Run important applications on Windows? A few years ago, fears of the blue screen of death would have frightened many companies away from entrusting their revenue-producing activities to a Windows platform. But Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 2000 Datacenter Server -- the product and the program -- is changing many minds about letting Windows into the glass house.

Long ago, when computers meant IBM, mainframe vendors controlled every aspect of computer systems: hardware, operating system and applications. This helped vendors ensure stability and reliability levels, at least until the courts made them unbundle their systems.

In the PC era, the situation changed. PCs were built for modularity of hardware, software and operating system. With many vendors selling hardware, applications and drivers, who could guarantee stability and reliability? Finger-pointing was the primary response.However, as CPUs became cheaper and more powerful, vendors began to pack more chips into machines. These servers were more capable than ever but still suffered from a multitude of hardware platforms and a bewildering array of drivers and applications.

Windows 2000 Datacenter Server is Microsoft's attempt to change that, coming full-circle to the mainframe model. No, Microsoft isn't building machines, but it is trying to exercise some control over the hardware, operating system and driver and application bundles. Enterprise users are finding the result compelling, not only in terms of cost but also in terms of stability, reliability and simplicity.

Product and Program

Datacenter is both a product and a program designed for enterprise users. It's the top-level Windows operating system from Microsoft -- but the company won't sell it to you. Instead, you buy Datacenter in a package along with certified, supported server hardware from a traditional vendor such as Compaq Computer Corp. or IBM.

As part of the Windows 2000 family, Datacenter shares that operating system's services, including Active Directory and security. Datacenter offers impressive handling of up to 32 processors per server. This allows great scalability when paired with appropriate multiprocessing hardware, and it's a lot more than Windows 2000 Advanced Server can offer. Also, Datacenter can address up to 64GB of main memory for managing complex applications.

Datacenter includes a Process Control tool to help manage all those processors. The tool lets you oversee workload and performance across all processors. You can dedicate certain processors to certain applications, so those applications don't have to go searching for idle cycles, thus reducing overhead and bottlenecks. It's also possible to change the load balance dynamically, pulling more processors in for certain applications when needed.

Multinode clustering of up to four servers is also part of Datacenter. Four-node clustering is far better than two-node clustering; with the latter, if one server fails, you start praying that whatever took down your primary server doesn't hit your only remaining server. Four nodes give you more breathing space. If one server fails, you still have three as backups.

Cascading fail-over is very desirable for systems that must keep running to keep revenue flowing, such as consumer-oriented e-commerce. With some other operating systems, clustering is available only throughh

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