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Microsoft has hit the final milestone in the long and rocky road to Windows Server 2008, announcing Feb. 4 that it has released to manufacturing the final code for that product.
The software maker will also issue customer advice and guidance about upgrading, as well as consolidated information on the upgrade tools it will offer to help with this.
The release to manufacturing marks the end of almost five years that it has taken Microsoft to get Windows Server 2008 out the door, following the release of Windows Server 2003 in April 2003. Microsoft made the updated Windows Server 2003 Release 2 available in December 2005.
Microsoft had initially hoped to ship Windows Server “Longhorn” and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 at the same time-in the second half of 2007-but the release of the server software was delayed.
Microsoft will launch Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 at a wave of events titled “Heroes happen {here}” beginning Feb. 27 in Los Angeles.
In an interesting turn of events, Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1 could still ship at the same time, as Vista SP1 is expected to be released before the end of March. But that is unlikely as the company wants the focus to be on the three new products.
Microsoft’s virtualization hypervisor, known as Hyper-V, has also been pushed out as a result of the delays in the server software and is now expected to ship within 180 days of Windows Server 2008.
eWEEK Labs tests Windows Server 2008 virtualization.
“When Windows Server 2008 ships, those versions that have Hyper-V will include the beta bits for that, and those will be updated to the final version when that ships within 180 days,” Brad Anderson, Microsoft’s general manager for the Windows and Enterprise management division, said in November.
Wait for Viridian?
As a result, some commentators, such as John Abbott, an analyst with The 451 Group, have said they expect some customers to wait until they see Viridian, Microsoft’s virtualization software, before migrating to the new server software from Windows 2003.
Microsoft will release eight versions of Windows Server 2008, three of which will include Hyper-V.
Microsoft will also release the Hyper-V Server, a stand-alone, hypervisor-based server virtualization product that complements the Hyper-V technology in Windows Server 2008 and allows customers to virtualize workloads onto a single physical server.
The server software is already widely deployed on thousands of servers inside Microsoft and across a range of workloads-it already powers the Microsoft.com Web site-although the company has shied away from recommending that customers run the software in production environments, Joseph Landes, Microsoft’s director of product management for Windows Server 2008, told eWEEK previously.
More than 100 companies from 30 countries are participating in the rapid deployment TAP (Technology Adopter Program), and deployments of the server software have accelerated after the first release candidate became available in September, Landes said.
In addition, more than 140,000 IT professionals and developers have already been trained on Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008, while 2,000 have been certified on Windows Server 2008, he said.
Klaus Merle, director of the computing center at the University of Mainz in Germany, is a Windows Server 2008 TAP partner, which allowed him to give input into the development of the product from the outset.
This included asking for the features he wanted and being able to deploy the technology early, putting the university at the bleeding edge, he told eWEEK in a recent interview.
“We have been deploying the software in our production environment since April 2007 and have had no major issues with it since then, as we first tested it extensively in the lab,” Carsten Allendorfer, who leads the systems department at the university, told eWEEK.
Microsoft executives are anticipating that the release of Windows Server 2008 and the other products will be good for its bottom line in 2008.
Last July, at its Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver, Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer, said, “I smell money in fiscal year 2008. With Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 all coming out over this next year, I see 2008 as the year in which we accelerate the monetization of this innovation.”