Microsoft Launches Windows Server 8 Developer Preview

Along with all the buzz over the new desktop version of Windows 8 recently demoed at Microsoft’s Build conference, the company took time to provide a peek at the new server edition.

For those of you curious about Windows Server 8, the Developer Preview has been available for download over the past couple of weeks since Build, but unfortunately only for people who subscribe to the company’s MSDN service. It’s not even available through TechNet at this point. That contrasts with the desktop edition of Windows 8, which anyone can download.

Microsoft (News - Alert) confirmed to me that the Windows Server 8 Developer preview is available only to MSDN subscribers for now but that the company will be providing evaluation versions more broadly at a later time.

As most IT pros may already know, the new server developer preview is a pre-beta edition meant strictly for evaluation purposes and certainly nothing you’d want to install on any type of live or production server. MSDN subscribers who want to take the product out for a spin are best installing it on a test server or in a virtual environment where it won’t affect any other files or applications.

A recent Microsoft blog revealed a few general tidbits of what we can expect to find in the new server OS. Written by Bill Laing, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Server and Azure engineering, the blog noted that Windows Server 8 has borrowed a thing or two from the company’s cloud-based Azure service. The goal, according to Microsoft, is to help organizations interested in deploying applications across public clouds, private clouds, or a combination of both.

The company has also tried to focus on making servers easier to manage. As one example, all IT admins know that patching and updating servers can be a challenging process both in terms of the time required and the potential for errors. In Windows Server 8, Microsoft will offer a new technology dubbed “cluster aware updating,” a method for automatically patching and updating all clusters without affecting availability.

Microsoft is also trying to offer a helping hand to organizations that can’t afford or support a lot of expensive hardware to ensure that server-based applications and services are always available and able to be recovered in the event of a disaster. As an example, Windows Server 8 will come with certain higher-end features built in, including device pooling, disk virtualization, and thin provisioning, all of which would have required additional hardware in the past.

Of course, there’s a lot more to Windows Server 8 than what Laing revealed in his blog. Interested IT pros can pick up further information at Microsoft’s Windows Server 8 product page and watch a video of the company’s server presentation at Build.