Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 is a free product available for download from Microsoft Download Center
It is important to note that the product does not require Host Server license. Each Windows guest Virtual Machine which is running on it requires a license, though. In comparison Windows Server 2008 standard edition Host Server License includes 1 Physical and 1 Virtual Machine license, the Enterprise edition – 1 Physical and 4 Virtual machines, and the datacenter edition – 1 Physical and unlimited VMs.
Microsoft Hyper-V Server is a perfect choice for you, if you do not plan to use more than 4 CPUs on the host server, and more than 32 GB of memory. It also lacks some of the advance Virtualization features like Clustering and Quick Migration. In addition, it lacks most of the Server Roles which you are used to see on Server Core. Here is the list of Server Roles, available in Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008:
– BitLocker
– BitLocker-RemoteAdminTool
– Microsoft-Hyper-V
– Microsoft-Windows-RemovableStorageManagementCore
– MultipathIo
– NetworkLoadBalancingHeadlessServer
– SNMP-SC
– TelnetClient
– WindowsServerBackup

Only the Microsoft Hyper-V role is installed by default.

Hyper-V Server requires:
-An x64-based CPU
-Hardware-assisted virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-v)
-Hardware Data Execution Protection (DEP)

In the following Screencast, we will demonstrate Step-by-Step how to install and configure Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008. In our demonstration, we will join Hyper-V Server to a Windows Server 2008 domain, and we will enable Remote Desktop on it.
In our next screencast, we will demonstrate how to manage it remotely from a Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista machine (installing roles and configuring and managing Virtual Guests).

Step 1 In the first Step, we perform the actual installation of Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008. As you can see at the end – the installation takes less then 4 GB of space.

Step 2 Next, we configure the Hyper-V server using the Hyper-V Configuration script. Compared to the server core initial installation this is much easier and pleasant approach.