As we’re getting closer to release, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is returning to how it was previously available to Windows Server 2008 customers. Specifically, we are going back to making it available as a separate download that is available to customers at no additional charge. This is how Windows SharePoint Services was available to Windows Server 2003 customers (pre-R2). With the beta and RC0 versions of Windows Server 2008, we offered it in the Windows Server 2008 software. Starting with RC1 and going forward, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 will have to be downloaded separately. Basically, we made this decision to allow customers to most conveniently obtain the technology while allowing Microsoft to have flexibility in the Windows SharePoint Services development process. If you have not looked at WSS 3.0, be sure to download it and peek around. It offers great collaboration, social computing and document management features and provides a rich composite application development platform based on our .NET technologies. The SharePoint team is working hard on great new features and releases that customers will continue to see delivered via download. For more guidance re: installation/evaluation updates, see: http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/9/e/b9e27997-7a8e-493c-b23b-58eeaa3214c8/WSSGuide.doc.
Julius Sinkevicius
I thought that I'd follow-up my post the other day - questions about when to use Terminal Services vs. Citrix -- by pointing out ERICOM Guy post titled, "are Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services Good Enough for me?" Here's an excerpt:
Windows Server 2008 may be good enough for you if: Your needs are simple, e.g. you do not need central management of the Terminal Servers You plan to upgrade all your clients to Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) or Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3). No, Windows CE 6.0 won't do.
Windows Server 2008 may be good enough for you if:
And a colleague saw my post and asked me to add a few additional points:
For deployment answers and tips, be sure to visit the TS team blog.
Nothing remarkable per say from the Day 2 keynote. Our own Mike Neil got some stage time to talk about areas Microsoft is investing in virtualization; nothing new if you read his February post. He touched on areas of continued and expanded partnership with Citrix ... especially since the XenSource acquisition. The four areas highlighted were: presentation virtualization (security, stability, extensibility), application virtualization (management technologies, app publishing), server virtualization (hypervisor interop, manageability), and interop (image format standards, industry standards). Here's a shot of Mike on stage.
As I already noted, Peter Levine's demos were great. Most impressive was the live migration demo using media server. The "Top Gun" video during the demo didn't blink when the workload was migrated from one host to another. On the note, I learned that Xen doesn't have a high availability/clustering offering until next year. For more on the Day 2 keynote, see Tim's post at Brian Madden.
Finally I'll close by pointing out the eWeek article titled, "Linux losing market Share to Windows Server." Here's an excerpt:
Linux growth in the U.S. x86 server market has, over the past six quarters, started to falter and reverse its positive course relative to Windows Server and the market as a whole. The annual rate at which Linux is growing in the x86 server space has fallen from around 53 percent in 2003, when Windows Server growth was in the mid-20 percent range, to a negative 4 percent growth in calendar year 2006, IDC Quarterly Server Tracker figures show. Over the same time period, Windows has continued to report positive annual growth, outpacing the total growth rate in the x86 market by more than 4 percent in 2006, indicating that Linux has actually lost market share to Windows Server over this time. One of the biggest reasons for this is that the migrations from Unix to Linux have slowed down markedly. "I spend a lot of time talking with both Linux and Windows customers and partners, and the feedback that I hear is that, in volume, Linux is primarily deployed in two workloads—high-performance computing and as Web servers," Hilf told eWEEK.
Linux growth in the U.S. x86 server market has, over the past six quarters, started to falter and reverse its positive course relative to Windows Server and the market as a whole.
The annual rate at which Linux is growing in the x86 server space has fallen from around 53 percent in 2003, when Windows Server growth was in the mid-20 percent range, to a negative 4 percent growth in calendar year 2006, IDC Quarterly Server Tracker figures show.
Over the same time period, Windows has continued to report positive annual growth, outpacing the total growth rate in the x86 market by more than 4 percent in 2006, indicating that Linux has actually lost market share to Windows Server over this time.
One of the biggest reasons for this is that the migrations from Unix to Linux have slowed down markedly.
"I spend a lot of time talking with both Linux and Windows customers and partners, and the feedback that I hear is that, in volume, Linux is primarily deployed in two workloads—high-performance computing and as Web servers," Hilf told eWEEK.
It's interesting to consider how broader deployment of server and application virtualization may impact these numbers studied by IDC. It has the potential for lots of OS instances per box instead of the traditional 1:1 ratio.
Patrick
We announced today that the hypercall API, which hypervisor and OS vendors will use to build on top/integrate with Viridian, will be licensed via the Open Specification Promise (OSP). You'll recall that the Microsoft's VHD image format is available via OSP. This license will be available at the time of Viridian RTM. And today we published updated - but still draft - hypercall API specifications for customers/partners to start developing. And as I told eWeek, the WMI interface to Viridian will be available to partners as well, and that interface is based on a standards spec under development in the DMTF.
