Scaling Up: Windows Server 2003 Runs On More CPUsScaling Up: Windows Server 2003 Runs On More CPUs

If Web services are evidence of increased agility in Windows Server 2003, other advances will be manifest in size.

After years of promoting scaling out -- adding servers as needed -- Microsoft officials increasingly tout scaling up, the practice of using a few big servers to handle the tasks of many smaller machines. A new set of tools called the Windows System Resource Manager will help with that. Bundled with the Enterprise and Datacenter editions of Windows Server 2003, Resource Manager can assign a percentage of CPU power to designated applications, ensuring desired performance levels. It also will generate accounting reports so IT departments can track system usage and charge business units for what they use.

The Enterprise and Datacenter editions will support clusters of up to eight servers, twice the previous limit. And Datacenter will scale to 64 CPUs, compared with 32 processors in Windows 2000. Other new capabilities in the high-end packages include hyper-threading -- the ability to split processing functions on a single Intel processor -- and support for Non-Uniform Memory Architecture. When all the pieces are put together, the result will be the biggest Windows machines ever created, megaservers with up to 64 of Intel's most advanced chips running a 64-bit version of Windows.

There's strong interest in using Windows Server 2003 for heavy-duty workloads, with 38% of early adopters in information Research's survey of 719 Microsoft customers planning to use the Datacenter Edition. Most, however, will gravitate toward the two packages designed for smaller Intel-based servers: the four-CPU Standard Edition and eight-CPU Enterprise Edition.

Then, there's the smaller version. For the first time, Microsoft also will offer the operating system in a Web edition. The stripped-down option -- terminal services, clustering, and the UDDI services are among the features left out -- will run on servers with only one or two processors.

Only 19% of early adopters in our survey have plans to use the Web edition. That's not good news for Microsoft's efforts to head off low-cost competition, because the setup is aimed at what's been a sweet spot for Linux: Internet servers.

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