An application that is only supported on MS Windows. Yes, those still exist. One project I am working on is supporting such an application that is a mix of desktop and web application talking to industrial monitoring devices.
It's a beast in terms of complexity, in my opinion. But the vendor only supports running it on specific configurations.
Building Unreal games. Running windows containers.
Windows server is actually kind of awesome for when you need a Windows machine. Linux is great for servers but Windows server is the real Windows pro. Rock solid and none of the crap.
The worst part of Windows server is knowing that Microsoft can make a good operating system and chooses not to.
As former Windows person who still uses fair amount of Powershell on Linux, I was interested.
However, reading the summary left me confused like you don't understand what's happening at Microsoft.
> Hopefully Microsoft will spend more time in the future on their server product strategy and less on Copilot ;-)
The future product strategy is clear, it's Linux for servers. .Net runs on Linux, generally with much better performance. Microsoft internally on Azure is using Linux a ton and Windows Server is legacy and hell, MSSQL is legacy. Sure, they will continue to sell it because if you want to give them thousands of dollars, they would be idiots to turn it down but it's no longer a focus.
The only people using MSSQL Server are people deep, deep in the Microsoft ecosystem. Think government work, and those unlucky enough to work at a pure Microsoft shop where every problem looks like a Microsoft or Azure solution.
It's not a dominant database anywhere on the outside.
We're a B2B shop migrating to MSSQL, from SQL Anywhere. Managed MSSQL in Azure is fairly easy operationally, especially since we don't have a dedicated DBA and our support staff aren't SQL gurus.
However since we now got the tools for running on both, and experience migrating, we might be moving to PostgreSQL at some point in not too distant future. Managed MSSQL in Azure is not cheap.
It's "legacy" because it's essentially tied to Windows. Yes, technically it works on Linux, and no doubt that was an amazing feat, but no serious company is running MSSQL on Linux when all the documentation, all the best practices are all based on running that on Windows.
For mid sized businesses, where you're mostly just doing some business reporting, a single mssql instance makes for a great and very cheap 'data warehouse'. All the auth magically works for people to connect with Excel, and powerbi+cloud just works out of the box.
I'd be curious what a better/non-legacy solution is! (as I do this stuff haha, and don't see much else other than full cloud options, sf etc)
Typical approach on an HV server is to disable C States, set power management to high, etc preventing x86 from downclocking. Keeping the CPU from seesawing can have big improvements.
But you’re not going to do that in a lab/personal machine, usually.
Cant believe somebody is still using windows server? What’s the use case?
An application that is only supported on MS Windows. Yes, those still exist. One project I am working on is supporting such an application that is a mix of desktop and web application talking to industrial monitoring devices.
It's a beast in terms of complexity, in my opinion. But the vendor only supports running it on specific configurations.
Building Unreal games. Running windows containers.
Windows server is actually kind of awesome for when you need a Windows machine. Linux is great for servers but Windows server is the real Windows pro. Rock solid and none of the crap.
The worst part of Windows server is knowing that Microsoft can make a good operating system and chooses not to.
I hope we migrate our stack to Linux soon, but I think that’ll take few years.
I know big company that run their core on Windows Server 2012, I’ve no idea how they manage the software assurance and compliance
Actually Windows Server 2012 or just Windows Domain functional level? https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/identity/ad...
As former Windows person who still uses fair amount of Powershell on Linux, I was interested.
However, reading the summary left me confused like you don't understand what's happening at Microsoft.
> Hopefully Microsoft will spend more time in the future on their server product strategy and less on Copilot ;-)
The future product strategy is clear, it's Linux for servers. .Net runs on Linux, generally with much better performance. Microsoft internally on Azure is using Linux a ton and Windows Server is legacy and hell, MSSQL is legacy. Sure, they will continue to sell it because if you want to give them thousands of dollars, they would be idiots to turn it down but it's no longer a focus.
Azure services run on [customized] Hyper-V, thus Windows Server.
Azure networking is Linux.
EDIT: Marvel at the NT4 style Task Manager [0].
[0] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windowsosplatform/a...
in no way that I can see is MSSQL or Server "legacy".
The only people using MSSQL Server are people deep, deep in the Microsoft ecosystem. Think government work, and those unlucky enough to work at a pure Microsoft shop where every problem looks like a Microsoft or Azure solution.
It's not a dominant database anywhere on the outside.
We're a B2B shop migrating to MSSQL, from SQL Anywhere. Managed MSSQL in Azure is fairly easy operationally, especially since we don't have a dedicated DBA and our support staff aren't SQL gurus.
However since we now got the tools for running on both, and experience migrating, we might be moving to PostgreSQL at some point in not too distant future. Managed MSSQL in Azure is not cheap.
Heh. State government is the only place I've encounter MSSQL in the past 10 years.
It's common as the backend to a lot of SMB scale ERP and CRM solutions. But almost all of those run on SQL Express.
Which can also run on Linux now.
It's "legacy" because it's essentially tied to Windows. Yes, technically it works on Linux, and no doubt that was an amazing feat, but no serious company is running MSSQL on Linux when all the documentation, all the best practices are all based on running that on Windows.
Why did they port it to Linux?
Knowing nothing about this, I wonder if they're getting ready to retire Windows Server, and wanted to get their server products off it?
Edit: How they did it is also quite fascinating:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/blog/2016/12/16/s...
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/drawbridge/
>a key contribution of Drawbridge is a version of Windows that has been enlightened to run within a single Drawbridge picoprocess.
MSSQL on Linux only seems to use parts of that project (a smaller abstraction layer), but that's still super cool.
On the flip side, every single MSSQL instance that I've encountered has been legacy. For at least five years.
For mid sized businesses, where you're mostly just doing some business reporting, a single mssql instance makes for a great and very cheap 'data warehouse'. All the auth magically works for people to connect with Excel, and powerbi+cloud just works out of the box.
I'd be curious what a better/non-legacy solution is! (as I do this stuff haha, and don't see much else other than full cloud options, sf etc)
Typical approach on an HV server is to disable C States, set power management to high, etc preventing x86 from downclocking. Keeping the CPU from seesawing can have big improvements.
But you’re not going to do that in a lab/personal machine, usually.