Macworld 2008 – looking beyond the Steve Jobs reality distortion field

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Before the Apple fanboys call me a hater, I’m not a PC bigot.  I’ve written here many times about how a PC is a PC, and that the MacOS X vs. Windows vs. Linux thing has gone too far, with advocates of each platform treating theirs as the one true approach to personal computing with the kind of fervour normally reserved for religious purposes.  I also like my Apple hardware and have a Mac, three iPods and an iPhone to prove it (as well as an assortment of Windows and Linux PCs), so I think I can be pretty objective in this area.

Having established my credentials, let me take a few minutes to dissect Steve Jobs’ keynote at the recent Apple Macworld conference and push aside the hype to get down to what Apple’s major announcements for 2008 really mean.

  1. As is now traditional with Macworld conferences, it started off with a PC vs. Mac advert complete with all the usual bias, lies, and claims that PC (i.e. Windows) copies the Mac in everything… hmm.  I’ve not upgraded to MacOS X 10.5 Leopard as for me it doesn’t represent a huge leap forward but I am glad though to hear that it is selling well – Apple claims 4 million copies in first 90 days making it the most successful version of OS X ever.  That’s only half the story though.  It may only have affected a minority but, from the reports I’ve heard (in the Mac-focused press), Leopard upgrades have not been without their problems (how dare users run non-Apple applications!).  And as more and more consumers switch to a Mac (I see no evidence of major businesses switching – except perhaps the odd director here and there who is senior enough to tell the IT department what he wants to use) problems with upgrades between OS releases will appear more significant.
  2. The next major announcement was Time Capsule – a companion product to Time Machine consisting of an Airport Extreme and hard drive in a single device to backup Macs wirelessly.  It sounds great, but suffers from the same problem as Windows Home Server does for PCs – support for heterogeneous networks is just not as good as it could be (and, as for Time Machine, Windows PCs have had snapshot-based backups for years).  What’s particularly worrying is that Apple claim the device has a "server grade" hard disk yet according to the technical specifications the Time Capsule uses a SATA disk. Those of us who frequently specify servers know that major vendors such as HP do not recommend SATA disks for intensive workloads due to the higher MTBF (hence the 1 year warranty that HP offers on a SATA disk compared with three years on a SCSI disk) and consequently I consider that to call the Time Capsule disk "server grade" is taking things a little far.
  3. Looking at consumer media devices:
    • There’s little doubt that the iPhone has been a huge success with 4 million devices sold in 200 days (although that is still quite a way off the original target of 10 million in the first year).  Apple is claiming 19.5% of the United States smartphone market but what also has to be considered is that the iPhone is not a business phone.  The new iPhone software is great too, although I’ve upgraded mine and am a little underwhelmed with the location awareness, which often seems to think I’m a few streets away (or even the next village).  As for the software update being free – I should hope so given how much we are paying for our iPhones!
    • Continuing the theme, Apple has made some of the iPhone applications available for the iPod touch, for a small charge, with the purchase via the iTunes store (could this be a demonstration of the model for future iPod and iPhone software purchases once the SDK is launched?).
    • The iTunes store has now sold over 4 billion songs with 20 million in one day (Christmas Day 2007).  It’s hard to deny that it’s been a huge success although the decision of some record companies to distribute DRM-free music on competing platforms should certainly be viewed as a threat (as long as it’s DRM-free then that’s no problem for consumers!). Apple is claiming that they are doing well with TV show downloads too (precious little content over here) but have revised the model for selling films, launching iTunes Movie Rentals – and it seems the studios are all on board!  The bad news is that international rollout is not planned until later this year and I for one am sick of Apple treating everyone outside the US as second class citizens.  It does look good though – the DRM is not too onerous with 30 days to start watching a film after rental, and 24 hours to finish (just like physical store) – and one nice touch is the ability to start watching on one device (e.g. a PC) and then finish on another (e.g. an iPod).  US pricing will be $2.99 for "library" films or $3.99 for new releases (so less than my local DVD rental store – that is good).
    • The Apple TV was originally an accessory for iTunes running on a computer and has sold reasonable well but even so there is little doubt that it has not been as popular as Apple had hoped.  Now Apple is trying again with new software for Apple TV (a free upgrade for existing users and a reduced price for new hardware purchases – at least in the US) and it will still synchronise with a computer but is no longer required to do so.  Support for iTunes Movie Rentals is extended with the ability to access DVD or HD quality (HD will cost an extra dollar) with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound as well as direct access to podcasts, photos (from Flickr or .Mac) and YouTube.  For me though, the Apple TV is still missing what it really needs – television!  Add a tuner and PVR capabilities and I’ll buy one.
  4. Finally, Jobs claims that Apple makes "the best notebooks in the industry" (I think they are among the best – Lenovo’s ThinkPads are also great) and at MacWorld he announced the MacBook Air – "the world’s thinnest notebook".  That it may be, but I think it’s expensive (relative to the MacBook and MacBook Pro), underpowered (an Intel Core 2 Duo may not be slow, but 1.6GHz is slow for a Core 2 Duo), lacks the ability to be upgraded and, whilst the main device may be thin, it does require me to carry a load of peripherals with me (power, optical drive, USB hub – it only has a single port) and doesn’t even have built in wired Ethernet.  It does have some nice touches though, like the additional gestures on the trackpad.  Remote Disc sounds good as an alternative to providing a build in optical device but why is an application required to simply share a CD/DVD drive?

