back to article Microsoft claims Windows Server 2012 is 'first cloud OS'

Microsoft has formally launched its Windows Server 2012 operating system, which Satya Nadella, president of Redmond's Servers and Tools Business, is dubbing the company's first "cloud OS." "This is perhaps the biggest release of our server products in history, bigger than NT," he said at the launch event on Tuesday. "I was …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Obviously

    cue lots of

    'Meh'

    'They would say that wouldn't they?'

    'They can tear server 2003 from my dead hands'

    Comments.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Obviously

      You forgot about the local intelligentsia swanning in with the ever present 'Windblows sucks' and 'Micro$hit are crap' and 'Meh. Linux rulez' comments.

      Oh how I prey this time it is different!

      As for me, I'll look forward to giving it a spin.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Obviously

        Fortunately we have posters like you to raise the bar.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Late

    MS is 10 months late. Oracle used the "First Cloud OS" claim for Solaris 11 in November:

    http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1356190

    1. RICHTO
      Mushroom

      Re: Late

      But Microsoft actually delivered....I dont see any shared nothing cross network VM cloud migration capabilities in Solaris...

      I cant see why anyone buys Solaris anymore. Either Linux or Windows server will do the same and cost much less.

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: Late

        Ey RICHTO how ya doing?

        I see ya'r still hailing from the Microsoft Dimension of Wishful Thinking, one of the spacetime bubbles in the marketing string landscape that can only be attained through transcendantal medication and whalesong.

        Keep it together now.

      2. Kebabbert

        Re: Late

        RICHTO

        "...But Microsoft actually delivered...."

        You are too funny. MS have not delivered anything yet. Oralce 11 has been out there for a while, how long has MS offering been out?

        And there are cloud OSes out there, for instance at Joyent which uses an OpenSolaris derivative called SmartOS

        http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2011/09/15/standing-up-smartdatacenter/

        1. RICHTO
          Mushroom

          Re: Late

          Yes they have. Server 2012 went RTM on August the 1st and has been available to download from Microsoft Volume Licensing site since August 15th, and is Generally Available today.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Late

        "Either Linux or Windows server will do the same and cost much less."

        It is funny that you throw Microsoft in with Linux as a low cost alternative to Solaris. As Linux is considerably lower cost than either, why would you use MS Server or Solaris? Solaris doesn't make sense anymore. Microsoft never made sense. There are Unix functional advantages over Linux, e.g. patch management, reliability, clustering features, full workload partitioning, performance (Power - AIX anyway). There are no functional advantages Microsoft has over Linux... and it certainly can't hold a candle to Unix.

        1. HipposRule
          Thumb Down

          Re: Late

          God, I hate people who think Linux is 'free'. If you're in an environment where for compliance reasons you have to have a supported OS it is not free. In our case SuSE works out more expensive over 3 years than MS (without software assurance) - and that's just in software/maintenance costs. OK, SA will push MS over the top (not by much though) but pretty much all we SA are CALs as we don't tend to upgrade servers every 4 years.

        2. RICHTO
          Mushroom

          Re: Late

          Linux is FAR more expensive than Windows Server. Have you looked at the licensing costs for Enteprrise Linux lately? Also it costs far more to support with a higher TCO.

          Windows Server also has massive advantage over Linux distributions. Roughly a tenth of the security vulnerabilities for starters, and it also has many many enterprise features that Linux doesnt, for instance thin provisioning, deduplication and mutipath SMB.

          1. Miek
            Trollface

            Re: Late

            "Windows Server also has massive advantage over Linux distributions. Roughly a tenth of the security vulnerabilities for starters, and it also has many many enterprise features that Linux doesnt, for instance thin provisioning, deduplication and mutipath SMB." -- Anything your Windows Server can do my Linux Server does better!

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Trollface

              Re: Late

              "Anything your Windows Server can do my Linux Server does better!"

              Anything your Linux server can do, my BSD server does better!

              1. Miek
                Linux

                Re: Late

                You little Devil!

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Late

                  I do apologise, but the comment was begging to be made :)

                  1. Miek
                    Linux

                    Re: Late

                    @Mike Hock

                    It was a BSD based Joke, isn't the mascot a little devil?

