Introduction

The latest version of Windows Server, Windows Server 2012, benefits from Microsoft’s experience hosting large-scale applications such as Office 365 and Bing, as well as the Windows Azure platform for hosting customer and partner applications in Microsoft data centers. In addition, changes that primarily impact the Windows client OS, such as how the Windows OS boots or starts, also benefit the server editions. This combined knowledge and experience has led to substantial changes and improvements in key areas of security, networking, storage, virtualization, and server management. For example, changes in how Windows boots makes the overall loading of the OS for execution resistant to tampering by malicious software, including rootkits. Improvements to networking make it easier to team network interface cards to increase throughput and reliability.

Even improvements to long-used technologies, such as the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, not only make networking faster and more reliable but also improve reliability so that even SQL Server databases can be stored on SMB-connected storage hardware. These changes to networks illustrate how some technologies that formerly depended on specialized and often-expensive hardware can now be deployed on more readily available hardware to reduce costs.