Last year wrote about how didn’t want an iPhone but by the time it launched over here I’d changed my mind (and shunned the touchscreen widescreen iPod that I had originally craved!).  This year I wanted either an aluminium MacBook with a PC Express Card slot and upgraded graphics, or a MacBook Pro with a MacBook-style keyboard.  The MacBook Air is neither – it’s just a thin, aluminium, MacBook, with reduced functionality and increased price – but I guess the lesson for me is to never say never…

Management of Microsoft Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 (Server Core)

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I recently bought a new server in order to consolidate various machines onto one host.  The intention here is to license Microsoft Hyper-V Server when it is released but, as that’s not available to me right now, I thought I’d use the latest Windows Server 2008 (Server Core) build with the Hyper-V role enabled.  Everything was looking good until I built the server, installed Hyper-V (using the ocsetup Microsoft-Hyper-V command) and realised that although I had a functioning Hyper-V server, I had no way to manage it.

According to the release notes for the Hyper-V beta:

"To manage Hyper-V on a server core installation, you can do the following:

  • Use Hyper-V Manager to connect to the server core installation remotely from a full installation of Windows Server 2008 on which the Hyper-V role is installed.
  • Use the WMI interface."

I wanted to run Hyper-V on Server Core because my experience of running Virtual Server on Windows Server 2003 has been that patching the host is a major issue involving downtime on each guest virtual machine.  Similarly (unless I migrate the workload to another server) applying updates to the parent partition on Hyper-V will also result in downtime in each child partition.  By using Server Core, I reduce the size of the attack surface and therefore the likelihood of a critical patch being applicable to my server.  If I need another Windows Server 2008 machine with Hyper-V installed just to manage the box then that’s not helping me much – even a version of Hyper-V Manager to run on a Windows client machine and administer the server would be a huge step forward!

I’ve raised a feedback request highlighting this as a potential issue which restricts the scenarios in which Hyper-V will be deployed; however I’m expecting it to be closed as "by design" and therefore not holding out much hope of this getting fixed before product release.

Forefront Security overview

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A few weeks back, I spent some time learning about the Microsoft Forefront security products.  I’ve written before about Forefront Client Security and intend to write some more posts that go into some detail on the other Forefront products, but I thought I’d start by taking a look at the suite as a whole.

