NT 5.0 scalability to come at a cost

Redmond, Wash.

Users looking for more scalability with Windows NT 5.0 had better be prepared to pay.

Microsoft Corp. is prepping an enterprise edition of NT 5.0 that will cost more than the basic version, said Jim Allchin, senior vice president of the business and systems group. He claimed that for the extra money, NT 5.0 Enterprise Edition customers will gain performance and availability features that match up well vs. those in Unix.

And even the basic version of NT 5.0 will be better tuned for performance, Allchin said.

"But we will not push clustering or the ability to run NT on huge, monster SMP [symmetric multiprocessing] machines down to the base product," he said. "Those [features] will be reserved for the enterprise-based product." NT 5.0 Enterprise Edition will support clustering across up to four nodes and enable users to run the operating system on 16- and 32-way SMP machines.

The software also will support 64-bit applications as well as applications that need as much as 64G bytes of memory to run.

Windows NT 5.0 Enterprise Edition likely will be the version of NT that will run on servers powered by Intel Corp.'s planned 64-bit Merced chip, Allchin said.

While Allchin declined to say how much NT 5.0 Enterprise Edition will cost, analysts said the NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition is priced four times greater than the $995 edition of NT Server.

NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition shipped last fall, a year after NT 4.0 was first available. The premium edition includes two-node failover clustering and a license to run the operating system on an 8-way SMP box. This version of NT also supports applications that need access to as much as 4G bytes of memory to run.

Microsoft would not say when it expects NT 5.0 Enterprise Edition to ship.

Analysts expect the software to hit the streets after the basic version of NT Server 5.0 ships, and that is not expected to happen until late this year.