Couple of big announcements
These last two weeks have been busy with announcements, and I have not had a chance to talk about any of them. So Ill be brief...
For Enterprise Search we just announced two new products, Search Server 2008 and Server Server 2008 Express. Search Server is a great step in helping customers locate information in the enterprise. I can tell you in all honesty, having search implemented in our own environment has made life easier when it comes to finding content.
The big difference between the two is that while Search Server 2008 Express runs on a single machine, while Search Server 2008 enables you to configure multiple query and clustered database servers to manage performance and ensure reliability.
The other good news about Search Server is that you can download Search Server Express 2008 Release Candidate now for free!!! Here is the link https://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/serverproducts/searchserverexpress/download.aspx.
The other interesting news was the announcement of the first public beta of Windows HPC Server 2008. To give you and understanding of what this is, I borrowed the abstract from the Technical Overview document...
Microsoft® Windows® HPC Server 2008 brings the power of high-performance computing (HPC) to the commercial mainstream. The centralized management and deployment interface helps to simplify deployment for both large and small compute clusters and provide a simple and effective management experience in order to increase cluster administrator productivity. The Microsoft HPC Pack includes a highly scalable job scheduler that provides support for interactive Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) applications using High Performance Computing for Windows Communication Foundation (HPC for WCF) and parallel jobs using the Microsoft Message Passing Interface (MS-MPI). Essential applications from key independent software providers (ISVs) can be run on the cluster to help you meet your business needs in a timely, cost-effective, and highly productive manner. Integration with the Windows operating system helps to provide seamless security, storage, and desktop access to cluster resources and management. Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005 provides parallel debugging capabilities for use with Windows HPC Server 2008, and MS-MPI is now integrated with the Event Tracing for Windows infrastructure. This consolidates application, networking, and operating system events from many compute nodes into a single, time-correlated record to speed debugging.
So basically, Windows HPC Server 2008, enables organizations to run applications across a cluster of servers, thereby utilizing multiple computers to complete a task, resulting in faster execution and delivery of results.