On Monday, we announced that Microsoft and Whale Communications are teaming up to deliver an integrated access solution that combines ISA Server 2004 with Whale’s Intelligent Application Gateway. This integration creates one of the industry’s first edge security solutions to offer both IPsec and SSL VPN capabilities in a single, easy to manage appliance. At the end of the day, this means our mutual customers will have the greatest flexibility and choice for their remote access connectivity needs. With this hardened Windows Server-based appliance, IT administrators can provide granular application and resource access through Whale’s leading SSL VPN technology, while still having the ability to offer full, secure network connectivity powered by our IPsec-based VPN technology (the one that’s built into in ISA Server 2004 and is part of the Windows Server Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS)).
As a networking guy, I’m really excited to see these two technologies come together, especially as our customers wish to offer their employees more mobility, but not at the expense of security. As a long-time security guy, I’m impressed by the combination of the rich, application-layer firewall features of ISA Server 2004 with Whale’s comprehensive end-point baseline compliance capabilities. And since Whale is a Network Access Protection (NAP) partner, this new product has the makings a great addition to the NAP platform. But, as a Microsoft guy, it’s great to see even more evidence that our partners are turning to the Windows Server System platform and security technologies to build their products on. I was in the Security Business and Technology Unit when we launched the ISA Server 2004 appliance initiative (in fact I worked on Mike Nash’s keynote where we demoed this for the first time at TechEd 2004) and this announcement further demonstrates the growth and momentum in Windows-based appliance space. Ultimately, it means our customers will have a great set of solutions to choose from to meet their specific infrastructure needs.
Ian HameroffProduct Manager, Windows Server Core Networking
The first Windows Server exec Web chat of 2006 is set for Friday, Jan. 13. Kyril Faenov will be joined by folks on his dev team to answer questions about Windows Compute Cluster Server and Microsoft's plans for HPC. Don't attend if you're interested in clustering services such as load balancing.
Patrick
I didn't think I'd have anything to write this week with all the candy canes and holiday cheer about, there's nothing overly compelling. I know, I know, we shipped another build of "Longhorn" Server to beta partners and TAP customers ... but this is business as usual. It went out with a CTP of Windows Vista. A few other reporters covered it ... must be a slow week in the news rooms.
But then, lo and behold, Oracle's marketing and finance departments decided to spread some fractional joy this holiday season. To be clear, Oracle again has revised its database pricing for multi-core processors. But this time the pricing is brand-dependent. InformationWeek's article sums it up best:
Under the new pricing scheme, an eight dual-core server (total 16 cores) containing IBM's Power chip would result in a charge for six Oracle processor licenses (.75 time eight). An eight dual-core server produced by AMD or Intel would result in a charge for four Oracle processor licenses (.50 times eight). The same eight way, dual-core server with Sun UltraSparc would result in two processor licenses (.25 times eight).
If it wasn't enough to have the head of Intel - back in August 2005 - tell the world that dual-core processors will ship in volume in 2006. No ... that's not enough for the oracles of Oracle. It took the Sun Fire T1000 with new T1 processor to motivate Oracle to act. Huh? I must be missing something here. To be fair, here's the statement of Oracle's VP of global pricing and licensing strategy:
"These new pricing policies will enable our customers to leverage the advancements in multi-core chip technology and derive even more value from their Oracle technology software."
Too bad there's not an equivalent of The Onion covering IT software because I'd love to read their take on this news. For now, we'll just have to wait for The Register's deadpan on this news. I'm sure they won't disappoint.
Patrick O'Rourke
There are some partners and customers with beta code of Virtual Server 2005 SP1 that is set to expire at the end of the month, and they need to know where to get their hands on the RTM version of Virtual Server 2005 R2.
As an aside: I'm assuming you all know that Virtual Server 2005 SP1 was renamed as an "R2" back in August/September timeframe, and that the product was released to manufacturing days ago.
With that said, if you're a volume license customer, the product is available from the VL site. If you were on the official beta (through Betaplace) then you will receive an email in the next week with how to download the final bits as a thank you. The last option is to download a 180-day Eval version. Please note that there are two Eval downloads, one to run on x64 (64-bit) editions of Windows and one to run on x86 (32-bit) editions of Windows.
And for those who can wait for February, Dell said they'll offer customers Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition jointly with Dell PowerEdge Servers. Along these lines, you'll be interested to read InfoWorld's Oliver Rist reviews of Windows Server 2003 R2 and Virtual Server 2005 R2.
Hello everybody. My name is Eric Kidd. I’m a director in the Windows Server Division at Microsoft, responsible for leading the product development of Windows Server 2003 R2. That means I work with marketing in defining the release as a product and I offer leadership in product development and successful release execution across the Windows organization and its partners.
And my name is Mark Harris. When I started at Microsoft over 10 years ago as a software design engineer in test, I never thought I’d have the chance to be involved at this level with shipping a Windows Server release. It has been my pleasure since late 2004 to work directly with Eric and the shiproom team, driving day-to-day decisions like bug fixes and release schedules, and coordinating the development effort for the release of Windows Server 2003 R2.
