Microsoft managed to get its VMware-spooking Hyper-V, its hypervisor-based virtualization technology, out the door Thursday, which is something of an accomplishment considering that by Microsoft’s clock the thing is weeks early, having not been expected until August sometime.

Of course it is also months late since it was supposed to come out with Windows Server 2008 in February. And Windows Server 2008 itself was delayed…

Oh, well, it’s here now and meant to harry virtualization market leader VMware into an early grave over pricing as well as neutralize Citrix, Novell, Red Hat, Sun, Oracle and the rest of the virtualization parade.

Hyper-V, which still lacks the polish and features of VMware, is free to Windows Server 2008 users, who can add it as a module.

It’s already been downloaded scads of times and Microsoft’s been carefully cultivating 250 early adopters considering VMware was already way, way out there.

It should be available as an automatic update by July 8 if not now. Users will have a wait some more for Microsoft’s companion Virtual Machine Manager, which is still in beta. It also manages VMware. A standalone Hyper-V that works on Windows Server 2003 is still months off.

The widgetry supports Windows Server, XP, Vista and SUSE Linux guest operating systems. HP, IBM, Dell and Fujitsu Siemens are expected to bundle it.