                    1. Anonymous Coward
                      Anonymous Coward

                      Re: Late

                      @Miek

                      Indeed, and that fact was not lost on me. I just felt compelled to apologise for any, er, disrespectful levity that may have been perceived in my remark.

                      Now I must dash back to the world of 'You are not allowed to ask sensible questions, let alone idiotic ones. Either way, just sod off & RTFM' i.e. BSD community forums :)

                      1. Miek
                        Thumb Up

                        Re: Late

                        "Indeed, and that fact was not lost on me. I just felt compelled to apologise for any, er, disrespectful levity that may have been perceived in my remark." -- No apology necessary, I quite enjoyed the remark XD

                        1. Anonymous Coward
                          Anonymous Coward

                          Re: Late

                          Wasn't Plan-9, introduced in 1992, the first Cloud OS?

                          And Microsoft already said its Azure product was first Cloud OS. No one told the server division apparently.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Late

      True, the "cloud OS" (presumably meaning with virtualization included) has already been used by Oracle. MS claiming to be "cloud" anything is absurd. It took VMware becoming huge before they even figured out that people might want to virtualize their data center full of 10% utilized MS servers. Now that they have included a hypervisor, we are supposed to be impressed?

    3. Keep Refrigerated
      Mushroom

      Re: Late

      Doesn't matter who says it when...

      In 3 years time Apple will release "iCloudOS", declare it to be the *1st* cloud OS and then start suing VMware, Google, Microsoft, Oracle and RedHat for infringing on it's Cloud design patents. It will mostly win these lawsuits in the US and the media will report that VMware et al. were finally proven to have stolen Apple's ideas for cloud desktops.

      Fanbois will squeal how this proves Apple was the first and all the others should stop copying. El Reg will write an article quoting some tripe from Florian Mueller about how this is going to cost Google big time. Andrew Orlowski will follow up with an article about how this proves design patents are good for the world and will help innovation.

      Amirite?

      1. Miek
        Linux

        Re: Late

        Clairvoyant.

  3. Nate Amsden

    10 months late?

    More like 3 years - vmware used that term in 2009

    http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/cloud/VMW_09Q2_WP_Cloud_OS_P8_R1.pdf

    I'm sure someone else used it before them...

  4. Dana W

    Ah yes, Microsoft. Never one to cloud the issue with the facts.

  5. b166er

    So thanks for the news, but what exactly makes it cloudy?

    1. RICHTO
      Mushroom

      These sort of things make it cloudy:

      http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/08/22/software-defined-networking-enabled-in-windows-server-2012-and-system-center-2012-sp1-virtual-machine-manager.aspx

      http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/05/03/building-cloud-infrastructure-with-windows-server-2012-and-system-center-2012-sp1.aspx

      http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/04/16/introducing-windows-server-8-hyper-v-network-virtualization-enabling-rapid-migration-and-workload-isolation-in-the-cloud.aspx

      1. Billl
        FAIL

        re: These sort of things make it cloudy:

        http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/08/22/software-defined-networking-enabled->in-windows-server-2012-and-system-center-2012-sp1-virtual-machine-manager.asp

        Solaris - Zones -- Check

        http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/05/03/building-cloud-infrastructure-with-windows-server-2012-and-system-center-2012-sp1.aspx

        I didn't read this whole link, but it just looks like a whitepaper on how to setup clouds using Windows?

        That's not a feature, it's a whitepaper!

        Give me a second to search on a Solaris Cloud Whitepaper....

        Yes, there's some:

        http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/documentation/whitepapers-1536169.html

        Solaris - Cloud Whitepaper - Check

        http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/documentation/o11-106-sol11-cloud-501066.pdf

        Network virtualization. Really? Microsoft's delivered where Solaris has not?

        Please see:

        http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/documentation/o11-137-s11-net-virt-mgmt-525114.pdf

        Solaris - Network virtualization - Check

        So, could you please comment on where Microsoft has delivered and Solaris has not?

