Windows 7's Server Counterpart Takes a Bow at PDC

ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley once again lives up to her blog's "All About Microsoft" title, delivering the news that attendees at this week's Professional Developers' Conference (PDC) will also take home a pre-beta of Windows 7's server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2. Here's what's new in what's being characterized as a "minor" update:
- Windows Server 2008 R2 represents the end of 32-bit support in the Windows Server family; it's 64-bit only
- Windows Server 2008 R2 features version 2 of Hyper-V "bare metal" virtualization, which will include a new Live Migration feature for fault-tolerant failover
- PowerShell Version 2.0, which includes a more graphical interface than its predecessor
- .NET incorporated in Server Core
- Remote Desktop Services replaces Terminal Services
Is Windows Server 2008 R2 in your company's future? Microsoft hopes so. According to Foley, Microsoft is calling the pairing of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 "Better Together," with features such as BitLocker support for removable drives, BranchCache (hosted server caching) and others working better when both operating systems are in use.
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ProtoJMB
October 28, 2008 at 5:22pm
So if this is only going to be 08' R2, why the name change to Windows 7 for the next end user OS? Why not Vista Second Edition like they did with 98? The more I read about this, the more I get worried that this is just going to be a rehash in new cloths.
On the other hand, I am also thinking we have taken this the wrong way. Maybe Vista WASN'T Millenium redux, but maybe we are seeing the same situation we saw with Windows 98. Windows 98 itself wasn't THAT great, it was pretty buggy and crashed quite a bit. However Second Edition was one of the best OS's till XP came out. Either way, maybe 7 and 08 R2 will be pretty decent.
Now concerning 08 R2, I probably won't be running this puppy till I get new hardware. My Poweredge 600SC only has a Pentium 4, and a Socket 478 at that! So I will probably have to wait till I buy a complete new server, or maybe just recycle my current PC when I get Core i7.
Overall, this does look intruging, and I probably will want to make a move on it.
Also, is it me or are the paragraphs not breaking like they should?
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yogurt80
October 28, 2008 at 5:35pm
This is the way I feel too. I just bought a new notebook that has Vista Premium 64, and I'm not going to fork down $200 in a year for an upgrade to 7, which seems so far to be very similar to vista. They should offer low price upgrade versions (and I don't mean these aweful $25 or $50 discounts, I mean I should pay like $50 to upgrade my soon to be out of date OS).
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zeringue
October 28, 2008 at 5:15pm
This is great news. I suppose VMWARE is concerned now, if MS has perfected the live migration. There are few things slicker than vMotion. If i can get the same features, same performance for 28 dollars more for Hyper-v from a sku without hyper-v, i am in heaven. Recent quotes for VMWARE VI 3.5 enterprise runs about 5000 dollars plus 3 yr platinum suport for 3500dollars per pair of procs, then windows licenses. DataCenter server 2008 is about 2800 dollars per proc and unlimited server licenses for virtuals. VMware should be worried, MS' Hype-v is a good first version product, and runs serveral server 2003 and vista clients very well with minimal issues.














