Microsoft's latest server operating system, Windows Server 2008, was developed to play well with rival platform UNIX. Windows Server 2008, formerly codenamed Longhorn, was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and then launched worldwide on February 27, at the Heroes Happen Here launch in Los Angeles. The server platform comes at a time when Microsoft places a strong emphasis on interoperability, and on the need to provide advanced support to customers running heterogeneous environments with mixed source applications.This is in fact the reason why Windows Server 2008 and UNIX can now virtually coexist.

"Unix support is spread across a few different roles and features in Win2k8. Telnet, both a server and client, for command line administration. Services for NFS allows transfer of files between Windows and Unix machines. Subsystem for Unix-based Applications (SUA)allows you to compile and run Unix apps on Windows with minimal changes to the source code. It also provides 300 Unix commands, utilities, and shell scripts. Identity Management for Unix (IDMU) - password sync between Windows domains and many Unix flavors, and a Server for NIS that allows AD to act as a master NIS server for NIS domains," stated Adam Carter, Microsoft IT Pro Evangelist.

According to Carter, Microsoft has sought to enable customers to maximize their investments in infrastructure, in terms of the UNIX platform. From the Redmond company's perspective, the move was done to help reduce costs, not only by protecting existent investments, but also by cutting down the effort associated with tasks such as administration, management and migration.

"Windows Server 2008 is the first time we're offering x64 versions of these tools - now with x64 SUA you can use it to port x64 or x32 bit Unix apps to x64 Windows. Most scripts should run without changes at all. This is the first time that we're including all this functionality as part of the OS - it was previously offered via web download or on the supplemental disc in Server 2003 R2," Carter added.