Microsoft has released pricing and other new information on their upcoming (February) release of Windows Server 2008.

The announcement states that prices across the board on the Server line will increase approximately one percent but the actual prices listed are, with the exception of the Web Server edition, identical to current Server 2003 prices, so it's not clear if they will be raised in the future or if there was a calculator malfunction in the marketing department (I guess marketing doesn't typically hire for math skills, anyway). Windows Web Server 2008 increases from $399 to $469 but also goes from 32-bit to 64-bit (all 2008 server products, with the exception of Itanium, will be available in 64-bit versions).

The pricing for the Hyper-V virtualization server was also announced at $28 MSRP. Also on the virtualization front, Microsoft announced a "Server Virtualization Validation Program" for non-Microsoft virtualization platforms... a smart move on Redmond's part, both in terms of making it easy to use their products in other environments and as a mechanism to rope in other virtualization software providers with Microsoft standards (using the omnipresent "We can't support you if you don't" argument) or deflect blame in the event of poor integration or performance. The first target platform for this program appears to be Xen running on Novell's Suse Linux, given the existing relationship between the companies.