MGR IT

As announced on the Windows Essential Business Server blog and confirmed on the EBS web site, Microsoft is discontinuing further development of Essential Business Server and will stop selling it from the end of June.  The announcement talks about the changing market landscape behind the decision, which sounds like a roundabout way of saying the thing didn’t sell.  That’s a pity, because it is actually quite an impressive product.

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Ubuntu 9.04 has been released in the last couple of weeks and I have been playing around with it to see how it compares to previous releases.

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Windows Server 2008 R2 will continue the current Microsoft methodology of releasing minor version upgrades of their server operating systems in between major version upgrades.  Originally scheduled for a 2009 release, it is now scheduled for release in 2010, but some details of what it will include have been released this week.

Probably the biggest thing to note is there will be no 32-bit version of Windows Server 2008 R2.  It is 64-bit all the way for Microsoft from this release on as far as server systems go.

Most of the new features are intertwined with the new features that will be in Windows 7, such as DirectAccess for VPN-like connectivity for remote users and branch caching, which will save bandwidth by checking for local cached versions of data before downloading them from the server.

On the Hyper-V front, this new version will include Live Migration, allowing virtual machines to be moved from one physical host to another without having to be powered down (which VMWare’s VMotion already achieves, of course).