Mitch Tulloch - Introducing Windows Server 2012

Windows Server 2012 introduces a plethora of new features to address the evolved needs of a modern IT infrastructure and workforce. The core of this experience is the need to scale out, virtualize, and move workloads, applications, and services to the cloud. Windows Server 2012 incorporates our experience of building, managing, and operating both private and public clouds, all based on Windows Server. We used that experience to create an operating system that provides organizations a scalable, dynamic, and multi-tenant-aware platform that connects datacenters and resources globally and securely. Clouds, whether deployed as public or private, rely on the same technology and provide consistency for applications, services, management, and experiences when they are deployed in a hosted environment, in a single-server, small office, or in your corporate datacenter. They are all the same, and the platform should scale consistently and be managed easily from the small business office to the infinitely large public cloud.

The Windows Server team employed a customer-focused design approach to design in-the-box solutions that address customers real-world business problems. We realized that we needed to cloud-optimize environments by providing an updated, flexible platform. We also knew that it was incumbent upon us to enable IT professionals to implement the next generation of technologies needed for future applications and services. We focused on end-to-end solutions that are complete and work out of the box with the critical capabilities for the deployments needed for the mobile and always-connected users, workforce, and devices.

To achieve these goals, we carefully planned a complete virtualization platform with flexible polices and agile options that would enable not only a high-density and scalable infrastructure for all workloads and applications, but also enable simple and efficient infrastructure management. Once in place, with maximized uptime and minimized failures and downtimes, the value proposition of an open and scalable web platform that is aligned to and uses the lowest-cost commodity storage and networking provides a comprehensive solution better than any other platform.

In addition, Windows Server 2012 provides next-generation data security and compliance solutions based on strong identity and authorization capabilities that are paramount in this evolving cloud-optimized environment. The mobile, work-everywhere culture demands not only compliance, but also protection against the latest threats and risks.

And, last but not least, Windows Server 2012 comes with the needed reliability, power efficiency, and interoperability to integrate into environments without requiring numerous and complex add-ons, installations, and additional software to have a working solution.

As one of the senior engineering leaders in the Server and Cloud Division of Microsoft, we have an opportunity to change the world and build the Windows Server 2012 platform to host public and private clouds all over the world. We took our experience and learning from Hotmail, Messenger, Office 365, Bing, Windows Azure, and Xbox Live all of which run on Windows Server to design and create Windows Server 2012 so that others are capable of building their own private clouds, hosting the latest applications, or deploying the next set of cloud services with world-class results.

This book is compiled from the expertise we have gained from the public clouds that we have run for years, as well as the experience from many experts on how to use the Hyper-V and Windows Server technologies optimally. We wanted to provide this book as a preview of the engineering teams inside knowledge and the best practices from the early adopter deployments of Windows Server during the beta. It provides a unique introduction and preview on how to cloud-optimize your environment with Windows Server 2012!

David B. Cross

Director of Program Management

Microsoft Corporation