MS Exchange 12 to be 64 bit only?

Successions from 8 Bit to 16

Successions from 8 Bit to 16 to 32 to 64...128 They aren't the same, as we know even they look like they are. So it wouldn't be the same necessity to get jump from 64 to 128 bit as the increase in pure math terms is by more than 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 times.
Whereas from 16 to 32 the increase was by less than 100,000 times. Of course one never knows the limits of data size we'll need to have a direct access to in the next 10-100 years...

Alex, Ian Ringrose's point

Alex,

Ian Ringrose's point about in-place upgrades might be "valid" in the Exchange world, but in the Domino world it's very much the norm to install upgrades on your existing hardware. (Okay, maybe every other release, you'll probably needs some better hardware, but you can usually get away with two consecutive major releases on the same boxes). And the upgrade process takes about 10 minutes per server.

For example, our existing hardware falls exactly into the category that you describe: 1-2 years old, 2.5-3 GHz dual processors, 4 Gig RAM. I want to throw all that out just so I can run the latest and greatest a year from now? No way! In fact, we're looking to upgrade to the latest version of Domino (7) precisely because we can get more oomph out of our existing hardware (according to IBM, anyway!)

Come to think of it, some of our existing hardware might even 64-bit; I'm not actually a server admin, so I don't know or care. And you know what? I don't have to!!!

Cheers,

- Mike

We have had a fairly intense

We have had a fairly intense discussion about this news on my weblog. Scalix, OpenExchange, sure those are options, as is Lotus Domino -- which still runs on Windows 2000 and runs on six other operating systems to boot.

I'm proud that IBM stands for investment protection in this space, and not forced migrations.

No, I'm equating the speed

No, I'm equating the speed of the processor with the viability of the same.

There's just no way that you can consider a 3 gigahertz Xeon as a legacy platform.

I actually need to do a blog post about how Moore's law is broken where CPUs are currently concerned.

Systems just don't need to be upgraded as quickly as they once did as the speeds just aren't increasing rapidly like they did 5 or 6 years ago.

Most companies would be better off at the moment extending server contracts on their more modern 2+ghz CPUs unless there's a valid need for more power, which there just often isn't in the small business space.

I just don't see the software being deployed to businesses that require as much hardware as we can now deploy to most organizations. Which is why virtualization and server consolidation is becoming the rule of the day.

Used to be that servers could only handle one or two separate services, but now they can handle 5 or 10.

I would hardly call a 3

I would hardly call a 3 gigaherz dual CPU server a legacy platform.

However, Ian does have a valid point about in-place upgrades.

This is not a new issue and

This is not a new issue and will exist well into the foreseeable future. Remember when 16-bit computing migrated to 32-bit computing? Software companies stop supporting legacy platforms for economic reasons that benefit all computer users.

Personally I could never see

Personally I could never see the risk of a “in place” upgrade of an exchange server being worth it. I would always expect to “clone” the current server onto new hardware, then upgrade and test the new system before taking the old system of line.

I would then redeploy the old box to do something else.

Given that most people will not think of upgrading to Exchange 12 until it had been out for 6 months and by then there server will be getting old anyway I don’t see having to buy a new server as being a big problem. It may mean some people wait a bit longer before upgrading.

After all who would risk installing Scalix or Open Xchange onto the a live Exchange box anyway? A new box would be needed to move to another vendors email system so as to control the risk.

Ian Ringrose
www.ringrose.name