Today, we are announcing the general availability of Windows Server 2022. It’s a big step forward for the operating system that is trusted by major corporations and small businesses alike to run their business and mission-critical workloads.
It comes with tons of security improvements (of course), SMB compression, support for up to 48TB of memory and 2048 threads running on 64 sockets, and more.
OS Hotpatching is interestingly reserved only to the version that runs in Azure. Pretty sure we’ll see more differentiation between the on-prem and azure versions over time as they push people away from on-prem.
I wonder if it uses some Azure magic, like running two exact VMs in the hypervisor and switching between the two.
I could run my business on a 1980’s system with dumb terminals running Pick with an Archimedes/Amiga thrown in as a workstation. I really don’t know why anyone needs anything more than this for business. Okay, being serious things could be uprated a bit but not that much.
I still have customers running Pick terminals (albeit, within Windows) for 90% of their work heh
How about database with thousands of entries ? Distributed ? Multi-site ?
Who needs databases? Civilization ran just fine with paper and pencil…
javiercero1,
Yeah, but probably with a lot more arithmetic errors, haha. Seriously though personally I’m glad we’ve managed to evolve beyond paper filing.
Who needs computers, phones, cars, planes, power tools, refrigerators & freezers, restaurants, etc etc etc, or for that matter, electricity? Humanity ran just fine for hundreds of thousands of years without any of those things.
Damn right!
Any business can just be run with some clay tablets and an abacus. If it was good for the Babylonians to build an empire, it should be fine for any modern business. It’s not like there has been any major changes ever since we discovered how to make fire….
Your hot takes are getting tiresome. Commenting on a subject that’s outside of your wheelhouse as if there’s some factual basis to your anecdotes got boring long ago.
Do you think a triple-A game development studio could perform continuous integration on multiple SKUs on an Archimedes?
Seconded
We are still running Windows NT 4.0
You make a good point. Computing technology has blown past way beyond what is needed for most people and businesses. I think I could get by quite well with early 2000’s era PCs.
Some organisations and applications seem to have an unquenchable thirst for more memory and CPU power. This is feeding in to the massive concentration and centralisation trends we see today where monopolies need to scale up in order to run the entire world.
It also seems like the AI hype is just a marketing strategy to sell companies massive amounts of computing power that isn’t actually needed or useful. ML is brute-forcing solutions to problems nobody knew they had.
Mainly because if you are still using a Windows NT 4.0 or XP machine, you are both exposed to security threats and cannot support new hardware/software (TLS being one). For offline systems tough, it can still work reliably for decades :
https://www.pcworld.com/article/249951/if-it-aint-broke-dont-fix-it-ancient-computers-in-use-today.html
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-companies-using-old-software-on-their-computers
However when the machine breaks and no newer hardware can read those punch cards or 8″ floppies, what are you going to do ? Run at the nearest computer shop to get a replacement ? It’s a double edged sword here.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01431-y
https://www.netstar.co.uk/hidden-issues-old-technology-business/
Insisting on using antiquated technology is stupid for that exact reason. What good does it serve to run old outdated technology/equipment if support is rare or non-existent, and when the rest of the world is not with you? Some people think it’s cool, like a badge of honor, to say `I’m still using a pc that’s 20 years old`, or along those lines. That’s not impressive or get you any cool points in my book, and I’m not inclined to help when things start breaking down.
It’s anti intellectualism being passed as a virtue. And it’s always old farts, who simply can’t cope with technical advances, who go on and on with their silly humble bragging whenever a news piece about a new tech tickles their insecurities.
Which is ironic given that this is the fastest advancing field in the human experience. Literally, the entire field is based around the notion of the enablements allowed by exponential advances.
it’s wondrous that I can literally buy the same floating point performance, from the top supercomputer at the turn of the century for less than a couple thousand dollars. But no, it’s always the teletype crowd moaning about why would anybody need more than 80 characters before hitting carriage return at a few bits per second.
I view them as cries for help for people too proud to grasp concepts that postdate their formative years.
