Microsofts NBT (Next Big Thing)


I attended a Microsoft community launch yesterday that included Server 2008. Having run Server 2008 as a virtual machine for a while on VMware workstation (very nicely thank you) – I was curious to hear Microsoft’s plans on two areas – one the virtualisation front and two the actual release date since that has an effect on the timescale for the SBS version.

The presentation ranged over a wide area and covered everything from installation enhancements to the improvements in clustering and the approach Microsoft have taken to virtualisation in the light of VMware’s dominance.

I was very pleased to see that further improvements to the Terminal services functionality and will be investigating those over the coming weeks. The roles based approach ( a more modular os concept) allows you to control what exactly gets installed from the OS “core” through to all the conponents you become accustomed to (and more new ones).

I liked some of the fault finding tools demoed in IIS7 – they have been sadly lacking in previous versions but a lot of effort has been made. The php integration demo and fastcgi performance demonstrated show a definite willingness from Microsfot to play better with Open Source and the realities on what is actually out there in the real word.

The final section of the presentation focused on NAP – protecting the network from threats attaching to it either remotely or locally.

The presentation certainly raised a lot of possibilities in my mind for the adoption of the new OS and it remains to be seen whether the uptake on Vista’s SP1 and XP Service Pack 3 and some requirements in those to work better with Windows Server 2008 – give Microsoft a boost and energises the industry to move to a more secure and modular future server OS.