Tech blog

"HEROES happen {here}" was the theme for Microsoft's launch Wednesday of its Windows Server 2008 operating system. The heroes, of course, are the IT workers who have been waiting through the many announcements for the final release and, sometimes, helping in the beta testing.

Today's sold-out event was scheduled for the Los Angeles Convention Center, followed by similar events in succeeding weeks in New York, San Antonio, Chicago, Boston, Denver and nine other cities, as well as online virtual launches.

The final technical preview of the release candidate for SQL Server 2008 was also expected Wednesday. The public launch is expected in the third quarter.

Possible Impacts

Server 2008 could have a major impact, said Laura DiDio, an analyst with industry research firm Yankee Group. Its features comprehend enhanced security, virtualization, increased power, a smaller footprint, and advancements in management and remote access.

The impact on virtualization, she said, is going to be "huge," although she noted that the virtualization wave encompasses not only servers but storage, clients and other areas.

Server 2008 has some virtualization built-in, but enhanced virtualization will be offered by Microsoft's Hyper-V, a hypervisor. A hypervisor is a layer of software that operates between the hardware and the operating software. DiDio said there was disappointment ready the delay of Hyper-V, which will be released 180 days after Server 2008, but "customers are used to delays from Microsoft."

Microsoft has said that Windows Server 2008's virtualization is highly scalable, permitting multiprocessor guests, memory allocations of more than 32GB per machine, and integrated virtual switch support. Supported storage protocols include iSCSI and fibre-channel SAN.

64-Bit, Vista Adoption

Another potential "huge sea change," she said, is the increased affiliation of 64-bit technology. DiDio added that one of the reasons why the 64-bit Windows Server 2003 did not have larger adoption is that "it was a big OS, a big resource hog." According to some estimates, only about 10 percent of customers are using Server 2003.

But with Server 2008, she noted, Microsoft has listened to its critics and bring "more power into a smaller footprint."

There has also been more speculation that adopting Server 2008 might drive acceptance of Microsoft's most recent operating system, Windows Vista. "(IT) departments often will want to do a server upgrade and a dependant upgrade at the same time," DiDio uttered. Many businesses have taken a "XP is good enough" approach to Vista.

But the big consummation with Vista, she said, is that Microsoft "missed badly" with backward compatibility, and upgrading to Vista means upgrading at least some drivers, applications and so on. Unless Microsoft fixes this, she said, many IT departments may wait on upgrading their client OS — and possibly their server OS as well.