The Forefront suite of applications currently includes a number of products:

Looking first at the client, Forefront Client Security provides virus and spyware protection in a single product for client and server operating systems with updates received using Microsoft Update.  That all sounds OK but, for some critics, the natural question to ask is "what does Microsoft know about client security?".  Well, it seems that they know quite a lot:

  1. First, Microsoft purchased GeCAD Software – a respected Romanian anti-virus vendor.
  2. Next, Microsoft purchased GIANT Software – a respected anti-malware provider.
  3. The Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool provides more than just the ability to remove malware from PCs as he reporting information helps indicate how widespread a particular issue is.
  4. Microsoft also purchased FrontBridge Technologies, whose scanning technology protects many organisations from viruses and spam.
  5. Another Windows Live service that provides Microsoft with reconnaissance information is the Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner (indeed the entire OneCare product range – although these consumer products have little in common with Forefront Client Security).
  6. Oh yes, and the fact that they run one of the world’s largest free e-mail services won’t hurt their ability to gather diagnostic information.

So that’s the client – what about the server products?  Based on the former Antigen products gained with Microsoft’s acquisition of Sybari Software there are currently two products carrying the Forefront brand name – plus Microsoft Antigen for Instant Messaging (to be replaced with an OCS-compatible product under the Forefront banner).  Making use of multiple anti-virus engines, the Forefront Server Security products provide realtime and manual scanning for messaging and collaboration products.

Finally, at the edge, ISA Server has been with us since 2000 (we had Proxy Server before then) and has become a well-respected application-level firewall and proxy server that is available in both software-only and appliance formats.  Intelligent Application Gateway (IAG) is a newer product, built around ISA Server by another company that Microsoft recently acquired – Whale Communications.  IAG provides SSL VPN capabilities, combined with a detailed understanding of how applications work (positive logic) in order to ensure that only valid traffic is allowed to cross the network boundary.  Whilst IAG is currently only available in appliance format, with Microsoft being a software company I can’t help feeling that a version of IAG will be released in software form at some point in the future.

Unfortunately, this mix of products from different backgrounds means that Forefront doesn’t feel as tightly integrated as some other product suites (e.g. Microsoft Office) but that is changing as the components are updated.  In addition, Microsoft has announced a product (codenamed Stirling) which they are touting as:

"[…] a single product that delivers unified security management and reporting with comprehensive, coordinated protection across clients, server applications, and the network edge. Through its deep integration with the existing infrastructure, such as Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft System Center, customers can reduce complexity, making it easier to achieve a more secure and well-managed infrastructure."

For anyone looking at purchasing Forefront products, Software Assurance (SA) might not be a bad choice as there are new versions of IAG planned based on the forthcoming ISA Server codename Nitrogen and ISA Server codename Oxygen products (don’t quote me on this as information is a little sketchy on these!) and further updates planned across the Forefront suite.

IT security is no longer an afterthought and has become an integral part of any organisation’s IT infrastructure. I’m impressed by the range of options that Microsoft can provide in the Forefront suite and, if they can convince critics that they have a credible range of products (they are currently suffering from "the Škoda badge problem"), then over time I expect to see Microsoft take a dominant position in Windows Server security.

Looking forward to Windows Server 2008: Part 2 (Setup and Configuration)

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Back in October, I started to look at the next version of Microsoft’s server operating system – Windows Server 2008. In that post I concentrated on two of the new technologies – Server Core and Windows Server Virtualization (since renamed as Hyper-V).

For those who have installed previous versions of Windows Server, Windows Server 2008 setup will be totally new. Windows Vista users will be familiar with some of the concepts, but Windows Server takes things a step further with simplified configuration and role-based administration.

Using a technology known as Windows PE, the new setup model allows multiple builds to be stored in a single image (using the .WIM file format). Because many of these builds will share the same files, single instance storage is used to reduce the volume of disk space required, allowing six operating system versions to fit into one DVD image (with plenty of free space).

The first stage of the setup process is about collecting information. Windows Setup now asks fewer questions and instead of being spread throughout the process (anybody ever left a server installation running and then returned to find it had stopped half way through for input of some networking details?) the information is all gathered at this first stage in the process. After gathering details for the language, time and currency, keyboard, product key (which can be left and entered later), version of Windows to install, license agreement and selection of a disk on which to install the operating system (including options for disk management), Windows Setup is ready to begin the installation. Incidentally, it’s probably worth noting that SATA disk controllers have been problematic when setting up previous versions of Windows. Windows Server 2008 had no issues with the motherboard SATA controller on the Dell server that I used for my research.

