Microsoft windows server2012 R2 is the latest virtualized version but according to a report 61% of businesses are still using Windows server 2003, just 4 months before Microsoft pulls plug on support. An average of £40,000 per company has been set for Windows Server 2003 migration-related projects representing a multi-billion dollar opportunity for IT professionals. The survey says that 8% are intended to keep Windows Server 2003 but 72% are scared about compatibility factor to upgrade with other systems and services. Some 74% are confirmed to migrate to move to a virtualized environment naming Windows Server 2012 R2 as it is a latest version.

Windows next version: a two faced beast:

Windows Server has been worked to support running cloud services like Azure better and if anyone wants a private cloud then Microsoft provides both Windows Azure Pack to give IaaS hosting with cloud style subscriptions and fast VM installation.

• Power Shell and DSC : Power Shell system allows user to write configurations once and automatically install and remains constant across multiple machines. DSC increases the running of entire cloud data centre with software defined networking which is used to monitor the network Quality of service.
• Deep Re-factoring : It is the process for Windows Server vNext which delivers a layered architecture that introduces current concept of server roles into the OS to make it more modular. Lowest layer is the cloud optimized server that will be run by Azure. Top layer is the full server that user will use for an on-premise Windows server system.

Migration to cloud:

For migration to cloud user has two options which are IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) or PaaS (Product as a Service). IaaS is straight forward so user can establish a VM to the cloud provider of his choice, install IIS on that VM then migrate the web application from IIS server to the VM hosted in the cloud. This process is the same as user had used to migrate to a Server 2012 R2 server. The drawback of this method is that user has to remove all unwanted stuffs with the cloud hosted VM, which he had with the on-premises box.

PaaS is different from this. With the help of this, the cloud provider provides IIS hosting and user install his website to them. There is a responsibility of cloud provider to keep hosting platform and web app more secure. There are a number of third party vendors providing tools for migration. Anyone can reduce costs by migrating his website to a PaaS environment.

Cloud: a looming change in IT:

The new report has came after research named “The Great IT Upgrade”, which analyze the economic and technical field of end of life(EOL) on IT departments. Virtualization changed it powerfully. The VMs belonged to the departments that requested the project and are responsible for the existence. There should be one general price to provide the service of running application. The business value of the application should be scaled on the basis of incremental price for using resources.

Market survey:

According to the Web Server Survey, Responses are received from 878,346,052 sites and 5,192,428 web facing computers. Along with all major vendors suffering huge loss of hostnames in March, Microsoft has lost the whooping 8.0 million. It also has to suffer from small loss of market share due to increase in site with missing server banners. In terms of web facing computers, all popular server vendors have had absolute gains in this month. Microsoft is the largest gainer which broke its recent declining trends with 30% increase in market share.