Microsoft Corp. today announced the beta release of Automated Deployment Services (ADS) for Windows® Server 2003, a powerful new server provisioning and administration tool that delivers key technology for the company"s new Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI). This initiative unifies hardware, software and service vendors around a software architecture, which enables customers to harness the power of industry-standard hardware and brings simplicity, automation and flexibility to IT operations. ADS helps customers reduce the complexity and high cost associated with managing today"s modern datacenter by uniquely employing a subset of the System Definition Model (SDM) specifically for server provisioning (see related release). It enables customers to rapidly and automatically deploy hundreds of highly customized Microsoft® Windows Server system images across their environments in a matter of minutes, instead of days or weeks as is currently required.
"ADS delivers rapid deployment and centralized administration of large, scale-out systems," said Bill Veghte, corporate vice president of the Windows Server Group at Microsoft. "Customers are clearly saying they require solutions to improve IT infrastructure productivity and reduce costs associated with server deployments. We are excited about delivering a solution that significantly automates and simplifies customers" IT operations."
The ADS beta is available this week to early adopter customers [Not avaliable for public download -Ed] and final code is expected to be broadly available in the second quarter of 2003