Microsoft has started shipping a new version of its Windows server
software tuned for data centres as an interim release until its
.net operating system is ready
The company said it would stop supporting the Windows Datacenter
Server Limited Edition software 90 days after it ships the
manufacturer version of the Windows .net Datacenter Server. But
Microsoft said users who purchase Windows Datacenter Server Limited
Edition would receive a free upgrade to Windows .net Datacenter
Server.
One use for the new operating system is to prepare users for the
.net release. Al Gillen, research director of systems software with
IDC said, "Datacenter server customers typically are going to be
slow to move to any new technology." He suggested that the interim
release provides a way for users migrate to .net technology.
The 32-bit system is a follow-on to Microsoft's Windows 2000
Datacenter Server. Microsoft said it is aimed at users who deploy
Microsoft software to manage servers dealing with a heavy load of
transactions.
In a bid to demonstrate the scalability of the server, Microsoft
released performance figures for SAP. Running on a 32-way Unisys
ES7000 server configured with 32 Intel Pentium III Xeon 900 MHz
processors and 12 Gb memory, the new operating system achieved
26,000 concurrent SD benchmark users according to Microsoft. The
company said on the Unisys machine running Windows 2000 Datacenter
server limited edition and SQL Server, SAP R/3 delivered an average
dialog response time of 1.97 seconds per request. It claimed this
was a world record for the benchmark.