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Microsoft Releases Windows Server 2012
Barence writes "Microsoft has released Windows Server 2012, letting businesses test it for 90 days on the Azure cloud platform for free. There are two versions of the main edition of Windows Server 2012: one with virtualization support and one without. The former, the Data Center version, costs $4,809, while the Standard edition will cost $882. There's also an Essentials version, which replaces Small Business Server, for $501 per server, and Windows Server 2012 Foundation, which will only be available pre-installed on hardware."
Ars has a detailed look at the new edition.
Dammit, VIRTUALIZATION.
When the hell is Mozilla going to put that in the default en_US dictionary already?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
... it will need Metro-style management tools!
.sig: No such file or directory
$4k to enable visualization support (that the code already is there for?)
Yet MS wonders why they have such a comparatively tiny market share of the server market...
It also allows for unlimtied virtualised Windows 2k12 installs under that one license...
Functionally, Standard and Datacenter are the same. Even things like clustering, which used to be the sole preserve of the higher-end Windows Server SKUs, are found in Standard. The only difference is the number of Windows Server virtual machines supported per license.
So again: The only difference between the Standard and Datacenter is the licensing. Same software, two licenses.
Each copy of Windows Standard includes TWO virtual instances for $800. Under the old agreement it was 1 License = 1 Copy.
Each copy of Datacenter includes UNLIMITED copies of Windows for $4800.
Or buy Essentials with NO virtualization for $500 (you can still run it on a virtual machine, but only ONE copy)
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
So bad and yet still miles better than any Linux based operating system or OS X.
That'll be why the world runs on Windows servers and no-one would think of putting any critical service on Linux.
(posting anonymous for obvious reasons)
It only took you three days. We were dealing with a screwy Microsoft Lync mobility issues whereby the iOS client just wouldn't work (but every other client under the sun worked). The only odd-ball thing about our setup was one of the four servers (at least four are required for any Lync deployment) was a Linux box acting as a reverse proxy. We opened up a ticket with Microsoft on April 30, 2012. The time spent with them since is a waste of time:
* We repeatedly requested the actual HTTP request/response data from the iphone's perspective, annotated with notes on how it differs from what the iphone expected. Every time we requested it, they provided us with the client's general iphone debug log (which was useless to us), even though we explained that it doesn't fulfill our request.
* We asked for details on what is expected of the Lync reverse proxy. They provided us with instructions on how to set up TMG. We replied that the provided information did not fulfill the request. Their response was a shrug and another link to the same instructions.
* We asked if there was anything specific to the iOS client that required ISA or TMG. They demurred on it, refused to research it, refused to acknowledge the bug for *four* months. I'm not exaggerating. It was August 31 when we inferred from the continued back and forth that the only way Microsoft can hope to grasp the problem is to make the reverse proxy an ISA server.
From this, I learned that Microsoft support really isn't much better than doing it yourself. They have no inside tricks, they have no way of getting a guru to weigh in on anything, and they hope that by sending you the same wrong information over and over they won't have to acknowledge faults in the product.
For my part, calling Microsoft support isn't an option any longer. It is a waste of time and money that could be better spent solving the problem myself.
So basically, Windows is the right tool for things that only run on Windows ... otherwise, use Linux.
That'll be why the world runs on Windows servers and no-one would think of putting any critical service on Linux.
The Oracle world (big business, government) is definitely running on Linux instead of Windows. With the decline of Unix running on "big iron", with the exception of IBM's RS/6000 and AIX being the last holdout, everyone is moving their enterprise, mission critical apps to Linux. Especially with Oracle themselves releasing a tweaked version of RHEL, Linux is an "officially supported" platform that even satisfies the corporate PHBs and bean counters.
I make a pretty good living porting Oracle enterprise databases and apps to Linux. Just a couple weeks ago, we ported a Windows-based Oracle WebLogic middleware server from Windows to OEL Linux running on the very same piece of hardware, and got a tenfold boost in performance. With results like that, business loves Linux now.
Granted, only server-side things on Linux are welcome in the business world. The desktop will sadly *never* be adopted in any significant numbers in any enterprise. All because Windows and Active Directory rule that market segment.
Haha.
On a serious note, though, you actually can run POSIX apps on Server 2012. NT has, since its inception, included support for POSIX APIs and filesystem behavior. These days it's called SUA (Subsystem for UNIX Applications) and a smallish but fully functional operating environment for it, called Interix, is available for free. The installer will also let you enable various tweaks such as SetUID/SetGID behavior and filesystem case sensitivity, things you can't get with Cygwin or the like. It's implemented as an NT subsystem, same as Win32, so the speed is basically native as well. Interix comes with a working build toolchain, plus you can get a package manager for a repository of precompiled software and updates from http://suacommunity.com./
I'm not sure I'd advocate adopting it at this point if you haven't already - MS has been making moves toward discontinuing support for some years now, and it appears to no longer be in any of the client editions but Enterprise - but it exists, and it works. MS themselves used it to host Hotmail on Apache before they ported it to run on IIS. I use it (on client) both for various utilities that I prefer the POSIX versions of (git and ssh and such, plus sometimes there is no Win32 version) and for bash (my primary shell).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
So what exactly does it do that similarly equipped Linux machines/vps' can't do that justify the cost?
* New resilient file system ReFS (think BtrFS when completed)
* Storage Spaces (think ZFS storage pools)
* SMB 3.0 - higher performance network transfer, transparent failover, SMB scaleout (multiple servers serve same shares and aggregates bandwidth), SMB Direct (efficient remote direct memory access), SMB Multichannel, Volume Shadow Service (VSS) for SMB file shares, SMB encryption, SMB Directory Leasing (negotiates and updates local caches of metadata over slow networks)
* Dynamic access control (claims and policy based access control). Think SELinux, grsecurity. Access control based on what application the user is running (sandboxing), from what type of device the user is accessing the resource, on other user attributes than security groups (e.g. who is the manager, what department does the user belong to etc), access control based on attributes of the file (e.g. classification, select words of a Word document)
* RemoteFX improvements, e.g. virtualized GPUs (can use local or remote shared GPUs during RDP sessions), remote low-latency multitouch.
* Direct Access over IPv4. Think hassle-free VPN.
* Hyper-V 3: ethernet cable live migration (neat trick) lets you migrate VMs off one server onto another server over the network without the servers sharing anything. Many Hyper-V manageability improvements. Crazy scalability, e.g. a 63-node Hyper-V cluster runs 4000 concurrent VMs simultaneously. Hyper-V replica.
* Server manager: Yes, a Metro (oops - "Modern") style management app for multiple servers. Integrates with response files and powershell workflow scripts to manage multiple computers (servers/workstations) at once - e.g. install new software, perform configure actions.
* PowerShell 3 with new features such as resilient remote connections (you can detach from a remote session and pick it up later/from another device), workflow scripts which can perform actions with suspend/restart/repeat semantics. No, not just "suspend process" - but actually persisting the state of a script to be continued later, e.g. after a computer restart (or from another machine).
* Thousands of new PowerShell cmdlets (many/most automatically derived from WMI providers) to control virtually anything on local or remote computers.
* Block sized data de-duplication
These are features I could find by googling. I'm sure there are more. Obviously not all of them will appeal to Linux enthusiasts. But still...
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
Wait, every single other client works, IOS doesnt, and your analysis is "Must be Microsoft's fault"? And you asked MS support for IOS details, and then wondered why they gave you the cold shoulder?
Seems to me youre better off bringing apple support in on this, or focusing on the "what is IOS doing wacky" rather than "what is IIS doing wacky".
That's utter nonsense. Windows Server Backup is about a billion times better then NTBackup. Pure image based backup, allowing multiple versions of files to be stored, Exchange aware, SQL aware and allowing individual files to be restored, easily. I would use WSBU over NTBackup any day of the week (and do). It works every time - and offers damn near instant bare metal recovery of corrupted servers. NTBackup, on the other hand, required you to rebuild from scratch and then manually restore files, apps, etc, painfully.
Just because you never learned how to use a tool doesn't make it bad. It is trivial to configure WSBU to backup individual components, such as system state, volumes or yes, even individual folders. Again - *you* not knowing how to do something doesn't make it impossible.
And for the obligatory Slashdot 2012: no, I am not paid or affiliated in anyway with Microsoft. Sometimes people like the changes they make because they actually tried them and found them better.