Microsoft Releases Systems Management Server 2003 SP1
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Microsoft released its first service pack for Systems Management Server 2003 with support for Windows XP SP2 and Virtual Server 2005.
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Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled the 2004 version of its Host Integration Server (HIS) product, which is designed to integrate IBM mainframes and servers with Windows systems.
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Microsoft plans to ship the first release candidate of Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2003 by year's end and will release a developer's kit for the high-performance computing version of Windows Server next month.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft released Windows Home Server (WHS) to manufacturing today, hitting the final milestone for software that will power several turnkey home servers that OEMs will put on the market in late September and early October. The move to RTM (release to manufacturing) means that Microsoft has wrapped up WHS and handed it off to its internal distribution teams and hardware partners, said Joel Sider, senior product manager. Those OEM partners grew by two today, as Iomega and Fujitsu-Siemens Computers were added to a list that already included Hewlett-Packard, Gateway, LaCie, and Medion. Details on the Fujitsu-Siemens and Iomega systems were scanty today, but the former will be a 500GB product with gigabit Ethernet, while the latter will contain up to four hot-swappable drives. "The main change from RC (release candidate) was that the domain for remote access is now homeserver.com," said Sider. "We also did some fine tuning and polishing and killed off the last few bugs." For the most part, however, the RC version was solid enough that few changes were necessary -- one of the reasons the team was able to shift the server software so quickly out of development and into distribution. "The team was very focused," said Sider, responding to a question about how WHS was able to move from public announcement to RTM in just over six months. "But simplicity was also job number one. We wanted to provide a really powerful but not endless feature set. We were being pretty conservative with what we were trying to achieve, something that I think helped us avoid 'feature creep.'" Sider declined to provide specific release dates for either the system builder version -- standalone software that will allow users to install WHS on older PCs -- or the various hardware products. But he did confirm that an evaluation edition would be available with the eval timing out after 120 days. As for existing testers -- more than 100,000 people have downloaded the beta and RC editions -- Microsoft hasn't decided whether it will offer them a discounted system builder. "We're thinking about it," Sider said. "That's been done before by Microsoft." Citing "early fall, late September and early October" as the likely ship dates for the first wave of WHS hardware -- led by HP's MediaSmart Server -- Sider said that WHS development would continue. "We'll keep moving forward," he said. "There will certainly be future versions of WHS."
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft released its first software designed specifically to manage virtual machines on a network ThursdayÂ and tweaked licensing for its system-management products to take into account virtualization. System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007, which has been in the works for about a year and a half, has been released to manufacturing and will be generally available in October as part of Microsoft's System Server Management Center suite of products, the company said. The new product is built on the same architecture as other products in the enterprise version of the suite -- which include Data Protection Manager, Operations Manager, and Configuration Manager -- and is aimed specifically at managing virtual machines in a data center that runs Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2, the current version of Microsoft's server virtualization technology, said Patrick O'Rourke, group manager, Windows Infrastructure. "Customers now can use the same tools to manage both virtual and physical assets [on the network]," he said. Microsoft also has changed the licensing model for its for its System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise, making it available for $860 per host server -- which means the actual server that hosts any instances of virtual software -- plus two years of Microsoft's Software Assurance plan. Previously, System Center software was licensed per device being managed in the data center, O'Rourke said. The new licensing should make managing virtualized environments with Microsoft's software more cost-effective for customers, he said. Microsoft has been developing and fine-tuning its virtualization strategy over the past several years to keep up with virtualization leader VMWare and others, as well as to serve the needs of large customers who increasingly are using virtualization in their data centers. However, the company's strategy has predictably hit some road bumps. Microsoft is developing next-generation virtualization technology, code-named Viridian, that takes advantage of virtualization-optimized processors from Intel and AMD and will help keep the company up to speed with competitors. However, though Viridian will be a component of Windows Server 2008, it won't be available until six months after that new OS is released. And because Microsoft recently pushed back the release of Windows Server 2008 to the first quarter of next year, Viridian's release is nearly a year away. The company also decided earlier this year to pull out some originally planned features of Viridian due to timing concerns. In the meantime, customers can use a combination of Microsoft's stand-alone Virtual Server and its System Center products to install and manage both virtual and physical machines in the data center. Microsoft also is planning a mid-market version of Virtual Machine Manager, called Workgroup edition, for release in January. The software will cost $499 per host server. Microsoft also plans to extend the capabilities of the next version of Virtual Machine Manager so that it not only supports Windows Server virtualization technologies but also third-party virtualization from VMware and XenSource Inc., O'Rourke said. A beta of that software is expected to be available around the same time as Windows Server 2008, and Microsoft plans to update its roadmap then as well.
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Microsoft Corp. wants to deliver its Windows Server 2003 update, known as &quot;R2,&quot; in 2005. To make sure it will be able do so, the company is prioritizing its feature list and moving some R2 features into later releases.
