MS Drops Licensing Restrictions from Web Server 2008

Channel Guy writes "According to a report from CRN, Microsoft plans to allow users of the Web Server SKU in Windows Server 2008 to 'run any type of database software with no limit on the number of users, provided they deploy it as an Internet-facing front-end server.' The previous limit was 50 users. Microsoft's partners expect the changes to go a long way toward making Windows Web Server 2008 more competitive with the LAMP stack, against which Microsoft has been making headway in recent months."

Re:Still have to pay for the OS

[poopdeville]

This is silly though. Web services only need one "user" -- the user that connect to the database on behalf of the server.

Eight different versions of Windows Server

[Animats]

There are at least eight different "versions" of Windows Server 2008: [pcworld.com], depending on what features are crippled:

1. Windows Server 2008 Standard, $999 (with five Client Access Licenses, or CALs);
2. Standard without Hyper-V, $971 (with five CALs);
3. Enterprise, $3,999 (with 25 CALs);
4. Enterprise without Hyper-V, $3,971 (with 25 CALs);
5. Datacenter, $2,999 (per processor);
6. Datacenter without Hyper-V, $2,971 (per processor);
7. Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems, $2,999 (per processor); and
8. Windows Web Server 2008, $469.

This change only affects the crippling level on #8.

Re:Google

[micheas]

If you read netcrafts definition of a website you will find some sort of strange things. almost all the google sites are blogger sites, over half the IIS sites are myspace profiles and live.com blogs.

The recent decline in IIS and gain by apache is almost entirely myspace to facebook migration.

The other big factors are godaddy parking is IIS, most other parking domains are apache, and then there is the relatively small number of sites which are all the sites that generate all the content that you would actually want to connect to the internet for.

Netcraft is has a bit of a problem with figuring out what is a website. Is a myspace profile a website? No, but what if someone is running a music site off of their myspace profile and have it branded and put real effort into and is its own destination?

Do geocities accounts count as websites? most of them did get counted and when geocities popularity waned so did BSDs market share.

What if you wild card a domain name and have a script generate unique content for almost every possible hostname, and submitted tens of thousands of the hostnames of that server to netcraft? How many websites would that be? Some creative spamming by Microsoft or their enemies would make netcraft statistics pretty meaningless. Also Netcraft only reports on the front facing server which grossly understates zope and tomcats presence.

There are lies, damn lies, statistics, and netcraft website counts.

Re:Still have to pay for the OS

[unoengborg]

OS-X is very nice for the desktop, but I would stay away from it on the server side, not because there is all that much technically wrong with it, but because Apple don't seam to get the server market.

By hard earned experience with Apple server products I have learned that you can't trust them to support their products over long times. The all of a sudden discontinues products without any resonable migraton paths to the successr, if there even is a successor. E.g. they dicontiued A/UX and replaced with an Apple version of AIX that they then dropped totally in just a couple of years.

When they distribute updates they have more than once totally destroyed, customized settings, and the open source software that comes with the server version of MacOS-X is often incomplete or lacking in functionality compared to the same software on Linux or Solaris.

Chosing between Windows and Mac, I would choose Mac any day. MacOS-X is at least simple to use.

Re:Still have to pay for the OS

[Clover_Kicker]

You don't think jwz was advocating for Windows, do you?

http://www.jwz.org/doc/linux.html [jwz.org]

Re:Still have to pay for the OS

[joeytmann]

Actually licensing for public schools is dirt cheap when compared to private business licensing.

Re:Suspicious.

[wuputah]

Most large changes relate to registrars (e.g. GoDaddy) changing their infrastructure on servers serving pages for parked domains (as parked domains make up a rather alarming percentage of domain names).

Why Netcraft?

[bogaboga]

The previous limit was 50 users. Microsoft's partners expect the changes to go a long way toward making Windows Web Server 2008 more competitive with the LAMP stack, against which Microsoft has been making headway in recent months. Emphasis mine.

Why do they continue to quote Netcraft when http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/200712/index.html [securityspace.com] has always put Apache ahead of windows? Is it that Netcraft is more of an authority than Security Space.

Back to the topic...I think Microsoft wants to claim bragging rights having come from very far behind when compared to Apache.

Re:SKU?

[Osty]

Many, many people seem to like misusing the term SKU. At least, I think they're misusing the term. After all, I wouldn't tell my wife "Wow, these new Doritos bar codes are mighty tasty! Pass me a bar code of that lemonade."

For what it's worth, I agree with you. On the other hand, that's what Microsoft uses to refer to the various versions of a product (they seem to alternate between "SKU" and "Edition" with no rhyme or reason why one word is used over the other), so that's what I used to refer to them. I don't like it, but at least it's not as horribly misused as phrases like "begs the question" (at least "SKU" in this context could potentially be referring to a real Stock Keeping Unit).

Also, your examples aren't quite right. You're referring to instances of a bag of chips or a glass of lemonade, while the Windows Server SKU references are to types of items that can be sold. A better example might be, "I prefer the yellow lemonade SKU over the pink lemonade." Still just as silly, but at least now it's correct :).

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Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Still have to pay for the OS

[pembo13]

Still, LAMP is free, so unless they're going to start giving away Server 2008, they can keep it.

I have to take issue with this statement.