After collecting information, Windows Setup moves on to the actual installation. This consists of copying files, expanding files (which took about 10 minutes on my system), installing features, installing updates, two reboots and completing installation. One final reboot brings the system up to the login screen after which Windows is installed. On my server (with a fast processor, but only 512MB of RAM) the whole process took around 20 minutes.

At this point you may be wondering where the computer name, domain name, etc. is entered. Windows Setup initially installs the server into a workgroup (called WORKGROUP) and uses an automatically generated computer name. The Administrator password must be changed at first logon, after which the desktop is prepared and loaded.

Windows Server 2003 included an HTML application called the Configure Your Server Wizard and service pack 1 added the post-setup security updates (PSSU) functionality to allow the application of updates before enabling non-essential services. In Windows Server 2008 this is enhanced with a feature called the Initial Tasks Configuration Wizard. This takes an administrator through the final steps in setup (or initial tasks in configuration):

  1. Provide computer information – configure networking, change the computer name and join a domain.
  2. Update this server – enable Automatic Updates and Windows Error Reporting, download the latest updates.
  3. Customise this server – add roles or features, enable Remote Desktop, configure Windows Firewall (now enabled by default).

Roles and Features are an important change in Windows Server 2008. The enhanced role-based administration model provides a simple approach for an administrator to install Windows components and configure the firewall to allow access in a secure manner. At release candidate 1 (RC1), Windows Server 2008 includes 17 roles (e.g. Active Directory Domain Services, DHCP Server, DNS Server, Web Server, etc.) and 35 features (e.g. failover clustering, .NET Framework 3.0, Telnet Server, Windows PowerShell).

Finally, all of the initial configuration tasks can be saved as HTML for printing, storage, or e-mailing (e.g. to a configuration management system).

Although Windows Server 2008 includes many familiar Microsoft Management Console snap-ins, it includes a new console which is intended to act as a central point of administration – Server Manager. Broken out into Roles, Features, Diagnostics (Event Viewer, Reliability and Performance, and Device Manager), Configuration (Task Scheduler, Windows Firewall with Advanced Security, Services, WMI Control and Local Users and Groups)and Storage (Windows Server Backup and Disk Management), Server Manager provides most of the information that an administrator needs – all in one place.

It’s worth noting that the Initial Tasks Configuration Wizard and Server Manager do not apply for Server Core installations. Server Manager can be used to remotely administer a computer running Server Core, or hardcore administrators can configure the server from the command line.

So that’s Windows Server 2008 setup and configuration in a nutshell. Greatly simplified. More secure. Much faster.

Of course, there are options for customising Windows images and pre-defining setup options but these are beyond the scope of this article. Further information can be found elsewhere on the ‘net – I recommend starting with the Microsoft Deployment Getting Started Guide.

Windows Server 2008 will be launched on 27 February 2008. It seems unlikely that it will be available for purchase in stores at that time; however corporate users with volume license agreements should have access to the final code by then. In the meantime, it’s worth checking out Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 website and the Windows Server UK User Group.

[This post originally appeared on the Seriosoft blog, under the pseudonym Mark James.]

How my Dell customer experience suddenly got better

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Last week, I wrote a post about the poor customer service I had experienced as part of my recent Dell server purchase but the very next morning things started to improve.

Firstly, my server turned up a week early.  That’s good – exceeding customer expectations gets a big tick from me.  Ordered at 2pm on Friday, order accepted (i.e. payment cleared) on Sunday, server built to order, shipped from Ireland and delivered in England at 9.15am on Wednesday.  One happy punter.

