To deploy or not to deploy — that's the question foremost in
the minds of IS planners as they begin to evaluate the second beta of Windows NT 5.0. When is it safe to migrate? How do you weigh the risks associated with a major new operating system (OS) release against the potential benefits of Active Directory (AD), IntelliMirror, and the rest of NT 5.0's features?
According to Giga Information Group, an IS advisory services company
known for its conservative stance on NT, you can't weigh the risks against the
benefits. As a result, Giga is arguing against adopting NT Server 5.0 until
after Microsoft ships the third service pack—and even then Giga says you
need to adopt NT Server 5.0 in a very controlled fashion. As for NT Workstation
5.0, Giga advises that you don't touch it until you have to.
Because Giga has more than 800 clients, most of whom are senior IS
decision makers at large international companies, its comments fueled the
headlines of several technology weeklies. Giga claims to have extensively
researched NT 5.0's enterprise readiness before unveiling its conservative
recommendations. However, some industry analysts disagree with Giga's
recommendations. Right or wrong, the industry's reaction to Giga's comments
reveals a deep-seated concern over NT's role in the enterprise.
Rather than challenge Giga's assertions with just opinion, I've decided
to measure the risk vs. reward of an early NT 5.0 migration. I'll be looking
hard at the NT 5.0 beta in an effort to assess how significant the potential
risks are. I'll then summarize my findings in a future issue of Windows NT Magazine. My goal is simple: To provide you with the information you need to decide whether NT 5.0 is a hot-button issue and worthy of immediate attention or a go-slow technology overhaul that belongs on the back burner of the IS stove.
—Craig Barth
Office 2000 Is Coming into Focus
With the forthcoming Office 2000 productivity suite due in beta by the end
of summer, Microsoft has been releasing details about the product's new Web
integration features. The suite's Office Web Discussions capability will let
users collaborate over the Internet, whereas its Office Web Components will let
users more easily extract data from otherwise static Web pages. However, the
feature that is stealing the limelight isn't Web-related. The suite's Installer
technology--part of IntelliMirror, a Zero Administration for Windows (ZAW)
mechanism in Windows NT 5.0--is a repair function. Installer will automatically
repair malfunctioning applications on the fly. Through a new table-driven setup
architecture, Office 2000 can repair an installation that has become corrupted
or is missing a setting or component file.
Installer will also let you preconfigure an Office 2000 installation,
selecting those applications and subcomponents you want to install on
users' systems. For example, you can preconfigure Office 2000 so that the core
productivity applications of Word and Excel, but not the Microsoft Info utility,
install locally on users' systems. Another way in which you can control Office
2000 deployments is by preconfiguring how users gain access to optional
components. For example, you can preconfigure Microsoft Graph to install on
demand.
Although Office 2000 provides an interesting glimpse of where Microsoft is
going with Installer, customers will fully realize Installer's real benefits
only when they move to an NT 5.0 environment. Once that happens, capabilities
such as install-on-demand and seamless, client-side persistent caching will help
organizations move toward distributed computing. Until then, organizations can
use a subset of these benefits by deploying Office 2000 on NT 4.0.
—Craig Barth
TerraServer: One Serious Proof of Concept!
What do you do with an 8-way Alpha server and some time to kill? Why, map
the earth, of course! Microsoft's TerraServer project is an ambitious attempt to
demonstrate the power of the company's forthcoming SQL Server 7.0 relational
database platform. Using aerial photography data compiled by the US Geological Survey and Aerial Images, Microsoft is delivering a birds-eye view of rooftops, swimming pools, and even automobiles (but not people).
When you first visit the project's Web site (http://www.terraserver.microsoft.com), you'll likely spend some time zooming in to your neighborhood,
favorite vacation spots, and other points of inter-est. However, once the
newness wears off, the reality of what you're seeing sinks in: The TerraServer
database contains more than 3.5TB of uncompressed data. (The compressed database
size is 1TB.)
Microsoft claims TerraServer is the largest publicly accessible database on
the Internet, a statement that, so far, has gone unchallenged. More important,
Microsoft is hosting TerraServer entirely on its software, which speaks volumes
about the scalability and capacity of SQL Server 7.0.
The server hardware consists of a Compaq AlphaServer 8400 with eight 400MHz
64-bit Alpha CPUs connected to a Compaq StorageWorks Enterprise Storage Array
10000 subsystem. Storage Technology's 9710 and 9714 DLT libraries provide system
backups. The 9714 provides as much as 3.5TB of uncompressed data storage at a
throughput rate of 108GB per hour. The system uses NetWorker storage management
software from Legato Systems for backup and disaster recovery.