@Luke McCarthy
Yes these are the kinds of questions I think naturally follow on. The discovery that data could give you a business edge has led to the creation of more data being collected. More leap on the bandwagon. Vendors then have excuses if you don’t gather this data using this particular equipment you will fall behind. The need for more and more and faster and faster grows more and more. You then start getting things like all singing and all dancing business account management applications. We all end up having to buy workstation level machines to do word processing and so on, or buy hugely expensive vertically manufactured database solutions or 24/7 security solutions.
Centralisation of power and bigger and bigger established companies and financial engineers who duck past quality of life and fairness issues to the point where foodbanks and the gig economy are being talked up as a norm?
Leaving the politics aside I think it’s right to ask the basic bread and butter questions.
Windows Home Server was excellent for a lot of small business then out of the blue Microsoft axed it. There’s really nothing else off the shelf on the market to plug this gap. You either need to pay through the nose for a solution or pay through the nose for an expert to put together a solution then pay through the nose for someone to babysit the thing.
Security is a red herring if something is broken by design. People should attack the vendor not the customer for this. Consumer protection law is a thing.
How many business and customer focused applications need all the bloat in a web page and a cloud service? Why do we need the latest DirectX version when applications are doing nothing more than what they did before the first version of DirectX shipped?
Do we really need a 20 megapixel camera or phone? Again, more pixels than is actually needed or used for your average screen or print. More data than we need to process. More memory. More storage.
I’m not suggesting we go backwards or ignore the good new things but more ask the questions what do we need and why? Then design and procure the systems to suit.
It also has 10 years of security updates, and doesn’t include the UEFI/TPM requirements from Windows 11. Server was always expensive and these days seems hard to actually buy, but if you want to stay on a Windows 10-based system for a while, this is one option.
I think it also drops the Essentials edition that was in 2019, which is a bit unfortunate for people wanting to use it on a workstation. Essentials not only had a lower price than regular versions, but it also didn’t have per-core licensing, so it was substantially more accessible/affordable than a full server.
I don’t know about other IT folks, but I don’t trust Windows Server one little bit. The whole system is a house of cards, and unrelated components can have adverse effects on one another far in excess of what should be possible. I don’t trust Windows Server, I am stuck with it… for now.
Windows Server is good especially for Active Directory to control thousands of computers. I prefer Linux for any application server such as database, Windows for Active Directory.
For me same it has the same reliability as any other server OS. Generally only see Windows/Linux crash out due to hardware problems, however it’s been Win2k / Win2k3 where ive seen a BSOD due to the OS being rubbish. Win2k8R2 + have been solid workhorses, where ive seen them run for 4 – 5 years (because the organisation didn’t patch them, i know painful) without an issue.
Only problem with Windows is the licencing in which not even microsoft representatives let along MSP’s know how to get the correct licence! They really are becoming another oracle with their very convoluted licence scheme. Just look at obtaining a licence to run Windows 10 as a VM, painful stuff.
Other problem i would say is that Windows is heavier resource wise in RAM & Storage compared to Linux on lower powered devices, however once you get into the large appliance/systems such as db’s etc.. then that really gets lost in the large resource allocations (128GB RAM etc..)
As someone who has an interest in protocols, it’s great to see MS adopt QUIC as well. SMB over QUIC and SMB compression would make VPN obsolete for a lot of people.
Windows Server editions used to be the “clean” desktop alternatives for workstations. I remember using them back in the day. And even OSNews covered such use cases: https://www.osnews.com/story/3655/windows-server-2003-as-a-workstation-great-but-not-unconditionally/
That tradition went on for a while, until things became increasingly more difficult. Not only Microsoft disabled more and more services (which are actually good, but software assumes they would be there), but 3rd party vendors started asking for “premium” editions of their software. Most basic roadblock: free A/V tools did not work.
It looks like the guides are no longer available, and the latest version can only be found on caches with little fanfare: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7dy7iqvxEzUJ:https://www.windowsworkstation.com/win2016-2019/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
I wish it was still possible. It would be a good alternative for the Windows 11 bloat.
Up to date Windows 10 already had a lot of bloat.
A business user that just needs to run an Remote Desktop Session to a server with Windows 10 Pro in default settings can’t run properly on a i3 and 4GB and SSD. It’s ridiculous bloat.