Then I got an e-mail and a phone call from one of Dell’s Technical Account Managers, who’d seen my blog post and wanted to talk to me about my experience.  I was only to happy to give him feedback on where it all went wrong for me, and in return he promised to look into it and get a server specialist to call me right away.  Sure enough, a few minutes later the phone rang and it was a really helpful representative from the UK and Ireland SME Silver Support Team, who took me through the configuration options on my server that had confused me so much (I’ve added a comment to my original post with the details).

As a gesture of goodwill (and I think it’s only fair to disclose this as I’m now writing so positively about Dell!), they also waived the shipping charge on the extra memory I was about to purchase and shipped some additional SATA cables to allow me to connect a third and fourth drive to my motherboard.

All of that is good news for me but what about those who can’t publicly throw their toys out of the cot (i.e. write a stroppy post on their blog) and who need technical pre-sales support?  Dell’s advice is to either:

  • Click on the Request a Call link on the Server page before starting the system build;

or:

  • Click on the Purchase Help tab to view contact details for Sales Support.

(As this second option leads to the same page I used before ending up in Dell phone system hell I’d suggest the request a call option.)

SharePoint, Workflow and Microsoft Search Server

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Earlier this week, I headed into Microsoft’s offices in London for an evening meeting of the SharePoint User Group UK.  I’m not a SharePoint expert by any stretch of the imagination (I’ve looked at various SharePoint products over the years but have no implementation experience) but I am interested in the product’s development – particularly as it seems to me that it is finally starting to gain some traction with customers.

The first session was a deep dive into developing Workflow with SharePoint and InfoPath, presented by Chris O’Brien.  To be perfectly honest, this went a little too deep into developer concepts for me to follow, but Chris has written about it on his blog for anyone who wants the details.

The second session was presented by Andrew Woodward, who looked at Microsoft Search Server 2008.  I’m particularly interested in this as it’s only a few months since I spent some time learning about implementing enterprise Search using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and the replacement of MOSS for Search with Search Server provides many new options for federated search that will be eventually be backported into the main MOSS product (initially via Microsoft Update and then as part of MOSS 2007 service pack 2).  What’s particularly interesting is the positioning of Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express as a free product – meaning that even small businesses can afford to implement SharePoint for enterprise search (and also potentially allowing for the creation of SharePoint appliances, much like the Google Search Appliance).  There’s more about Microsoft’s enterprise search products (including Search Server) on the Microsoft website.

Overall, the evening was interesting (and well attended) – for future events, check out the SharePoint User Group UK website.

Dell customer service fails again

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A few years back I had the misfortune of using a Dell Latitude D600 notebook computer for my work.  At the time I wrote about the problems I experienced with Dell customer service and it seems that Michael Dell’s return as CEO isn’t doing much to improve the customer experience.

Then, last week, I bought a Dell PowerEdge 840 server.  I did it because it was cheap.  So, one might ask what am I complaining about but, even though £391.98 is very inexpensive for a server, I expect some service when I’m trying to buy something from someone.

I suppose I’m spoilt because normally I buy many servers at a time, have a technical account manager to help me select the right options and it’s someone else’s money if I miss something and need to buy some more components.  Oh yes, and I buy HP servers where possible.  This time I was spending my own money and wanted the best deal possible.

As I worked through Dell’s "build your system" website, I wanted some technical support for the RAID connectivity options which, after telling me that the server supports up to 2 cabled or hot-plug SAS or SATA hard drives, the website listed as:

  • C1B – Motherboard SATA cabled, min 2, max 2 Hard Drives connected to onboard SATA controller.
  • C1C – Motherboard SATA cabled, min 3, max 3 Hard Drives connected to onboard SATA controller.
  • C1D – Motherboard SATA cabled, min 4, max 4 Hard Drives connected to onboard SATA controller.

I was confused.  If the server only supports 2 cabled or hot-plug drives, then why is there a no-cost option to have 3 or 4 hard drives connected to the on-board SATA controller?  So I called Dell.  Only to find after about 8 (no kidding) menu options on the phone system that the "small business" department I needed to speak to was closed and only works from 9 to 4.30 Monday to Friday (part-timers…).

