Microsoft proclaims Windows Server 2012 ‘first cloud OS’

05 Sep 2012

New virtualisation features offer clear challenge to hypervisor leader VMware

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 has gone on general release, with the company proclaiming the product the ‘first cloud OS’.

The first major upgrade to Windows Server since 2009 can be controlled remotely and comes with a host of new features designed to make it more suitable for large-scale data centre deployments.

“This is perhaps the biggest release of our server products in history, bigger than NT,” said Satya Nadella, president of the servers and tools business at Microsoft, at the product’s official launch. “I was here at Microsoft when we launched Windows NT, which ushered in the era of client/server, and we believe that Windows Server 2012 ushers in the era of the cloud operating system.”

In a live streaming presentation on 4 September, executives from the company provided a review of the product’s capabilities, hitting almost all the industry’s current buzzwords: consumerisation, bring your own device (BYOD), the cloud and big data. Above all, they were keen to stress how Windows Server 2012 will deliver secure and reliable access by workers to corporate data and applications, regardless of their location or the device they are using.

“You want to be able to connect to the world’s data,” Nadella said. “You want to be able to blend the data that you have in your enterprise with the world’s information to create new value.” The aim of many of the product’s enhancements is to provide a consistent user experience across private, public and hybrid cloud platforms.

In the fanfare surrounding the release of Windows Server 2012, there were some clear shots taken at VMware, say analysts.  While Microsoft commanded 26 percent of the global hypervisor market in 2011, VMware enjoyed a 58 percent share, according to IT market research company IDC – so references to Windows Server 2012’s hypervisor capabilities and potential in private cloud environments were heavily emphasised.  

Windows Server 2012, said Microsoft executives, will support 320 logical processors and 4 terabytes (TB) of physical memory per server, with 64 virtual processors per virtual machine, each scalable up to 1TB of memory in Hyper-V at no extra cost. Virtual disks, meanwhile, can scale up to 64TB, which is 32 times what the competition currently offers, claimed company executives. The product, they added, can virtualise 99 percent of all SQL databases.

Whether companies will be prepared to move away from the VMware hypervisor technology that many already have installed in their environments to Microsoft’s Hyper-V, which is included in Windows Server 2012, is less clear. Perhaps with that in mind, Microsoft launched a ‘Switch to Hyper-V’ programme back in July, designed to help customers along with that decision.

A survey of 70 early-adopter customers worldwide made some big claims for the new product: by using Windows Server 2012, they expect, on average, 52 percent reduction in downtime; 41 percent reduction in workload deployment time; and 15 hours of productivity saved per year, per employee. The vast majority (91 percent) expect a reduction in server administration labour and 88 percent expect a reduction in network administration labour.

Other IT vendors were keen to hitch their wagons to Server 2012, among them systems company Dell, semiconductor maker AMD and networking specialist Brocade. Dell is introducing a series of PowerEdge servers that will be pre-loaded with Windows Server 2012. These servers were launched earlier this year but will now be shipped with the new OS. AMD, meanwhile, has announced new AMD Opteron 4200 and 6200 series processors optimized to run Windows Server 2012. Brocade, meanwhile, has announced comprehensive fabric networking support for the product.

Microsoft, Dell and Brocade are all confirmed as exhibitors at IP EXPO 2012. This year’s event will also feature a Microsoft Theatre, where representatives of the company will discuss how Windows Server 2012, combined with Windows Azure and Windows 8 managed with System Center 2012, represents a modern platform for the world’s apps.