While researching to make sure my computer wouldn’t explode at exactly 12:00AM on Wednesday, I happened to see on that site that to check a server’s time, you can look up HTTP information via telnet (Note: This will only work on computers running Windows XP or below. Windows Vista and Windows 7 do not include telnet by default).

While examining these headers, I happened to see something very interesting with the site I tried: the very popular MSN.com.

Check after the break for an analysis along with other targets.

It would appear from looking at the information provided there that MSN is running on IIS 6.0 and that page was built with ASP.NET 1.1. Both of those relate to “2003″ versions of Microsoft systems – IIS 6.0 included with Windows Server 2003. ASP.NET was launched at the same time. That means that it appears that MSN.com – the number 6 site on the web according to Alexa – is running on software that’s now quite outdated. It seems very odd that they would be running such an important site on software that old, especially considering that the MSN landing page has been updated, in rather significant ways, many times since 2003!

But wait, there’s more

Seeing that site was running on old server software, I decided to see what was up with other Microsoft sites. Rather than mess around with telnet (remember, I’m a child of the GUI – DOS is something I only rarely interacted with in my early computing years), I decided to use the extention Firebug for Mozilla Firefox to extract all the juicy information I wanted from my headers.

Just to make sure I wasn’t crazy, I stopped by Bink.nu since they advertise that they themselves are running IIS 7.0 and ASP.NET 3.5 (correlating to Windows Server 2008). Sure enough, Bink is running IIS 7.0. It reports that the ASP.NET version is only 2.0, but I’m willing to say that’s just an error in that header it’s because .net 3.5 is just .net 2.0 with WinFX bits bolted on. [Props to Benjamin for the reminder. ~Bryant]

LiveSide reported the same bites of information as Bink.nu, which makes sense once you consider that their back-ends are very similar (both sites are powered by Community Server).

I then decided to check other Microsoft sites. First up, Microsoft.com – the company’s homepage. Again, Firebug reported the ASP.NET version was version 2.0. The real shocker, though, was in the server line. It is reported that Microsoft.com is running on IIS 7.5. This version of Microsoft’s web server is to be included in Windows 7 (Home Premium and above) and Windows Server 2008 R2. That’s right, software that hasn’t been released yet. That is quite a leap of faith to be running your whole corporate main site on prerelease software. It’s also quite a difference from what MSN reports. The servers for “Windows.com” will also report the same information. Update: Microsoft did clarify the move to IIS 7.5 in Early February. You can read this here. ~Bryant

MSDN reports that it is running IIS 7.0, which is a bit more reasonable and also the least surprising. Truthfully, it’s what I expected to see running everywhere here in April 2009. Finally, Live Search refused to give up it’s server info, just informing me that it was powered by ASP.NET (no surprises there).

What can we see from these seemingly random version numbers? We can see just how complex Microsoft’s web servers are. They range from the nearly outdated (especially for a company that develops web server software) to the bleeding-edge software that isn’t even released yet and many things in between. At the very least, this gives an insight both into the different requirements for the many pages at Microsoft as well as the different practices between different teams of developers. One would probably bounce between at least five or six different web server versions (major versions, not minor revisions like the 2.2.11 of Apache) each day in your daily web travels. As long as it serves up your pages and isn’t riddled with more holes than swiss cheese… that’s the main idea isn’t it?

In case you’re interested…

Apple.com runs on Apache as well: version 2.2.8. Mac OS X Server 10.5 says that it includes Apache 2.2, so it would be a pretty solid guess to say that Apple.com is powered by an Xserve.

I personally had mixed feelings on this situation. I said on one of the tech forums I visit,

There’s only ever been one R2 release, and that was for Windows Server 2003 (and all it’s various sub-SKUs). That was because they had features to release, but no major platform to build it on. Consider that when WS2003 R2 was released, the latest build was the Pre-Beta 2 5259. There were also several other large platform launches that year – Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. Now in 2008, this “big-three” was revived – Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and recently, SQL Server 2008.

Also, I think 2010 seems to be on track for Server 7, as that would follow their schedule they’ve kept for a while now, and would confirm the late-2009 client release.

