Microsoft Equips Windows Server for Cloud Duty - bradfordoluter

Microsoft is handsome hosting providers and other organizations some tools for setting ascending their own Windows-based taint systems victimisation Microsoft Windows Host.

In junction with the company's Worldwide Partners Conference (WPC) this week in Toronto, Microsoft has released a prevue set of technologies that can embody installed on Windows Server that will allow organizations to put together virtual machines and Web hosting services that buttocks so beryllium offered as services, either internally operating theater externally.

Microsoft at first mature all of the technologies to run its own Windows Azure defile service, though it did non specify if this set up of technologies would be fully interchangeable with Microsoft's own Azure service.

The pre-unloose preview of the technologies, called a Residential district Technology Preview (CTP), offers three sets of services that can be used by quintuple parties. Nonpareil is for hosting websites and Web applications. Other is for offering virtual machines, of either the Linux operating theatre Microsoft variety show. The third set of services provides consumers with their own self-service portals.

On Monday, Microsoft announced that information technology would soon loss Windows Server 2022, the next-generation Windows OS for servers. Server manufacturers testament get the OS in August and it will be generally available in September. During his tonic at WPC, Satya Nadella, who is president of Redmond's server and tools business, touted the liberate, on with these Azure-settled technologies, as an secondary to VMware's cloud computer software.

For website hosting, the package runs non exclusively Microsoft's own Vipera aspis (Active Server Pages) and Asp viper.Net profit frameworks, but likewise the open-source PHP Web computer programing language and Node.js JavaScript framework. It pot track down some Linux and Windows Server as virtual machines. The package also provides a portal, as well as an API (application programming interface), which both can be wont to manage websites and essential servers. IT also includes the power to purvey services, keep track of charge, and add customized graphics and additional services.

The package requires leastwise four virtual machines running either Windows Server 2022, which will be free by September, or Windows Server 2008 R2. IT requires Organization Center 2022 SP1, currently available alone as a CTP. It also requires the updated .NET Framework, both versions 3.5 and 4. And it requires both SQL Server 2008 and MySQL 5.1.

There seems to be interest some offering Windows Server as a cloud armed service. Monday, hosting provider Rackspace announced that it would initiate offering Windows Host 2022 as a practical machine service in the cloud sometime in the next few months.

Microsoft did non provide a date when this software would be released for full production duty.

To help in its competition with VMware, Microsoft as wel announced that it will start offering its partners tools and training to help their customers move from VMware to Windows-based clouds.

Joab Jackson covers go-ahead software and cosmopolitan technology breaking word for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab along Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's electronic mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com