        1. RICHTO
          Mushroom

          Re: re: These sort of things make it cloudy:

          Solaris can only do SDN on a per host basis, not transparently across multiple sites.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      What makes it cloudy

      It comes from a long line of vaporware...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "So thanks for the news, but what exactly makes it cloudy?"

      Microsoft discovering virtualization... like two decades after Unix and four decades after mainframe.

    4. Silverburn
      Thumb Up

      My thoughts exactly. +1.

      And for my secure Datacentre why would I want "cloud" anyway?

      Personally, I'd much rather see a commercially available "hardened at the factory" fork, or a "hardened" option on the installer.

  6. cmrayer
    FAIL

    It's working now, oh no it isn't....

    They can't even make the errors user friendly!

    Server Error in '/' Application.

    Runtime Error

    Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

    Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a <customErrors> tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This <customErrors> tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".

    <!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->

    <configuration>

    <system.web>

    <customErrors mode="Off"/>

    </system.web>

    </configuration>

    Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's <customErrors> configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.

    <!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->

    <configuration>

    <system.web>

    <customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="mycustompage.htm"/>

    </system.web>

    </configuration>

    1. RICHTO
      Mushroom

      Re: It's working now, oh no it isn't....

      As it says, thats a security restriction. Either turn the restriction off as per the detailed instructions, or create the same error from the local console....

  7. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Coffee/keyboard

    "Windows NT, which ushered in the era of client/server"

    Pffft... Ackpbth....

    It was neither the first, nor did it really work. Well, it gave us file sharing and printer sharing... which we had on the Mac network already. Meanwhile real client/server was done command-line-wise on the unix host and using X.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Nutella...

      Is the same marketing droid who (in his keynote presentation at WPC Toronto) made the hilarious assertion that Microsoft "birthed the client server era". Regard the rest of his announcement as being equally accurate.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Nutella...

        To be fair, they did birth the era of charging you 10x as much for the same code by sticking "server" in the name and adding a registry key that limited the number of IP connections

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Nutella...

          @Yet another...

          Actually MS were the first cheap alternative to the stranglehold of Big Iron proprietary hardware/OS stacks. If you think that MS server OSes are expensive, you've clearly never seen UNIX server OSes.

          Also, look at the support costs for, say, RHEL, server is much more expensive than workstation.

  8. BozNZ
    Meh

    bit of a whinge...

    Only been away from windows server admin since server 2003, but the newer server GUIs look like they've been designed by a committee as I totally couldnt find out how to find anything on the server 2008 GUI I has too look at the other day when all the normal guys were away, had to google everything! even basic things like the event log took a million more mouse clicks to open..

    Not sure I like the direction MS is going, hope 2012 is more logical

    1. N2

      Re: bit of a whinge...

      "Not sure I like the direction MS is going, hope 2012 is more logical"

      Don't hold you're breath, with MS its 'new ways to do familiar tasks' which is meaningless, what's really needed is 'familiar ways to do new tasks'.

  9. nuked
    FAIL

    With...

    .. big-budget decision making resting solely in the hands of the unelightened few, it is irrelevant how impressive or accurate MS' claims are. They will be judged on their worse-than-appalling ability to provide even a remotely-secure retail OS.

  10. hugh wanger
    Pint

    RICHTO, console yourself in the fact that Unix is dieing. x86 + Windows will kill it as long as Moores Law continues.

    Windows Server is actually pretty solid these days, and cheap as chips compared to AIX kit and anything from Oracle costs a kings ransome.

    Non argument. From The Register today:

    "Unix systems based on RISC or Itanium processors accounted for $2.15bn in revenues in the second quarter, down 17.9 per cent."

    Dodo :)

    x86 was over 9billion by comparison. Big Iron is a minority sport, which will become less and less used as Windows + x86 will be enough for most workloads.

    1. cocknee
      Childcatcher

      hugh, are you the panto villain/troll?

      "Oh no it won't......................"

    2. Goat Jam
      WTF?

      At what point did you reach the conclusion that you have a clue?

      Was head trauma involved?

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Pint

        Bueno... Excellente!

        Sockpuppeting now?

        I said keep it together!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "x86 was over 9billion by comparison. Big Iron is a minority sport, which will become less and less used as Windows + x86 will be enough for most workloads."