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Microsoft is poised to deliver a new interim build of its Windows Server 2003 SP1 (Service Pack 1) to testers. Windows Server 2003 SP1 is the server complement to the recently released Windows XP SP2 (Service
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Microsoft and Dell are looking to merge their Systems Management Server and OpenManage suites to create a powerful, easy and cost-effective server management solution.
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Released to manufacturing Microsoft this morning released Service Pack 1 for Vista and Windows Server 2008 to manufacturers.â¦
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Microsoft gives us an update on Windows Home Server
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With an absence of fanfare, but otherwise on schedule, Microsoft opened up its download page for Service Pack 2 of Windows Server 2003, both 32-bit and 64-bit editions. Perhaps most importantly, enterprises won't have to wait until Longhorn to be able to utilize Windows Deployment Services, the company's new image-based system for pre-composed, remote Windows installations.
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Microsoft Tuesday released a handful of software products that are key elements in its drive to develop a comprehensive management platform for Windows.
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US software maker Microsoft has announced the availability of a combination of tools, prescriptive guidance, training and technical support for customers that are considering migrating from Novell NetWare to Microsoft Windows Server 2003.
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Microsoft confirmed Thursday that its invite-only group of about 15,000 testers has had the final version of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) for the past two weeks.Other Vista users, however, will have to wait until March to obtain a legal copy of the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) version of Vista SP1, the company reiterated.According to a Microsoft spokeswoman, the build designated Vista SP1 RC Refresh 2, which was seeded to testers on Jan. 24, is identical to&#160;the code that company developers shipped&#160;out the door on Monday as RTM.&quot;In final stages of a product, Microsoft likes to get as much validation as possible before releasing,&quot; the spokeswoman said in an e-mail. &quot;The release candidate ended up being a high enough quality to be approved to release to manufacturing.&quot;The shift in nomenclature, but not bits, is common. Eventually, a vendor must approve a build as &quot;gold code,&quot; at which point that edition becomes the shipping version. Last November, for example, Apple Inc. issued a test build of Mac OS X 10.5.1 to developers one day, then called it good to go and posted it for download the next.However, users who weren&#39;t part of the SP1 testing group must wait until March to get their hands on the update, the spokeswoman repeated today. In five to six weeks -- mid-March according to Microsoft -- the service pack will be offered via Windows Update as a 65MB optional update and posted to Download Center as a 450MB stand-alone installer that supports five languages. A month later, in mid-April, Windows Update will automatically download and install SP1 on Vista-equipped PCs whose users have set Automatic Updates to do hands-off updating.Subscribers to the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) and TechNet will get a slight jump on the general public. &quot;In early March, MSDN and TechNet subscribers will be able to get the &#39;Windows Vista with SP1&#39; full DVD,&quot; the same spokeswoman said in another e-mail. The updated operating system will be offered to MSDN and TechNet subscribers through their respective download centers.Microsoft is holding SP1 so that it can identify device drivers that won&#39;t reinstall -- as they must -- during the service pack update process. On Monday morning, Mike Nash, vice president of Windows product management, said that while SP1 had met the RTM criteria, it would not be available for several weeks because of the&#160;driver problems.That generated a firestorm of criticism from users, who vented by posting over 200 comments to Nash&#39;s announcement, calling the decision &quot;stupid&quot; and &quot;one of the all-time worst moves&quot; by Microsoft.Judging by the tone of nearly 120 comments left on Microsoft&#39;s official TechNet blog, IT professionals and developers are even angrier. The subscribers called the withholding of SP1 &quot;boneheaded&quot; and a &quot;slap in the face,&quot; or dubbed it &quot;the Vista SP1 RTM Debacle.&quot; Others questioned the value of their TechNet subscriptions, admitted that they had had to download a pirated copy using BitTorrent so that they could start testing, and said they would postpone Vista deployments for months because of the delay.Several wondered why reviewers in the press had the finished bits before they did.But a commenter identified only as Joe put it most succinctly: &quot;This is the lamest decision since Microsoft Bob. I get this the same time as my mom?&quot;The backlash may have gotten through to Microsoft. On Monday night, Kathy Dixon, the TechNet Plus team member who normally writes the blog, said that she was looking into the possibility of moving up the availability date of SP1. But as of Thursday night, she had no solution for users. &quot;I have escalated this and am continuing to push internally for a solution ASAP,&quot; Dixon wrote around 8 p.m. EST. &quot;Please hang in there, I should have something more specific soon.&quot;Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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com. Labeling 2005 a &quot;breakout year&quot; for its server operating-system line, Microsoft on Monday laid out a revised road map for Windows Server 2003 that promised the release of the second edition in the last half and a service pack in the first.
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Microsoft on Wednesday made available the latest builds of its 64-bit version of Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise, that each features a handful of new improvements including the Luna user interface, Windows Messenger, Windows ...
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On Wednesday Microsoft announced that it had completed the development of Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005, its next-generation operations management server product, which will ship in separate versions aimed at enterprises and mid-sized businesses