Dell picks Windows 2000 Datacenter
C|Net | at | by Mike
Dell Computer has named Avanade the preferred consulting company to help customers install Dell servers using Microsoft's top-end Datacenter version of Windows, the companies said Monday.
Datacenter is the most powerful version of Windows 2000. It runs on servers with as many as 32 CPUs, though in practice that configuration is rare. Dell, Intel and Microsoft long have promised that their products would be simpler to use and less expensive than current high-end server systems such as Sun Microsystems' Unix computers. However, in making Windows servers more powerful, the allies have found they must adopt many of the same technologies and practices that raise the cost of Unix systems. Reducing crashes requires carefully tested software, limited hardware configurations and tight control over the addition of new software.