Apparently, Mary-Jo was later told by Microsoft that Windows Server 2008 R2 is on track to become the next version of Windows Server. Supposedly this release is on track for 2010, immediately parallel to the next client release, Windows 7. Then another version, “which may or may not be called Windows Server 7″ is expected in 2012. This would leave Microsoft in a somewhat regular pattern, as seen in the below timeline.

Timeline of Windows, Windows Sever, Visual Studio, and SQL Server 2002-2012

More of my own analysis of the recent events, along with a quick versioning primer, comes after the break.

Updates Here, There, Everywhere: A Review

Near the beginning of the decade, Windows Server 2000 and SQL Server 2000 were holding steady in their own markets. Windows XP had just been released on the Windows Client side. Then there was the release of the .NET framework.

In 2003, two important systems were updated – Windows Server and Visual Studio. They both contained the year “2003″ in their title. 2004 became an off year (at least in terms of major releases, since XP SP2 did release to web in 2004), though as many AeroXperience readers may remember, Longhorn was originally slated for a possible 2004 release. Then in 2005, developers got a large update with both Visual Studio and SQL Server releasing new versions, again versioned by year. No major Windows updates were shipped that year.

Things changed in 2006, with no updates coming to the developer tools, but Windows Server 2003 R2 coming in early February and Windows Vista RTM’ing in November. Windows Server 2003 R2 became basically, the “2005″ update to Windows Server, matching it with the other two “2005″ products.

The developer trio reunited in late 2007-early 2008 with the release of Visual Studio 2008, then Windows Server 2008, and finally SQL Server 2008 last month.

So by now, you’re surely wondering, “Why is this important?” Because, by looking to the past, you can also see the future. Graphically, we can see that Windows Server is on a regular release schedule, as is Windows client (although it seems to be nearly twice as long). The next meeting of those two has been confirmed by Microsoft, and is set for 2010, many guessing early in that year. So that also means, don’t be surprised to see the next version of Visual Studio (VS10 or “Hawaii”) and/or SQL Server. However, don’t be surprised if they don’t come out until later in the year and are named with the year “2011″ as to fit with the last three big launches.

Windows 7 Not As Important?

A Microsoft spokesperson has also confirmed several things about Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows 7 Server. For one thing, he says that Windows 7 is not actually Windows version 7, but actually version 6.1. So basically,  Windows 7 (NT 6.1) is to Windows Vista (6.0) as Windows XP (NT 5.1) was to Windows 2000 (5.0). The architecture changes aren’t too great (though from what it sounds like, there may be less in Vista->7 compared to 2000->XP. This also explains why in the few leaked screenshots we’ve seen, WinVer lists Windows as Version 6.1. The confusion comes from the codename “Windows 7″, since there appears there’s going to be another, true Windows 7 at some point. It may just end up confusing geeks who care about numbers, but it has the potential to confuse more than that (you know what technological leaks can turn into in mainstream media).

Editor’s note: while the kernel revision numbers are important, they’re mostly used for application compatibility purposes. More significant revisions are more likely to break older applications, so the major revision number is generally updated in the event of significant change. It’s possible to have a kernel with many added features while only being a minor revision increment (6.1 as opposed to 7) simply because not enough old features were changed or scrapped.

Big Bang, Minor Maintenence

It also appears that Microsoft may be wanting to make their Windows client more like their Windows Server in more ways than one. This seems to be a good thing; many people have sang high praises for Server Core, so a similarly modularized Windows client operating system will likely receive the same approval. They also seem to want to bridge together Client/Server release timings, which in my mind makes a lot of sense. Sure, giving it more time to bake ensures some more errors get worked out, but if you release a new client and then put it on an old server, it may not necessarily work as well on the old server as it would on the new one. (Note that I haven’t done enough testing with Vista+WS2003 vs Vista+WS2008 to say if that applies here. If you do have an opinion on that, duke it out in the comments.)

It also seems they may be doing this to keep it on a major/minor release cycle. We had Win 2000/Win XP, and now we’ll have Win Vista/Win 7. As mentioned earlier, this same thing happens in the Server world under the guise of R2 releases.  All in all, the numbers aren’t important, and really, not even the dates as much, if what we get is a quality product. It’s fun to follow all the small stuff, but remember, it’s the big stuff that sells.