Microsoft Germany announced that Windows Server 2003 (not 2008) would be the server platform of choice for BMW dealerships, according to the Microsoft Windows Virtualization Product Group blog. About 3,500 dealers will average a roll-out of two 64-bit servers each hosting about 20 client devices per location, the blog says. Even more interesting, the blog says that BMW will at first use Virtual Server 2005 R2 (not Hyper-V) on each server to consolidate and run its .NET-based applications, along with some business process integration apps and assorted other software. An upgrade to 64-bit Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V is, however, planned.
The deal is part of a giant Microsoft-only rollout that not only includes Virtual Server but also SQL Server 2005 (not 2008) and BizTalk Server 2006. Please note that the press release (which was quoted in the blog post) says that Microsoft’s own consulting services team developed this retail server platform for BMW, based on Windows Server 2003 and Virtual Server 2005. BMW is already a System Center Operations Manager user and will continue to use it. Windows Virtualization Product Group member “Patrick” asks this very good question and comes up with an obvious Microsoft-point-of-view answer:
So what’s my point? Why does anyone care about a deployment using Virtual Server the day AFTER we released Hyper-V? I’m interested to hear your thoughts. Here are mine: If you’re a Virtual Server customer, now you know that there’s someone else who has plans to move a large # of Virtual Server-based VHDs to Hyper-V.
More likely the real answer is that even though Hyper-V has had a long evaluation period, and is getting good reviews, not many companies are ready to bank mission critical apps on it in a big way without backup. What are your thoughts?
Go to the Microsoft Subnet home page for more news, blogs, podcasts. Open source could doom Exchange, one IT pro believes Microsoft rolls out new IBM HPC serversMicrosoft releases OOXML-to-HTML translator Good-bye XP, desktop virtualization is the answerAll hail Hyper-V: the hypervisor finally, officially arrivesDozens of great freebie addons for OpsMgr 2007More Microsoft Subnet blog posts:
