Microsoft Migrates Internal Servers to 64-bit
daria42 writes "Microsoft says servers running the company's website and MSN Search and Messenger applications have been migrated to the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003. 'Our MSN search engine is actually built on several thousand systems running the x64 version of Windows,' a spokesperson said. In addition, 'the entire Microsoft.com site has been migrated, and we serve 30 million unique visitors every day.' According to the company, the Messenger servers handle about 70 million users."
Microsoft moved most of there servers to HP DL585 systems which are Opteron based.
They had a big press release about it not too long ago.
Before W2k was out, Microsoft migrated most internal, and everything external to W2k before it was gold. Before E2k3 was released, Microsoft was running it on all internal servers. Before W2k3 was released, Microsoft was running it on all internal and external servers. Before XP was released most workstations were upgraded to it. Microsoft has always been a very much proponent of "eating your own dog food". And yes when it goes gold Microsoft moves to that version and it's the same version sold to everyone else.
Indeed they are - they recently bought a pile of Sun Fire V20z and V40z dual/quad Opteron servers from Sun - you can even see the Sun and Microsoft engineers posing in front of the racks here.