I bought the server anyway because the discount was due to expire (it’s since been extended) and called back on Monday. After making 4 menu selections I got to a person who was somewhere in South Asia and sounded helpful but was clearly following a script.  She redirected me to someone in Ireland who sounded annoyed that I was taking up her time and told me that my query was a technical one (not sales). She put me through to technical support, who were confused when I said that I didn’t have a service tag because my system was still being built but put me through to the PowerEdge department anyway.  They were busy but after 5 minutes on hold I spoke to a person who was helpful but didn’t really fill me with confidence in his advice as first of all, he told me that the PowerEdge 840 supports up to 4 drives (good) but that the options may be for different backplanes.  Then he checked and said that the system supports 2 drives on the motherboard but drives 3 and 4 would need a separate RAID controller.  As that seemed to contradict the options at purchase time and he couldn’t comment on the "build your system" website, I’m still no clearer.

I guess I’ll find out how many drives I can get in this server (and what the C1B/C/D options mean) when it arrives next week…

Googling for information

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Just before Christmas, someone showed me how to use Google (yes… the search engine) to convert values between units (e.g. kilometres into miles). I didn’t know that feature was there in Google and it turns out there are many more useful search features too – things like the weather forecast, films at the local cinema, etc. (as well as the well known stuff like definitions, inbound links and Google’s cache).

Windows Server 2008 {is coming soon}

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Windows Server 2008 logoIt’s been a couple of weeks since I posted anything on this blog as I decided to spend Christmas with my family (i.e. not with the computer) and didn’t have any posts ready to publish.  I’ve also been suffering recently from a combination of writer’s block and too much work so, as a consequence, I have many things in my head but very little written down… mostly about Windows Server 2008. As it will be part of a very significant product launch in a few weeks’ time I thought it was about time I updated my previous post looking forward to Windows Server 2008 and highlighted the main advantages of Microsoft’s latest Windows Server release, although I have to confess that much of this is based on Microsoft’s marketing message (with a little of my own opinion for good measure).

A couple of months back, I watched Bill Laing, General Manager for Microsoft’s Windows Server Division, give a keynote presentation to the press on Windows Server 2008 during which he looked back over the history of Windows Server:

  • Windows NT was really a file and print server product with some application support, finally starting to gain acceptance with NT 4.0, which launched in 1996.  In those days, enterprise applications ran on large (typically Unix-based) computers or mainframes and the main competition for departmental deployments was Novell NetWare.
  • Windows 2000 marked a significant change with the introduction of Active Directory and scalability improvements.
  • Even though IIS had existed as a standalone product and then in Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003 was a turning point for Windows application hosting, with Internet Information Services (IIS) 6, 64-bit hardware support, and specialised SKUs (e.g. Windows Storage Server) as well as a web edition of Windows Server.
  • Windows Server 2003 R2 was a midpoint release with new tools for administrators.
  • Windows Server 2008 is a major new update that Microsoft is pitching as a customer focused release.

Bill Laing highlighted a number of hardware inflection points around 64-bit hardware support, multiple processor cores, power consumption and virtualisation.  In addition, he cited customer feedback as the main reason for providing role-based server management, the ability to remove the desktop experience and only run essential server services, and of course the old favourites (or "foundational attributes" as Bill Laing referred to them) – reliability, management and performance.

So, how has Microsoft responded to this famed customer feedback?  They are pitching the major improvements in Windows Server 2008 as follows:

