Windows Server 2008 for Webhosts

Microsoft says the latest iteration of Windows Server 2008 has been designed with feedback from webhosts, and has extensive channel support.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [November 14, 2007]

On a recent afternoon, Michael van Dijken, lead marketing manager for hosting solutions at Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft, visited New York as part of Microsoft's tour designed to educate hosting providers about the important functionality and features being built into Windows Server 2008 and featuring hands on education for administrators. Microsoft will visit 62 cities worldwide; van Dijken will visit several of those.

He is responsible for the marketing and communications portion of the channel, reporting to the guy who makes decisions about strategy, John Zanni, managing director of worldwide hosting for Microsoft.

Van Dijken said that the Communications Sector at Microsoft focuses on three segments: network providers (telcos and cellcos and cablecos), content providers and publishers (such as Disney and Sony), and the hosting industry. The hosting industry includes ISP, pure play webhosts, outsourcers, and on demand software providers. There is a Microsoft channel partner representative in "practically every nation where Microsoft has a subsidiary. Microsoft Hosting Solutions specialists work with hosts to help them be more successful."

The Microsoft channel also has hosting evangelists and technology specialists. Evangelists make sure customers know what the products they've purchased can do, and technology specialists deliver Microsoft's knowledge concerning already deployed solutions to customers who need it.

"We have 6,500 service provider partners worldwide," said van Dijken. The channel is already large and is ready to grow.

Microsoft licenses are sold through resellers (and also direct, but this is discouraged) on a subscription basis. There are no minimums and no fixed fees. This deal is, of course, only available to the channel, not to end users.

Features
Features of Windows Server 2008 designed for webhosting include:

Improved site density: allowing more sites on less servers. Van Dijken said that although Microsoft has achieved 20,000 sites per server in its labs, in the real world the company expects hosts to deploy between 2,000 and 4,000 sites per server, up from between 500 and 1,000 in the previous version of Windows Server.

Modular install: new with Microsoft IIS 7, hosts can choose to install only those parts of the system they need. This means each install potentially takes up less space, could operate more efficiently, and presents, van Dijken said, a "smaller attack surface" to the internet.

PHP on Windows: Microsoft has worked with open source virtualization project Zend to enable PHP and ASP.net to run at the same time on a server, so that users can deploy software products on each and get them to work together. Van Dijken said that the performance of PHP on Windows Server 2008 is comparable to LAMP.

Delegation: site owners can use the IIS manager to manage their own site (previously they needed to use the CLI).

Extensibility: Microsoft has already built some add-ons to make it easy for third party applications such as CPanel and Plesk to integrate with IIS 7, and webhosts can add their own.

Schedule
Windows Server 2008 is due to be released on February 27, 2008. Several major service providers are already running the beta three version.

Within the following 180 days, a service pack including improved metrics and Hyper-V is scheduled for release.

— End