Free At Last: Microsoft Ships Windows Server 2008

Published: February 6, 2008

by Alex Woodie

The day has finally arrived. After seven years of development and numerous delays, Windows Server 2008, sometimes known as "Longhorn Server," was released to manufacturing (RTM) on Monday, starting the countdown to general availability. Despite indications and prognostications (including some in this newsletter) that it would be delayed once more, Microsoft deliver Windows Server 2008--as well as the first major update to Windows Vista, Service Pack 1--according to its latest revised schedule.

Windows Longhorn was first conceived in 2001 as a minor update of the Windows XP client operating system that would ship in 2002. Late in 2002, as the company was struggling to get Windows Server 2003 (then known as Windows .NET Server 2003) out the door, Microsoft decided it would develop a server version of Longhorn as well.

By early 2003, Microsoft was talking about a 2005 ship date for both the client and server versions of Longhorn. That date had been pushed to 2006 by the summer of 2004, when Microsoft was forced to cut the revolutionary Windows File System (WinFS) to keep the development effort on schedule.

Despite cutting WinFS, the project was doomed to more delays. In 2005, delivery of the new server OS was moved back to 2007. After finalizing Windows Vista, developers were free to concentrate all their efforts on Longhorn Server. As recently as a year ago, Microsoft was still planning to ship Longhorn Server--which it had officially named Windows Server 2008--by the end of 2007. However, a final delay last September, following revelations of difficulties developing the closely related new hypervisor for Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, forced Microsoft to push the release back to the first quarter of 2008. Microsoft ended up keeping that a delivery promise, despite recent delays to a companion product, SQL Server 2008, and the questions that raised about Windows Server 2008's readiness.

As it turns out, Windows Server 2008 will be available for customers with enterprise agreements or Software Assurance contracts to download during the big "triple launch" event for Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 that Microsoft will hold in Los Angeles on February 27. Microsoft has been planning the event, dubbed "Hero's Happen Here," since last July, and it's always been slated to be more of a big marketing and PR extravaganza than a real honest-to-goodness product launch. But it just so happens that Windows Server 2008 will become generally available just a couple days after the event, on March 1--a Saturday, but who's complaining. (Users will probably have to wait about six months to get SQL Server 2008; Visual Studio 2008 has been out for months.)

So, the big question is: Will Windows Server 2008 match the success of Windows Server 2003. It's tough to tell. If the adoption of Windows Vista is any indication, Microsoft could be sorely disappointed in Windows Server 2008 sales. However, if business spending on PCs and servers peaks, as some analysts are predicting, then Windows Server 2008 would win its share of deals by default.

In any event, the pairing of Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 undoubtedly helps the sales prospects for both products. Without a big "must have" feature to justify the upgrade from Windows XP (which for many is "good enough"), Windows Vista hasn't seen a great deal of adoption among corporations and other institutional Windows users. The conventional wisdom held that business buyers would hold off on Vista deployments until the first service pack was released and most of the bugs and kinks had been worked out. Now that SP1 is out, that will likely spur corporate spending on Vista.

The RTM of Windows Server 2008 also enables organizations to begin using one of the new security features in Vista--Network Access Protection. With NAP, organizations can feel secure that only fully patched and protected PCs are allowed to join a network, thereby preventing any contamination that can occur by allowing unpatched PCs without security software to join a network.

Besides NAP, there are several other improvements customers will see with Windows Server 2008. Heading up that list of new features is the new Server Core option that allows users to only install the components and subsystems necessary to accomplish a given task, and even allows them to eliminate the GUI if they want. Also giving the new OS a "back to the future" flavor is PowerShell, the new command-line interface and scripting language that will allow administrators to accomplish certain tasks much more quickly than by using a GUI.

The biggest new feature of Windows Server 2008 that's not part of the operating system's initial release is Hyper-V (formerly Viridian), the new hypervisor for Windows Server that will bring new virtualization capabilities.

When it ships, per Microsoft's schedule, 180 days after the RTM of Windows Server 2008--which would be August 2, another Saturday--Hyper-V will be able to carve 16-core systems into multiple virtual machines that can run a mix of Windows and Linux operating systems. It won't offer some of the high-end features Microsoft had initially targeted, such as support for 64-core systems, or the capability to add storage, networking, memory, or processor resources without bringing the virtual environments down. But just the same, Hyper-V, with its closer proximity to the underlying iron, should provide a big performance boost over Virtual Server 2005, which resides on top of the operating system and consumes a greater share of resources.

As Windows Server 2008 gets closer to general availability, we'll take a closer look at these enhancements, including dozens of other small enhancements, in a future issue of this newsletter.

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