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Windows Server 2012 launched today!

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MC900434719[1]While there are many Microsoft product launches happening this year, this one is near and dear to my heart. I first started working with Windows servers back in the days of the Windows New Technology server, or NT, as I’m sure some of you reading did as well. We’ve come a long way, baby!

This latest version of Windows Server is impressive in it’s scalability. Throughout the development cycle, boundaries were continually pushed across the Windows core kernel, storage, networking, hyper-v and clustering. Now with the launch, here are the final numbers which show very clearly how much of an industry leader Windows Server is:

Windows Server 2012 Standard/Datacenter Editions with Hyper-V Enabled

 

Windows Server 2008 R2

Windows Server 2012

Improvement Factor

Logical Processors Per Host

64

320*

5x

Physical Memory per Host

1 Terabyte

4 Terabytes*

4x

Virtual Processors per Host

512

2048*

4x

Virtual Machines per Host

384

1024*

2.7x
       

Virtual Processors per VM

4

64

16x

Memory per VM

64 Gigabytes

1 Terabyte

16x

Maximum Virtual Disk

~2 TB

64 TB*

32x
       

Nodes in a Cluster

16

64*

4x

Virtual Machine in a Cluster

1,000

8,000*

8x

*= Industry Leading

Did you notice in the table above that I’ve listed both Standard and Datacenter editions as having the same capability? That’s because there is no difference in their technical capabilities.

Also, the table shows that Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V supports virtual disks up to 64 TB each. What that means is that each virtual machine can have up to 255 virtual disks and each virtual disk can support up to 64 TB. Which means a Hyper-V virtual machine can support ~16,320 terabytes or 15.9 petabytes per virtual machine using virtual disks. This doesn’t include pass through disks, which have no limit other than the limit imposed by the guest OS.

Read more about the Windows Server 2012 Launch to see what the media is saying:

Participate in the virtual launch and ask your questions to online experts.

Download an evaluation copy of Windows Server 2012 and try it out for yourself.

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