I'm proud to announce that my new Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Essentials course is now available at TrainSignal. I designed this course for those of you who have Windows administration experience but are new to Hyper-V. This almost four-hours-long course will give you the jump start you need to learn about the most powerful virtualization hypervisor that Microsoft has ever created. By watching the course, you'll learn that:

• Learning Hyper-V can be inexpensive and it can be easy to build your own lab
• Implementing Hyper-V for the first time can be done by anyone
• Hyper-V virtualization is powerful and extremely useful
• The new Windows 2012 Hyper-V offers many advanced features to make your life easier

Side note: I just love products that make people lives easier (especially the lives of server admins)!

As I said, the ideal viewer for this course is someone who is “all new” to Hyper-V. Because of that, I'm not going to list out all the Hyper-V advanced features that you'll learn about because, if you are new to Hyper-V, features like “live migration,” “storage migration,” and “failover clustering” may not mean a lot today. Once you are done with this course though, you'll know how these types of advanced features can completely change how you run your data center.

Here's a sample from the course:

Now if you have no idea what virtualization is, I recommend that you first watch my totally free Introduction to Virtualization lesson and, from there, move into this Hyper-V Essentials course.

In my opinion, one of the best things you can learn about is how to create your own Hyper-V lab. With a small home or work lab, you can recreate all the configurations that I show you in the course (and no, a lab doesn't have to cost you thousands of dollars).

If you know me then you may be puzzled as to why my name is associated with Microsoft's Hyper-V. Yes I am known as a VMware vExpert and evangelist. However in the last few years, I have been learning about all types of virtualization. Previous versions of Hyper-V were immature compared to VMware vSphere, but Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V is far advanced compared to its predecessor. I've been impressed with the advanced features it offers and want to help others to learn about it as well.

I hope that you enjoy my new Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Essentials course, and I welcome your feedback!