Some clarity around Microsoft’s operating system release cycles

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I normally avoid blogging about Microsoft’s release plans for new technology as they tend to be out of date almost as soon as they are written; however, at last week’s Microsoft Technical Roadshow, John Howard gave one of the clearest examples I’ve ever seen of Microsoft’s plans for new operating system releases.

Microsoft aims to provide a major operating system release every four years with release updates approximately half way between major releases. For example, Windows Server 2003 was released on 28 March 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2 is expected during 2005 (delayed due to the late shipping of service pack 1) and the next version of Windows Server (codenamed Longhorn) can be expected in 2007. Following this pattern, we can expect an update to Longhorn in 2009 and the following version of the Windows Server product (codenamed Blackcomb) to make an appearance in 2011.

On the support side, mainstream service packs and updates will be provided for at least 5 years from the date of a major release (i.e. until 2008 for Windows Server 2003) with extended support available for a further 5 years.

No NAP until Longhorn

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Last year I commented that network access protection (NAP) had slipped from a planned feature pack for ISA Server 2004 to Windows Server 2003 Release 2 (R2). Well, it seems that has changed. Confirming what I wrote last March, when I blogged about the need for network segmentation and remediation, Steve Lamb commented at last week’s Microsoft Technical Roadshow that NAP will be a feature of the next version of Windows Server (codenamed Longhorn) and not in the R2 release scheduled for later this year.

Apparently the reasons for this are that NAP will require kernel mode changes (and there will be no kernel mode changes in R2) and the extra time will allow Microsoft and Cisco to ensure that NAP (Microsoft) and NAC (Cisco) play nicely together.

Until then we will have to make do with the network access quarantine controls (originally part of the Windows Server 2003 resource kit and productionised as part of the release of Windows Server 2003 service pack 1). The main differences are that network access quarantine control allows quarantining of inbound connections via the Windows routing and remote access service, but NAP will will support quarantine for wired and wireless LAN connections too.

How about this for a test system…

Posted on By Mark Wilson

In one of the SQL Server sessions at last week’s Microsoft Technical Roadshow, Michael Platt showed the first three minutes or so from an MSDN Channel 9 video. In it, we saw one of the systems at Microsoft’s labs in Redmond where ISVs and OEMs assist the SQL Server team with their performance testing and benchmarking – an HP Integrity Superdome system with 64 64-bit Intel Itanium 2 CPUs, 1Tb of RAM and a couple of thousand 18.2Gb disks. Why so many small disks? Apparently it’s about providing provide parallel reading capacity to increase the overall system throughput and hence run the CPUs at their limits.

The whole system cost in the region of $5.1m and the full details of the benchmark tests may be found on the transaction processing performance council website.

Interestingly, one of the problems encountered during the benchmarking was running out of power to spin up all of the disks and having to install a new power distribution unit at a cost of $250,000!