We’re writing to you today because yesterday we released R2 to manufacturing – the final-step before the product becomes generally available to the public (a little more time is needed before you see it on the shelf of your local software store, to produce the CDs, boxes, manuals, etc – that’s the manufacturing part). We thought we’d take this opportunity to tell you a little about R2: what it is, why it’s special, and the great new features that have been introduced to Windows Server in the R2 release.
First, what is R2? R2 is a full release of Windows Server 2003, based on Service Pack 1, with significant new components. It’s not a feature pack, roll-up, option pack, or any other type of release we’ve done in the past. As a full release, it will replace Windows Server 2003 in all sales channels so, generally speaking, when a customer walks into a software store to buy off the shelf or purchases a system with Windows Server pre-installed, they’ll get R2. And why wouldn’t they? It’s everything Windows Server 2003/SP1 is with the addition of some great new features.
The next question that might come up is: why do an R2 release? In order to deliver value to our customers with greater consistency and more predictability, the Windows Server Division has adopted a new release cycle wherein we will release a major version of Windows Server about every 4 years. Those are releases like Windows Server 2003 and “Longhorn Server.” About 2 years after each major release, we’ll deliver an update release. Windows Server 2003 R2 is the first such update release. This means that we will offer to our customers a new release of Windows Server every 2 years, alternating between major and update releases. This release cycle allows us to best of breed functionality to our users when they need it and in ways that make it easy for them to consume.
We know, from talking with our customers, that delivering new features and more functionality is not enough. To make update releases like R2 useful to our customers, we also had to make it easy for them to consume into their existing environment. That means a few things… First, we’ve based R2 on Windows Server 2003 SP1 and have made no core OS changes – most of R2’s new features are installed optionally, via Add/Remove Windows Components. That means R2 has the same application compatibility, performance, and reliability as SP1. Therefore, if a customer has already adopted SP1 in their environment, they can feel comfortable dropping R2 into the same environment with little additional testing. Further, R2 will be serviced along with Windows Server 2003 as one servicing tree. This means that there will be one set of Service Packs and patches that can be applied to both Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2 boxes. While it wasn’t easy, internally, for us to do this, it’s something we all felt must be part of how we do update releases such as R2.
Finally, before talking about some of the cool new features in R2, a few words about what it was like to introduce a new type of Windows release. Given R2 is Windows’ first update release, a big part of the challenge was, simply, doing it. Since the R2 release schedule has coincided with other, very important Windows releases (such as Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and Windows Vista/Windows Server Longhorn) we’ve constantly been faced with the challenge of managing the corresponding resource overlap in a way that allows us to deliver a compelling R2 release while, at the same time, not impeding progress on other product releases. With today’s launch of R2, I’m happy to say that the many people who have contributed to R2 have been successful with this goal. Nearly 100% of the people working on R2 also worked, and are working, to develop each of the releases mentioned above. Given the great product launches of 2005 along with a full pipe of upcoming releases, through Longhorn Server, this is a very exciting time for us all here at Microsoft.
After Windows Server 2003 shipped, we received loads of feature suggestions from our customers. Our product planners and engineers looked at the feedback as well as the work the component teams were doing at the time and decided to focus R2 on three main areas: identity management, storage management, and branch office solutions.
Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) is the first feature I want to talk about. It gives companies the ability to extend the active directory over the “cloud” and across organizational boundaries. This allows seamless cross-company collaboration. Utilizing the passive-mode of WS-Authentication protocol, companies that have deployed ADFS can share their internal web sites run on IIS with identities at other companies.
In storage management, we added file screening, customizable reporting, and [finally :-)] directory-based quotas. Administrators now have the built-in ability to prevent certain types of files being stored on corporate file shares, automatically report on space utilization, and to flexibly restrict the amount of file space used by individuals on a directory-level. With the exponential growth of storage needs in IT today, these features are in dire need. I know that I would have liked to have the quota and reporting mechanisms when I ran the internal redirected My Documents deployment testing in Windows.
Last, Windows Server 2003 R2 added an efficient protocol for file replication (DFS-R). By replicating only the changes in a file across a DFS forest, we are able to keep file servers up-to-date with the latest copies of a file must more efficiently and faster than previous versions of Windows. Additionally, our hardware management tools take advantage of the WS-Management protocol to provide post-crash and pre-boot access for certain server systems. Last, the Print Management Console (PMC) gives administrators an easy-to-use GUI for managing printer queues and shared printers, all within the well-known Microsoft Management Console (MMC) framework. With these features, it is no longer necessary to incur the high costs of administration inherent in keeping systems on site at a branch office.
Each of these features is baked into the Windows Server 2003 code base. These features are not bolted-on, but rather integrated with the code that made up Windows Server 2003. For example, they are all installed via the Optional Component Manager (OCM); the same installation mechanism as all optional components. Wherever possible we leveraged features already available on Windows Server 2003 and were successful in not modifying the kernel, shell, or any of the Windows Server API set. As a result, R2 is as secure, compatible, and reliable as the original release of Server 2003.
We speak for the entire team when we say that we are extremely proud to have been part of bringing this to our customers. R2 gives Windows Server a reliable, predictable release cycle as well as addressing key needs of the marketplace.
Eric & Mark