The latest Wikibon study has found that Microsoft Server 2012 is a must-have upgrade but that users should be careful in their feature selections, writes Wikibon CTO David Floyer in his latest Professional Alert. Specifically, the research results indicate that ODX, Hyper-V V3, and TRIM/UNMAP are priority features, praised by study interviewees, that users should implement immediately. On the other hand, users should be cautious about implementing Storage Spaces, Deduplication, Resilient File System (ReFS), & SMB 3 until they have done significant testing and staff education or until they are better integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem.

Overall Wikibon recommends general adoption of this release, which provides significant storage and other functionality that will reduce infrastructure cost. It also recommends virtualization of database servers and use of flash to reduce IO read & write latency and IO variability to reduce the cost of SQL Server deployment.

The study behind the report included intensive interviews with executives responsible for Windows Server infrastructure in eight organizations ranging from a small manufacturer to large-scale banks, as well as research into Wikibon’s database of datacenter cost metrics and business cases.

The full Alert, like all Wikibon research, is available free of charge on the Wikibon Web site. IT professionals are invited to register for free membership in the Wikibon community. This allows them to comment on research and post their own tips, questions, Professional Alerts, and white papers. Membership also comes with invitations to the periodic Wikibon Peer Incite meetings, at which your peers discuss how they use advanced technologies to solve business and IT technical problems.