Future Directions and Considerations

Many organizations evaluating Windows Server 2008 will also want to evaluate the Hyper-V virtualization technology, which will not ship with the OS but will ship approximately six months later at nominal cost to Windows Server 2008 OS customers. Windows Server 2008 will also be Microsoft’s last 32-bit OS, and so it could become the standard baseline for organizations still running 32-bit hardware. Windows Server 2008 also introduces some unique compatibility considerations that organizations will need to consider before moving to the new OS on application servers.

Hyper-V Server Virtualization Coming

Server virtualization is so strategic to Microsoft that the company decided in 2004 to make virtualization an integral capability of the Windows OS rather than letting it remain an add-on. Server virtualization enables multiple operating systems to run concurrently on a single machine. Organizations use server virtualization for a variety of purposes, including server consolidation, creating isolated testing environments, and hosting legacy applications. Although Microsoft hoped to build this capability into Windows Server 2008, the virtualization team has decided that the feature is too critical to be rushed and therefore it will not be released with Windows Server 2008. Instead, Microsoft says it will add virtualization support, which it named Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V (formerly code-named Viridian), within 180 days of Windows Server 2008’s release to manufacturing.