Windows Server 2008 users say they're on a roll

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“We’ve seen no issues and no performance problems,” says Matt Okuma, enterprise architect for Pacific Coast Companies, which provides IT and others services to parent company Pacific Coast Building Products.

While Okuma says Windows Server 2008 has many useful features, he says the migration could be jarring.

“It is going to be a major change from 2003 to 2008,” he says. “Managing the server is different. It is a major change from what administrators are use to. It was a shellshock to me when I got into the interface, but now I see the advantages of what they have done.”

Okuma has four servers deployed. The company is using Terminal Services to support a truss-design application that previously ran on Citrix.

“The application had become too slow, but now a design step that would take three seconds is instantaneous. The performance using 2008 is night and day.”

Okuma, who has been in production with 2008 since December, says he also used the Server Roles capability to install Terminal Services and to install a Rights Management Server that is tied to a SharePoint Server and provides protection when sharing sensitive documents within the company.

“We have also integrated it to protect our e-mail,” says Okuma.

He plans to have his Active Directory up and running on Windows Server 2008 by May and by February 2009 to have all his major servers on 2008 to handle some 2,000 users.

He is currently working on some proof-of-concepts with NAP and says it works well with his infrastructure.

“My main goal now is to stop buying third-party products that do something that Server '08 brings to you.”

One thing that others users say Windows Server 2008 brings is better integration when used with SQL Server and Visual Studio 2008.

Wednesday’s launch of Windows Server 2008 in Los Angeles will also feature those two products and how the entire platform works together. Visual Studio 2008 shipped in Nov. 2007 and SQL Server is slated for release before June 30.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says the trio will form the bedrock of the company’s services platform.

That is what Big Hammer Data uses the three to accomplish. The company runs a service that collects and stores product data from manufacturers, such as descriptions and specifications for a television, and provides it to retailers who can use the information on e-commerce sites, kiosks or point-of-sale terminals.

“We have a large scale system that has to be fast and agile,” says Mike Steineke, vice president of IT for Big Hammer.

The Big Hammer platform, which has database, application and presentation layers, runs on a cluster of Web servers (to server manufacturers), a cluster of Terminal Servers (to serve retailers) that tap into the remote desktop features of Windows Server 2008, and Unisys ES7000 server hardware to support the SQL Server 2008 database.

“Looking at all three as a whole we see ease of interoperability and ease of use,” says Steineke, “We are able to develop applications and deploy them without any problems.”