Let us assume a LAMP stack which comes via a support subscription (eg. RHEL). And lets assume variables such as customer support and pricing are equal, I would still go with the LAMP stack. I have experience with both, and I find LAMP to be easier to use yet much more versatile. A Microsoft web stack can definitely get the job done... but I find things easier to accomplish with LAMP -- I definitely don't work with Microsoft stacks without getting paid for it.

Re:Still have to pay for the OS

[foniksonik]

Not if you're using it with a Active Directory system with automatic login to an intranet ala Sharepoint...

I agree with your logic but MS doesn't do logic... they do licenses and IP... so all of their technology is set up on the premise that they need you to buy lots of licenses to do 'anything'...

though when you do cough up enough money, their integrated suites of software are pretty useful, as long as you need to do exactly what the software is capable of and nothing else.

As soon as you need to do something else, you'll either have to hire an extremely over-priced development firm, a team of developers and all the overhead of a new department - or wait until MS decides that enough of your peers want to buy the thing you need for it to be profitable to them.

 

Re:Still have to pay for the OS

[sumdumass]

I was wondering about this too. Most all of the windows domain instalations I see don't even have physical licenses, someone down the road just put the licenses in the server config and dropped it. I asked one guy I know who did this and he said Why pay for it if you don't have too, I then asked him why he paid for windows, he says he didn't the company did. Well, after seeing a logic loop starting I just shook my head and dropped it.

On another note, I was helping a kid who went through a vocational school for high school and was supposed to get his A+ certification by graduation. His final assignment was a cost and implementation plan for a company of 50 workers (broken into groups representing departments) and a need of 200 gigs of storage. He got an A on the assignment and never figured on backups, CALs, and assumed one windows 2003 domain controller would serve the entire company without hassle. He had his certifications but really didn't know much after two years of classes. Of course this was high school so I figured he goofed off quite a bit but the teacher grading the roll out plan should have caught some things. Out side of crimping cables and adding memory, I'm not sure he would be able to competently network his mom's computer. He ended up taking over an account I had because he was related to management (of the account). It wasn't long before I got the account back and he did trivial stuff and worked another job at the same time.

Not to mention hardware resource requirements

[walterbyrd]

My debian etch VPS takes up less than 12mb ram, and less 500mb HDD space. The hardware requirements for Server-2008 are astronomical by comparison. But, if you are running some huge commercial site, I don't suppose the hardware requirements are a big deal.

Re:Still have to pay for the OS

[rvw]

You just can have a linux box with apache doing reverse proxy and caching in front of it, and ...

This is exactly what is not allowed, like I said already. The "user" is not a computer, but strangely enough a human being. Where is the world going...? :-P

Re:I call BS

[lukas84]

Just FYI, Windows 2003 for Small Business Server was available in 2003, which would've reduced your cost figures immensively (around 1400US$ starting price (premium) including 5 clients, plus 700US$ for each additional 5 clients).

SBS Premium includes SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition, Exchange Server 2003, and runs on a single machine. SBS CALs are also valid for other Windows Server 2003 servers in your network, e.G. if you would've bought a Web Edition machine, you wouldn't need to purchase any CALs and run it either against a local SQL Server Express instance or against the Workgroup Edition on the SBS Server.

Back in 2004, Office Communication Server 2007 wasn't released, but right now it's a full blown voip solution from Microsoft (which works pretty well, and integrates nicely). It isn't expensive either, at around 1000US$ per Server, and around 20US$ per CAL.

I don't intend to change your mind, just wanted to show you that the stuff isn't as expensive as you're trying to make it. Also, if you're a development shop that sells application based on Microsoft Windows, you can apply to become an MS Partner, which costs around 1500 US$ per year, and gives you all the licenses you might want (for internal production use), plus an MSDN subscription.

Re:Hardware Demand

[koa]

Actually, no..

Microsoft has taken yet another page from the *NIX play book and constructed a model called "Server Core" for 2008:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/servercore.mspx [microsoft.com]

This is essentially an ultra-small footprint server installation to run server apps on top of it, it doesnt even have a window manager- you boot directly to the "cmd.exe" prompt.

Gee where have we seen this before- oh i know it started back in the 70s...

Re:Still have to pay for the OS

[guruevi]

Have you used 10.4 and 10.5 server yet? I did both (just did an install of 10.5 server) and I would recommend it to anyone. It's built on top of BSD and uses Apache and MySQL. I know in the past they didn't really have a marketshare in the server world simply because a) they were not flexible enough b) they had proprietary solutions to common problems.

The current 10.5 Server has much improved over 10.4. As in 10.4 you still had to use some command line to do advanced stuff, now a lot of that is moved into the interface without making it difficult (it's in a separate tab). Apple though is in a different market segment than most of us geeks. Apple is if you want to simply set up a shop with 0-500 users without fussing too much about the details. If you're small enough, you don't even need a sysadmin, just somebody that knows enough to click it together. It's flexible now too (as compared to before 10.2 since it still allows you to go into command line if you really want/need to. The best of both worlds.

Of course for larger shops that needs lots of performance out of a single box or have multiple locations and directories that need integrated and have the sysadmins to do it, Linux still beats the crap out of Mac OS X. Mac OS X is more in line with what you can do with a Windows server for a medium to large office but without the expensive licensing or rack-full of hardware.