  • your platform {reliable} – looking first at Windows Server as a server platform, Microsoft has provided a solid foundation with:
    • A new management experience.  Server Manager provides a simple point of administration for role-based deployment.  Out of the box, Windows Server 2008 has 17 optional roles (e.g. Active Directory, file, print, web, etc.) and 35 optional features (e.g. multi-path input/output, desktop experience, clustering, etc.).  Windows PowerShell is integrated within the operating system (removing what I consider to be one of the main barriers to adoption of this extremely powerful technology).  Microsoft has also made improvements in the area of power management (now enabled by default) and is working with developers to ensure that applications are written to be more efficient in their use of power (polling vs. quiescing, etc.).
    • Reliability. A new server installation option – Server Core – allows organisations to run servers with only essential Windows services and a limited user interface, supporting selected server roles for command-line (or remote) administration.  There is also a new networking stack, with improved TCP/IP performance and scalability.  Finally, failover clustering (renamed to avoid confusion with other clustering technologies) has been improved from both the implementation perspective and in the provision of support for clusters.
  • web experiences {stunning} – another major change in Windows Server 2008 is IIS 7.  IIS7 uses a modular architecture to improve application performance and aid extensibility.  There are also new IIS management and deployment tools.  This is backed up with new Windows Media services for advanced streaming and caching as well as web application services for communications and workflow integration.
  • infrastructure {virtualised} – whilst other vendors (i.e. VMware) may benefit from their experience of the x86/x64 virtualisation technologies, there is little doubt in my mind that Hyper-V represents a huge step forward for Microsoft.  Furthermore, Microsoft is pitching its virtualisation story as a multi-level approach from the point of view of:
    • Licensing – since Windows Server 2003 R2, Microsoft has adjusted its Windows Server licensing model to support virtualisation (despite claims to the contrary from competitors).  The Microsoft virtual hard disk (.VHD) format is also available with a royalty-free license.
    • Infrastructure – new virtualisation technologies (such as Hyper-V) work with hardware support from Intel and AMD to allow agile virtualisation solutions that better utilise server resources.
    • Management – System Center Virtual Machine Manager helps customers to ease the process of virtualising their infrastructure and to better utilise the available resources, providing the same management tools for both virtual and physical machines.
    • Interoperability – working with both Citrix (XenSource) and Novell (SUSE Linux), Microsoft is able to support heterogeneity across the data centre).
    • Applications – in addition to virtualising server resources, Microsoft SoftGrid and Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services as technologies for application and presentation virtualisation.  Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services includes both Terminal Services Gateway and Terminal Services RemoteApp support.
  • your data {secure} – finally, security.  The days of insecure Microsoft operating systems are long since gone (in fact, Windows Server has always been pretty good) but new technologies in Windows Server 2008 include the server component of the network access protection (NAP) supported by Windows Vista for health validation and compliance checking, read-only domain controllers for secure delegated branch office deployment of Active Directory, fine grained password policies, and Active Directory rights management services for protecting documents during cross-organisational collaboration.

It’s also worth noting that Windows Server 2008 represents a turning point in the shift to 64-bit computing.  Unlike with desktop operating systems, where there is a vicious circle of vendors that won’t write 64-bit device drivers until there is proven demand and users who won’t adopt 64-bit technology until there is vendor support, in the x86/x64 server world there is broad support for 64-bit technologies and Windows Server is the last planned release of a 32-bit server operating system.

As an IT consultant, I agree with Microsoft that there is increasing pressure for IT departments to become more agile and return some benefit to the business – to reduce the cost of "keeping the lights on" and increase the organisation’s ability to innovate.  Microsoft thinks that Windows Server 2008 is more than just an operating system upgrade – that it is key to optimising the infrastructure – and I have to agree.  I was critical of Windows Vista when it was launched (actually, I was critical of the way that Microsoft left its XP customers waiting for a service pack… and we’re still waiting…) but I really can see advantages in the new technologies that Windows Server 2008 brings.  Will organisations deploy Windows Server 2008 right away?  I certainly hope so – there are many compelling reasons to use the new technology but, perhaps more significantly, the release of Windows Vista over a year previously has allowed many of the issues with the common technologies to be ironed out ahead of the server product release.

Finally, what’s with the curly braces smattered throughout this post?  Heroes happen {here} is the theme for the Microsoft marketing around the Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 joint product launch.  For those of us on this side of the pond, a UK launch site has also been released with press and customer events planned for 27 February and IT Professional events from 19 March onwards.   I’m also hoping to work with Scotty McLeod and Austin Osuide to step up the Windows Server Team events in 2008 and of course, watch this space for more detail on some of the technologies that I mentioned in this post.  In the meantime, check out Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 Technical Overview.