Microsoft's 2008 Server Stack-What's New and Who Cares?

By Michelle Savage

May 15, 2008 — (Page 2 of 4)
“As a company, we’re very cautious, because of the scale of bill pay transactions we do,” said CheckFree’s Mark Prout. “We never go down the bleeding edge of technology as an overall strategy. We’re usually about a year behind when it comes to new technologies. In the 2009 time frame, we’ll move 2008 products into our stack.”

However, Prout added, CheckFree works closely with Microsoft to use the newest product versions internally. For example, it is currently using SQL 2008 to handle back-end internal business processing.

Microsoft’s Jonathan Perera said that the 2008 products offer numerous compelling reasons to upgrade.

“We’ve made it easy for companies to take advantage of next-generation Web capabilities,” he said. “Every organization around the world is trying to understand, ‘How do we bring Web 2.0 inside the firewall and take advantage of it? How do we take advantage of next-generation Web approaches to find a business application?’

“What we’ve done across Windows Server, SQL Server and Visual Studio 2008 is put Web platform leadership front and center,” Perera continued. “For example, with the Windows Server Web Core Edition, we’ve streamlined Windows Server to just run as a Web server. There’s a massive reduction in terms of total amount of memory impact. The result is improved performance and tighter security.”

Virtualization is front and center when it comes to new features for Windows Server 2008. “What’s happening with Hyper-V will lead a new approach to how people think about virtualization,” said Perera.

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the hypervisor-based server virtualization technology, allows users to consolidate servers and use hardware more efficiently. Several enhancements to Terminal Services improve presentation virtualization. And multiple operating systems—Linux, Windows and others—can be deployed in parallel on a single server using Hyper-V.

Beyond virtualization, Perera said that improvements in IIS 7 and next generation Web capabilities are the highlights of the launch. “The Web server has been fully architected to be more programmable, more secure and easier to mange,” he said. “For example, we have a configuration option that would allow an administrator to just define a simple text-only configuration file and force that across a whole farm of IIS servers. It’s very easy to manage—a real change from Windows Server 2003.”

Related Search Term(s): Microsoft, Windows Server

Pages 1 2 3 4

Share this link: https://sptechweb.com/link/32183

Windows Essential Server Solutions Slated for Fall Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Essential Business Server 2008 have reached the Release Candidate 1 milestone, and they will launch on Nov. 12 of this year.

Exchange Server 2007 Migration: Look Before You Leap Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 is a viable update to its predecessors, but businesses are reluctant to migrate to it, fearing loss of data and increased complexity. Here's how they can navigate that migration without hitting any major snags.

Live From Microsoft Tech·Ed IT Professionals—Wednesday, June 11 The second day of TechEd featured sessions covering best practices for Microsoft SQL Server 2008, implementing virtualization using Microsoft IT and the drive for 64-bit computing. Bamboo Solutions and NetApp announced new products.

Add comment

Name*
Email*
Country

Comment
Preview

Microsoft's 2008 Server Stack-What's New and Who Cares?

By Michelle Savage

Related Articles

Add comment