Danny
Bradbury looks at the IT roadmap for the spring. Microsoft
unleashes its long-awaited Windows Server 2003, Intel adds its
heavy guns to the 64-bit market, and the latest version of Linux
appeals even more to the enterprise.
April:
Windows Server 2003
Originally meant to
ship late last year, Microsoft's next-generation server operating
system has also changed its name. Originally .Net Server, the
product is now called Windows Server 2003, but Microsoft
executives insist the company is not backing away from its .net web
services initiative with the name change. Although it will include
the .net framework, the real interest lies in the system's
infrastructure, scalability, and security improvements.
The Active Directory
system (think of it as an address book for all your computer
resources and the people that use them) benefits the most from the
changes. Traditionally difficult to implement, Microsoft has worked
on making it simpler to manage. For instance, trust relationships
can be built between "forests" within the directory structure’s
hierarchy, which mirror the hierarchy within a global business
Replicating the
Active Directory database ensures people at different offices can
log into servers and access applications and data securely. But in
the past this replication has been fraught with problems since the
database often proved too large to copy efficiently over a network.
Directory replication has now been made easier. First, users can
copy it onto a CD-ROM or tape then install directly at a remote
site. Another feature in Windows 2003 is link-value replication
individual changes to a directory are copied across a network,
rather than the whole directory.
In Internet
Information Server 6.0, the company has worked hard to solve the
security problems that plagued the Windows 2000 web server.
Applications are now divided into their own memory spaces, with
multiple application pools all running software independently. IIS
is turned off by default, and only serves static content unless
otherwise specified. Such things can be managed using an
application management console now included in the system. The
infamous buffer overflow problem that rendered the system
vulnerable to Internet attacks has been addressed with the
inclusion of a protective software marker on the stack that stops
data sent across the Internet from being read into executable
memory.
Expect to see
management improvements including an emergency management service
function to control a headless machine if it blue-screens.
Hot-pluggable PCI and hot-addable RAM aim to minimise downtime,
planned or otherwise. The Enterprise version of the server will
scale to eight nodes in a single box, rather than Windows 2000’s
four. If that's not enough power for you, clustering wizards are
now included to make it easier to string machines together.
www.microsoft.com
May: 64-bit
server processors
Users can expect to
see 64-bit computing to hit the headlines this month thanks to
Intel's release of Madison, the latest processor in its 64-bit
Itanium range. The chip is expected to have six megabytes of level
three cache, compared with three megabytes on the previous McKinley
Itanium 2 processor, and will run at 1.5 GHz.
With 4-500 million
transistors squeezed on to a smaller 374 square millimetre
footprint, the chip,promises to run faster than its predecessors
and will be the latest salvo in Intel's war against rival Sun
Microsystems, which has its own 64 bit UltraSparc architecture.
Analysts at CPU market watcher Insight64 predict there will be a
50% performance boost.
AMD is releasing
Opteron, its own 64-bit server-based processor, for release at
roughly the same time as Madison. As part of the underlying Hammer
architecture, AMD has introduced a technology called x86-84, which
extends the existing x86 architecture to support instructions for
64-bit computing.
Opteron will also
use HyperTransport, a very fast bus technology that AMD is pushing
as an alternative to PCI. Supporting server configurations of up to
eight processors, Opteron will sell into the enterprise server
space, but also be available for low-end servers such as firewalls,
and high-end workstation users.
www.intel.com
www.amd.com
June: Linux
2.6
While the latest
version of the open-source Linux operating system is 2.6, some
Linux high-ups have been debating whether to call it version 3.0
because of the breadth of new features it contains. This latest
business-focused release promises faster data transfers to and from
hardware such as CD-Rom drives and Flash memory.
Other improvements
make it more scalable thanks in part to the inclusion of a
replacement LinuxThreads library designed to improve multi-tasking.
The operating system will include significantly better I/O
performance, too. Other possible features for inclusion in the new
version of Linux are dynamic system probes and an enterprise volume
management system. Look out for a workload manager, too.
The end result of
all these improvements is that Linux will be better equipped to
climb up the enterprise ladder. It threatens Microsoft increasingly
at the low end and, if the features described above continue to
become stable part of the operating system, the low cost of Linux -
along with Microsoft's increasingly draconian licensing policies -
will be enough to drive more customers to consider the open-source
operating system as a serious contender.
www.linux.org