The immediate lineage of Windows Server can be
summed up in three letters - VMS.
More about that later, but first, for those who want more
background, it would seem appropriate to start out with a bit of
history.
In November of 1983, Microsoft Corporation
announced Microsoft Windows, a new operating system that provided a
then-new idea, graphical user interface,
combined with a multitasking environment for computers.
Rumor has it that Bill Gates wanted to name the operating
system Interface Manager, but his marketing manager convinced him to
call it Windows.
Microsoft did not actually ship Windows 1.0 until November 20, 1985,
almost two years later than the original release date.
Windows started as a desktop product.
While working on the Windows product, Bill Gates was also
working in conjunction with IBM.
Both were collaborating with each other in developing their
PC operating systems and had access to each other's code.
In August of 1985, the development of OS/2 began when IBM and
Microsoft signed the Joint Development Agreement, a joint project
aimed at developing and improving the OS/2 operating system.
By the early 1990s, problems began emerging in
Microsoft's relationship with IBM. Microsoft wanted to further
develop Windows, while IBM wanted future operating system work to be
based on OS/2. In an attempt to resolve the conflict, IBM and
Microsoft agreed that IBM would develop OS/2 2.0, to replace OS/2
1.3 and Windows 3.0, while Microsoft would develop a new operating
system, OS/2 3.0, to later succeed OS/2 2.0.
Things soon went sour between the two, and the
Microsoft collaboration with IBM was ended.
IBM continued with OS/2, while Microsoft went on to work on
'New Technology', or as it is better known, Windows NT.
Although both companies retained the rights to use OS/2 and
Windows code developed up to the termination of the agreement,
Windows NT was destined to be written almost totally from new roots.
Those roots were to come from Digital Equipment Corporation's
(DEC) then-flagship operating system.
Windows NT, and thus Windows 2000/2003/2008,
can be traced back to what was a favorite O/S of many people who
have been in this business for awhile:
VMS. VMS is
short for Virtual Memory System
, a multitasking, virtual memory operating system with many users
that runs on DEC's Virtual Access Extension (VAE). It is now called OpenVMS.
VMS in its day was used by banks, hospitals, specialty
software companies such as Intergraph, and many large businesses. It
had a reputation for extreme reliability.
It was also the first to use true clusters and actually had a
Distributed Lock Manager, allowing several nodes to access the same
disk drives at once in much the same way which Oracle RAC functions.
That is one thing Microsoft still has not been able to do.
Today's Microsoft Clusters
can
only have one node accessing a disk device at a time.
One of the main architects and project leader
of VMS at Digital was Dave Cutler.
Once VMS was developed, Dave Cutler and his team continued
work on new releases of VMS.
By 1981, Cutler was looking to leave Digital. In an attempt
to keep him, Digital gave him a new project and about 200 hardware
and software engineers with a mission to design a new CPU
architecture and OS that would lead Digital into the next decade.
The new project was called Prism, and the operating system was
slated to be named Mica.
In 1988, Digital cancelled Cutler's project and
laid off many of Cutler's group. It was this action that finally
caused Cutler to decide to finally leave Digital, and in August
1988, Bill Gates hired him to work at Microsoft. One of Cutler's
conditions for accepting the position at Microsoft was that he could
bring several former Digital employees with him, including several
hardware engineers. This was agreed upon, the result of which was a
team of developers and engineers that had previously built and
maintained VMS for several years.
These people were the same team that began work on Windows NT
at Microsoft.
It would only logically follow that these
developers would use their past VMS design experience directly in
the design and implementation of NT.
Many users believe that NT's developers carried concepts from
VMS to NT, but most do not know just how similar NT and VMS actually
are at the kernel level.
The result is, if a DBA has worked with VMS, Windows
NT/Server 200x really is not as much of a shock as it is to someone
who is coming over from UNIX/Linux.
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