ITWire

"I wish we would have renamed it [ie, File Server]," said Mr Woolsey, as the new version is nothing like any file server previously offered, handling up to 16GBps and with built-in thin provisioning and deduplication.

There has also been a shift from the server to the data centre as the basic unit. "PowerShell is the key" to managing multiple servers as one, he said, stating that 2400 new PowerShell scripts are included with Windows Server 2012.

Continuous availability is another important feature of Windows Server 2012, and it is possible to carry out live migration of virtual machines between physical servers with nothing more than an Ethernet cable.

This enables cluster-aware updating, which allows administrators to automate the process of migrating workloads from a server, patching the server, and then migrating the workloads back - and then repeating that for the remaining servers in the cluster.

"Every single new feature in Windows Server 2012 works with live migration, without exception," said Mr Woolsey.

"We think this is the broadest and deepest release of [Windows] Server."

Next page: early adopters of Windows Server 2012 include Kennards Hire and McGrathNicol.