      You are for some reason equating x86 with Microsoft - x86. Unix is declining, but it is because people are moving to Linux - x86, not Microsoft - x86.... As Microsoft loses their grip on the client side, Linux will become more and more prevalent.

      1. RICHTO
        Mushroom

        Microsoft's server market share is still growing though at the expense of UNIX:

        "Microsoft Windows server demand was up 1.3% year over year in 1Q12 with quarterly server hardware revenue totaling $5.9 billion representing 50.2% of overall quarterly factory revenue, up 1.8 points over the prior year's quarter.

        Unix servers experienced a revenue decline of 17.2% year over year to $2.2 billion representing 18.3% of quarterly server revenue for the quarter. IBM's Unix server revenue declined 3.7% year-over-year and gained 6.3 points of Unix server market share when compared with the first quarter of 2011. "

  11. regnik

    Is "cloud" not a little passé?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    VMware vSphere

    Having setup and used VMWare vSphere over a whole "cloud" platform, I fail to see what this may bring to the picture in terms of data centres over what we can achieve already. What is it's unique selling point?

    I do like Windows Server and the last version was really nice to use (especially on said VMWare environment). We had it on a number of VM's.

    1. RICHTO
      Mushroom

      Re: VMware vSphere

      Server 2012 does true multisite cloud networking without having to have spanned layer 2 VLANS......

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    NIce to see things haven't changed.

    Thier ultra scalable network OS isn't capable of delivering me the ISO at more than 700kb/sec.

    And the VHD download is an EXE.

    Sort of makes the idea of offering a VM image pointless really.

    I roll my eyes at thee, but I'll have to get used to it anyway - guess what my job is!

  14. Goat Jam

    Microsoft As Always Leading From Behind

    "I was here at Microsoft when we launched Windows NT, which ushered in the era of client/server"

    Do these twonks actually believe the crap they come out with?

    1. Test Man
      FAIL

      Re: Microsoft As Always Leading From Behind

      Calm down. It's just the usual marketing fluff. You never heard of companies talking themselves up? You must lead a sheltered life.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Microsoft As Always Leading From Behind

      I don't know, but maybe you should read some of your posting history before slinging mud.

  15. Synja

    Granted, MS doesn't have the best history of speeches...

    But I think in this case, given that Microsoft and their "people" were the target of the speech, that some of you are taking things out of context?

    Server 2012 *does* begin the era of Cloud systems there... much as NT started the client/server era at Microsoft.

    I highly doubt that Microsoft was claiming they invented the client/server OS or that they have the first cloud OS.

  16. Mitoo Bobsworth
    Pint

    Cloud - crap buzz word?

    Every time I hear cloud I think insubstantial volume of vapour with a tendency to either evaporate or piss down all over you. Is there not a better descriptor for this tech out there, or am I closer to the mark than I think?

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Haha

    Coming from the guys who needed to wait for VMware to become huge prior to adding virtualization to their OS, that is funny.

  18. HipposRule
    Unhappy

    The PITA with 2012 and VMware

    is that it doesn't appear to run on ESXi 4.x (and we've only just managed to get our infrastructure up to that) - tried to install it last week on a 4.1 standalone host and it errored with a screen that wasn't viewable.Looks as though we'll have to wait till we upgrade to 5.1 then

  19. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Way to generate comments on the reg...

    1. Publish misleading headline.

    2. Done.

    Headline:

    Microsoft claims Windows Server 2012 is 'first cloud OS'

    Sub-heading:

    " is dubbing the company's first "cloud OS."

    Companies First != First

    Still we all know people on here read the headline and go into meltdown.

  20. Silverburn
    Facepalm

    "This is perhaps the biggest release of our server products in history, bigger than NT,"

    What...you mean just like last time, when you said the exact same thing?

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: the biggest release of our server products

      In terms of "marketing dollars" or "DVD bloat", it undoubtedly *is* bigger than NT.

      Whether or not those are suitable metrics, I leave as an exercise for the customer.

  21. Steve 76

    Cloud®

    Does this mean another generic noun is now Microsoft's and Microsoft's alone?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cloud®

      Yes ! (they already have Clown®)

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