Scratch that. Windows Server 2008 R2 still lives

What do you do with a blog post that is so messed up that you can't even go in and edit it in order to fix it? That's my dilemma with my post from August 15 about Microsoft skipping over Windows Server 2008 R2 and proceeding direct to Windows 7 Server.

After sending me a note that led me to believe that Microsoft had decided to veer from its original plan of an R2 update followed by a full-fledged Server update, a Microsoft spokeswoman called on August 18 to tell me that her note to me was misleading.

So, scratch that Friday evening post. Microsoft is still doing what it had led folks to believe up until this point: A release called Windows Server 2008 R2 is still on the books (now officially slated for 2010). And there will be some release two years after that which may or may not be called Windows 7 Server. (Microsoft currently won't say anything about the planned naming for this release.)

And just to keep things extra confusing, the spokeswoman told me that if and when anyone hears references to "Windows 7 Server," what they really mean is "Windows Server 2008 R2." In other words, the codename for the Windows Server 2008 R2 release is "Windows 7 Server" -- which, based on previous Microsoft naming conventions, should be the codename for the release that comes out after Windows Server 2008 R2.... Yeah....

A comment sent to me by an anonymous reader, good old anonymous@anonymous.com this morning makes more sense now. (Note to reader: Why anonymous? If you don't want me to use your name in a posting, I won't.)

"Okay, I don't know how someone on our side could have miscommunicated this or if you are purposely reporting this incorrectly, but let's be clear on this: Windows 7 Server is and has always been Windows Server 2008 R2.

"Furthermore, Windows 7, despite it's rather pretentious sounding code name (a result of Sinofsky's like of big round numbers) is NOT Windows NT 7, but rather 6.1(current builds are numbered 67xx as a direct continuation of the longhorn codebase). Put simply, it is not a big jump as a codebase revision and the new changes, on both the client and server, will be focused on user features, not core OS components. The big core OS changes are WDDM 2 and a kernel scheduler update to remove the simple bitmask enumeration of processors so that the OS can schedule more than 64 concurrent threads.

"Finally, and I can't be more clear on this, 'Windows 7' client and Windows Server 2008 R2 will RTM simultaneously (and just so you are 100% clear on this) and are based on exactly the same codebase (just as Vista SP1 and Server 2008 are based on an identical core OS codebase).

"As for the next major release (meaning a full revision of the NT codebase) that will not occur until well after the current Win7 wave."

So there you have it. Next up: Windows Server 2008 R2. To all you readers who thought it made sense that Microsoft was skipping over R2, looks like that's not the case, after all. Sorry for the miscommunication.