30 April 2009

Bill Laing, corporate vice president of the Windows Server and Solutions Division, explains how Windows Server 2008 R2 can help enterprises save money on energy and data use.

What are the most notable new features in Windows Server 2008 R2?
We’re building on our state-of-the-art virtualisation technology with a newer version of Hyper-V, as well as some new features that customers have been asking us for, such as Live Migration. This feature, which is included at no additional charge, lets you move a running workload from one machine to another in milliseconds, with no loss of performance from the user’s point of view.

On the management front, Windows Server 2008 R2 will be a foundation for data centre automation. We are also making improvements to help customers reduce and better manage their data centre power consumption. Windows Server 2008 R2 can automatically turn processor cores on and off based on system workload, or reduce power consumption by adjusting processor speed.

Another area of innovation is the ability to more easily administer and support Web applications on a streamlined Web platform. We’ve integrated Internet Information Services 7.0 manager extensions to make it simpler to administer local and remote Web servers, and added support for ASP.NET and PHP to the Server Core.

Finally, we continue to invest in scalability and we’ve built in support for up to 256 logical processors, which will allow customers to more fully exploit today’s powerful CPUs, deploying only the features they choose and scaling those solutions to meet their organisation’s needs.

Did any other features in R2 result from customer suggestions?
We know the economy is top of mind for every business right now, which has put more pressure on IT budgets. With Windows Server 2008 R2, we really focused on this issue. For example, giving customers more control over power consumption was an area we heard feedback on. Another suggestion was to incorporate Windows PowerShell support on the Server Core installation option. So we now offer the ability to run Windows PowerShell on Server Core with full support for ASP.NET and PHP.

Are there any advantages to deploying Windows 7 with Windows Server 2008 R2?
Definitely. Because Windows Server 2008 R2 is being developed in tandem with the Windows 7 code, it has several features that are designed to work better with computers running Windows 7. For example, we have a new technology called Branch Cache. Any time a document is retrieved by a client in a company’s branch office, Branch Cache keeps a copy in the branch, so if another client in the same office wants to retrieve that document, it can be served up locally instead of across the WAN.

The result is a significant reduction in bandwidth use between corporate offices and branch sites, and a huge potential cost saving because most organisations pay for bandwidth by the byte. It also gives branch offices a degree of autonomy in case the link to headquarters is severed.

Remote Desktop Services (RDS), formerly Terminal Services, is another example. We expanded RDS in Windows Server 2008 R2 so you can run the desktop or applications in the data centre while your users can be anywhere.

Another feature, DirectAccess, allows remote users to securely connect to their work environment as if they were on the corporate LAN. IT administrators can fully manage remote PCs securely, as if they were on-premise, without using a VPN.

Why did you produce only a 64-bit version of R2?
Today, 64-bit processors have become the industry standard for systems ranging from the most scalable servers to desktop PCs. Like Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 will provide parity for 32-bit applications with something called Windows on Windows, or WOW. Essentially what we do is emulate the 32-bit, x86 architecture in a seamless way.

R2 also supports more than 64 processors, so customers can take advantage of advancements in hardware. Coupled with SQL Server 2008, this enables an optimum use of hardware to parallelise tasks and boost performance.

What’s next for Windows Server products?
We recently released Windows Server 2008 SP2 to Technology Adoption Programme customers for evaluation. We’re encouraging developers to try out the pre-beta Windows Server 2008 R2 code, known as Milestone 3. Our Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Essential Business Server 2008 are all-in-one solutions that address key small and midsize customer pain points by making enterprise-class IT accessible, affordable and less complex.


This article first appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Prime magazine.

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