Microsoft confirmed the future plans of Windows Server & System Center (Cloud OS) vNext tonight. The released “a bit” of information:
- Infrastructure upgrades: Rolling upgrades for Hyper-V clusters to the next version of Windows Server without downtime for your applications and workloads. This includes support for mixed versions as you transition your infrastructure.
- Networking: New components for our software-defined networking stack that enable greater flexibility and control, including a network controller role to manage virtual and physical networks.
- Storage: New synchronous storage replication that enhances availability for key applications and workloads plus storage Quality of Service to deliver minimum and maximum IOPS in environments with workloads with diverse storage requirements.
- Remote Desktop: Enhanced application compatibility with OpenGL and OpenCL support.
- Identity and Access Management: New scenarios to reduce the risk profile of administrators with elevated rights, including time-based access with fine-grained privileges, and new application publishing capabilities.
They also confirmed that the preview will be out on Oct 1st:
As our first step in this journey, we will be making a “Technical Preview” available for the next version of Windows Server and System Center on October 1.
This bit of news is strange:
We are also evolving how we ship our software and service our platform products to keep the software up-to-date. For our datacenter products, there is a duality in what customers want: in some scenarios customers tell us they favor stability and predictability while in other scenarios they want access to the latest and greatest technologies as fast as possible. We’ll have more specifics in the coming months, but you can expect us to deliver the best of both worlds: options for speed and agility, plus options for stability and durability
Hmm, worrying. I think they aren’t listening to us about update trustworthiness. We need to speak louder.
But on the positive side … .rolling friggin updates of Hyper-V clusters. Woooooooooooooooooooohoooooo!
Synchronous storage replication should be *ahem* very interesting. I also like the introduction of storage QoS.
Perhaps it means that they have listened to you. The “both worlds” might mean some form of Long Term Support version. For those who don’t want to rock the boat too much and are comfortable that they’re running a secure enough environment.