Microsoft Leak Reveals New Windows 10 Workstation Edition For Power Users (theverge.com)

Upon close inspection of the Windows 10 build that Microsoft accidentally pushed to insiders last week, several users are reporting discovering the reference of a new Windows 10 SKU. From a report: In a leaked slide, Microsoft describes the edition as "Windows 10 Pro for Workstation" with four main capabilities:
1. Workstation mode: Microsoft plans to optimize the OS by identifying "typical compute and graphics intensive workloads" to provide peak performance and reliability when Workstation mode is enabled.
2. Resilient file system: Microsoft's file system successor to NTFS, dubbed ReFS, is enabled in this new version, with support for fault-tolerance, optimized for large data volumes, and auto-correcting.
3. Faster file handling: As workstation machines are typically used for large data volumes across networks, Microsoft is including the SMBDirect protocol for file sharing and high throughput, low latency, and low CPU utilization when accessing network shares.
4. Expanded hardware support: Microsoft is also planning to allow Windows 10 Pro for Workstation on machines with up to 4 CPUs and a memory limit of 6TB. Windows 10 Pro currently only supports 2 CPUs.

Comments

Re:Great!

[TWX]

What got me laughing was the following:

Workstation mode: Microsoft plans to optimize the OS by identifying "typical compute and graphics intensive workloads" to provide peak performance and reliability when Workstation mode is enabled.

So, if workshation-mode gives us peak performance and reliability, then what the hell are we receiving now?

Also, in the Microsoft sphere, isn't it generally acknowledged that performance and reliability are usually at-odds with each other? Reliability comes from using older, established technologies that have had time to mature through fairly expensive development over the long-term. Performance tends to come from embracing the latest/greatest as soon as it's available, often without giving the technology time to mature to get the bugs worked out.

Malware for sale or rent

[WaffleMonster]

Given the fact windows is a spying and advertising platform who would pay extra to use it for "work" only to be hosed by forced data exfiltration and forced updates /w shoddy QA regardless of it's other capabilities?

I mean.. when they can't even manage... to force the right version of windows out the door.. when they resort to outright lies and trickery to get their way.. when their operating systems come pre-installed with a remote access trojan and stated policy granting them the right to exfiltrate your data from your system without asking or you even knowing about it who is going to want to roll the dice?

I fail to see the point of a new file system that comes with an absurd number of limitations including lack of transactions, EFS or inability to actually boot and run the operating system that makes it worthless for any "workstation" purpose other than a generic file server.

What would in be useful for a "workstation" would be for MS to get off their asses and fix long standing deficiencies in block level software RAID implementation.... Little things like deprioritizing and rate limiting rebuilds, not concurrently regenerating multiple volumes across the same physical disks, multi-disk read and block level recovery that does not fail the whole disk, ability to add more disks to achieve arbitrary levels of redundancy or read only I/O acceleration.

I don't really want to see a new IFS at this point unless it brings something really significant to the table. At the very least it must work transparently with everything with complete feature parity, must be bootable and it must optionally be versioned.