takes a few (6-60) additional seconds to complete over and above VMware's near-zero downtime VMotion capability. This is a feature that is likely to be fixed in the next release.

The author sums up his experience with the following:

Overall, I find SCVMM to be a compelling solution for managing virtual machines across your enterprise. I was impressed by the scope of management available, and in some ways, having SCVMM manage VMware hosts and virtual machines seems superior to using VMware's own tools because the UI is easier to use than the VMware interface and SCVMM plugs in better with the rest of your Microsoft infrastructure. And the extensibility of the management capabilities via PowerShell is second to none. The integration with Operations Manager and the PRO performance optimization features seal the deal.

If you find yourself looking to integrate VM administration in your enterprise beyond native tools, SCVMM is absolutely worth your time to evaluate.