Supportability and licensing are key when it comes to virtualization a BizTalk Server 2010 production or any other environment. It also provides a much easier scalability when it comes to adding server or resources. Virtualization of the BizTalk servers are getting more and more common for all the different virtualization platforms as the support get better. More and more big companies moves BizTalk over to the virtual platform to keep costs and downtime down to a minimum.
Similar to SQL Server Enterprise, BizTalk Server 2010 ENT can be licensed for unlimited virtualized processors that are available on a single physical server. As customer you will be required to license the number of physical processors on a server.
In case you desire to build your own BizTalk Server 2010 virtual machine for learning purposes you can use Hyper-V in case you have Windows 8 or Windows 2008 R2 with Hyper-V to your disposal, or an alternative like VMWare or VirtualBox. The latter are appropriate in case you want to build a virtual machine on a laptop or desktop with a client OS like Vista or Windows 7. You can download the readymade VHD, yet you have to convert them either to VMDK or VDI format.
Another important place to find a huge amount of BizTalk related articles is the TechNet Wiki itself. The best entry point is BizTalk Server Resources on the TechNet Wiki. Read suggested related topics:
Steef-Jan Wiggers edited Revision 24. Comment: Fixed typos
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What do you mean by SVVP certified?
To improve customers' support experiences when running Windows Server on virtualization technologies other than Hyper-V™ and Virtual Server, Microsoft has launched the Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP), see www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx
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