Other than the folks over at Brian Madden, not too many people blogging from Citrix iForum. That ashame because there's alot of good content on app delivery and Citrix's plans to virtualize desktops (i.e., VDI) and datacenters (i.e., Xen). I'll post some photos from this morning's keynote later today. But it was the first time I've seen Peter Levine (former CEO of XenSource, now GM of Citrix's virtualization group) speak. His big message was "10 minutes to Xen" and showed a couple slick demos of XenMotion and XenCenter. He also referenced the hypercall API news that Mike Neil announced on stage just prior to Peter speaking.
As for the booth, traffic was decent yesterday (photo below). We're demoing Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop, Windows Server 2008 terminal services (aka, presentation virtualization), SoftGrid, SCVMM and Viridian. The top questions were:
Get Ready for Microsoft Virtualization Technologies with the Assessment and Planning Solution for Windows Server Virtualization, SoftGrid, and Terminal Services. Listen to and interview from IT Pro Evangelist Keith Combs and Sr. Product Manager, Baldwin Ng at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/tnradio/archive/oct232007.mspx
I admit being a bit lazy with short-hand. But I can only spell out virtualization so many times before I get tired of two-finger keystroking all those letters. It has more to do with a poorly-attended typing class during the summer between junior and senior year of high school than my interest in the subject. But I'm not the first to use V12n.
I'm in Vegas (baby) this week to attend Citrix iForum. Citrix is using its conference this year to re-energize its channel around its broadening virtualization portfolio. Alessandro covered Citrix's news here. They're bringing Xensource into the fold, to include re-naming products with the Xen brand. I'd expected to see flaming comments about this proprietary/open source branding mixture from the open source community, but nary a word. Give it time. I'll be strolling the show floor today, maybe I'll hear some angst then.
On a related note, there's some interesting posts around V12n killing the modern-day OS. Dan Kusnetsky says it's one of the top 10 V12n myths. Here's an excerpt from myth #1:
Some of the statements made at VMware’s VMworld event convinced some people that operating systems are becoming an endangered species and that shortly they'll be replaced by virtual machine software. This is a very unlikely scenario and let me address the reasons why this is so: Hypervisors are small operating systems or components of general purpose operating systems, such as Windows, Unix or Linux. Replacing one with another doesn't mean that operating systems have gone away only that functions have been “re-hosted” to run on the hypervisor directly. Most applications have been written to use the facilities of an operating system and related system software. Until hypervisors offer all of those features, applications would have to be rewritten to internalize those functions. Who's going to save money doing that? Hardware suppliers offer support based upon a well-tested list of hardware and software options. It is not at all clear that these suppliers would support an application stack running directly on a hypervisor. This is something the organization would have to discover on a case-by-case basis.
Some of the statements made at VMware’s VMworld event convinced some people that operating systems are becoming an endangered species and that shortly they'll be replaced by virtual machine software. This is a very unlikely scenario and let me address the reasons why this is so:
Whereas Scott Lowe chews on the topic a bit longer to conclude:
See, Microsoft has to make the claim that ESX Server is an operating system, so that it can level the playing field—at least with regards to perception—between VMware’s virtualization solution and Microsoft’s own virtualization solution. After all, if you’re VMware and you’re saying that your solution runs “on the bare metal, beneath the OS,” then this sounds somehow better than Microsoft’s hypervisor, which is “bundled with the OS.” See the difference? If Microsoft allows the perception that ESX Server is not an OS to grow, then it undermines their solution. Likewise, VMware has to distinguish their solution from the “traditional OS” because if they don’t, then they begin to lose the perception advantage against other virtualization solutions such as Xen or Windows Server Virtualization. You can see this trend even now on the VMware web site, where you’ll find statements like this about ESX Server 3i: ESX Server 3i is the only hypervisor that does not incorporate or rely on a general-purpose operating system (OS), eliminating many common reliability issues and security vulnerabilities. Is ESX Server an “operating system”? What about ESX Server 3i? As with so many other things in life, I guess that truly depends upon your perspective.
See, Microsoft has to make the claim that ESX Server is an operating system, so that it can level the playing field—at least with regards to perception—between VMware’s virtualization solution and Microsoft’s own virtualization solution. After all, if you’re VMware and you’re saying that your solution runs “on the bare metal, beneath the OS,” then this sounds somehow better than Microsoft’s hypervisor, which is “bundled with the OS.” See the difference? If Microsoft allows the perception that ESX Server is not an OS to grow, then it undermines their solution.
Likewise, VMware has to distinguish their solution from the “traditional OS” because if they don’t, then they begin to lose the perception advantage against other virtualization solutions such as Xen or Windows Server Virtualization. You can see this trend even now on the VMware web site, where you’ll find statements like this about ESX Server 3i:
ESX Server 3i is the only hypervisor that does not incorporate or rely on a general-purpose operating system (OS), eliminating many common reliability issues and security vulnerabilities.
Is ESX Server an “operating system”? What about ESX Server 3i? As with so many other things in life, I guess that truly depends upon your perspective.
I'll offer another thought. Machine virtualization is today's version of the TCP/IP stack of the late 1980s. Remember when vendors sold TCP/IP? Today most commercial OSes include and install the stack by default. Today, machine virtualization is being offered in all sorts of open source and commercial OSes ... and soon Windows Server.