Tag Archives: Windows Server 8

Windows Server 8 is Now Officially Windows Server 2012

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Windows Server 8 beta was released along with the release of Windows 8 Consumer Preview.Yesterday we reported about the official announcement of the Windows 8 SKU’s with 2 editions for the x86 systems while 1 for the ARM version,with two more editions for Country specific SKU’s and the Enterprise edition.

Microsoft has now officially named the next version of Windows Server,so Windows Server 8 is now officially Windows Server 2012.The next server edition from Microsoft is expected to be released alongside Windows 8 which is expected to be released in the 4th Quarter of 2012.

At the  Microsoft Management Summit, Corporate Vice President Brad Anderson spoke to nearly 5,000 IT professionals about their opportunity to deliver fast, reliable services with cloud computing.

He talked about the Windows 8 Server Features and how cloud computing would be beneficial for the IT Sectors,

“Cloud computing gives IT professionals an opportunity to increase their strategic value to their businesses while building new skills,” Anderson said. “Microsoft’s private cloud solutions help IT professionals become cloud innovators for their companies, managing and delivering the applications people need to be productive across private, hybrid and public clouds.”

At the event he also provided a preview of how the Windows Server 2012 will make Microsoft’s private cloud  more powerful than ever before.So with the new and improved features of the latest server edition and hype of its desktop version counterpart(Windows 8) we can expect more IT professionals to embrace the upcoming Windows Servers when they launch later this year.

Checkout the Press Release for More Details.

Microsoft Details Online Backup Service for Windows Server 8

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Windows Server 8 beta was released along with the release of Windows 8 Consumer Preview.The server version of operating system is also expected to be released later this year.

Detailing about its Online Backup Services for Windows Server 8 on their official blog post,Microsoft revealed some of the detailed features of the Online Backup Services on Windows Server 8  which allows files and folders to be backed up and recovered from the cloud in order to provide off-site protection against data loss due to disasters allowing the admins to back up and protect critical data.It uses the Windows Azure platform specifically  Windows Azure blob storage for storing customer data.

Image Credits[Microsoft]

Here are some of the key features of the Backup Services

  • Simple configuration and management. The backup service integrates with the familiar Windows Server Backup utility in order to provide a seamless backup and recovery experience to a local disk, or to the cloud.
  • Block level incremental backups. The Microsoft Online Backup Agent performs incremental backups by tracking file and block level changes and only transferring the changed blocks, hence reducing the storage and bandwidth utilization. Different point-in-time versions of the backups use storage efficiently by only storing the changes blocks between these versions.
  • Data compression, encryption and throttling. The Microsoft Online Backup Agent ensures that data is compressed and encrypted on the server before being sent to the Microsoft Online Backup Service over the network. As a result, the Microsoft Online Backup Service only stores encrypted data in the cloud storage. The encryption passphrase is not available to the Microsoft Online Backup Service, and as a result the data is never decrypted in the service. Also, users can setup throttling and configure how the Microsoft Online Backup service utilizes the network bandwidth when backing up or restoring information.
  • Data integrity is verified in the cloud. In addition to the secure backups, the backed up data is also automatically checked for integrity once the backup is done. As a result, any corruptions which may arise due to data transfer can be easily identified and they are fixed in next backup automatically.
  • Configurable retention policies for storing data in the cloud. The Microsoft Online Backup Service accepts and implements retention policies to recycle backups that exceed the desired retention range, thereby meeting business policies and managing backup costs.

The Backup Service however only supports Windows Server 8 and not the Windows 8 Consumer Preview version of it or any prior versions of Windows operating systems for that matter.Checkout the blog post for detailed steps for Registering Microsoft Backup Services.

 

Microsoft talks about Windows Server 8 at WPC 2011

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Microsoft has earlier talked about Windows 8 on the first day of WPC 2011, while on the second day the emphasize was on Windows Phone 7, cloud computing and Windows Server 8. ZDNet.com reports that Microsoft gave the first glimpses of Windows Server 8 at WPC 2011.

Here are some of the points mentioned by Mary Jo Foley on ZDNet-

  • Windows Server 8 would contain more than 100 new features
  • Will have next version of Hyper-V Hypervisor and will support more than 16 virtual processors per machine.
  • Hyper-V Replica feature will allow asynchronous virtual machine replication

Windows Server 8 has already been leaked months back though expect for the new Hyper-V no other important features were discovered in that build. Windows Server 8 would be released alongside Windows 8 client and according to information available we may see the Beta version in September during BUILD and RTM version during April 2012.