Windows Server just celebrates the 30th birthday! 🥳🎂🍾🎈
Can you believe it? It’s been 30 years since Windows Server was first released to the world. That’s three decades of innovation, evolution, and transformation in the world of computing. Windows Server has come a long way since its beginnings as Windows NT 3.1 in 1993. It has powered millions of businesses, organizations, and individuals across the globe, enabling them to do more, to scale up and out, to secure and manage their data, and to unleash their creativity and productivity.
On July 27th, 1993, Microsoft introduced the first version of Windows Server in the Windows NT family – Windows NT Server 3.1. As you know Windows Server was always an important part of my career as well as a big part of this blog here and it will be for a long time to come.
My first touch point with Windows Server was with Windows Server 2000 which I am sure many of you started much earlier than this. My first blog post about Windows Server I wrote in 2009, this was also shortly after I started blogging. Now my latest blog post I wrote was last week on July 20, 2023 was about the latest Windows Server 2022 Azure Edition and the new Hotpatching feature for Desktop Expierence.
Just from these dates you can see how much innovation was put into Windows Server over the years. There were many releases of Windows Server to address the different challenges of customers and help them innovate.
Jeff Woolsey (Principal Program Manager at Microsoft wrote a fantastic blog post about the history, future and the birthday of Windows Server, check it out on Tech Community!
In all these years I had some great and funny stories with Windows Server, one of them is when I found some Windows Server 2003 servers which had an uptime of over 900 days (almost 3 years). Now, I am not saying that not installing security updates and not rebooting your servers is good practice, but wow great uptime ;).
I am sure many of you have some great and funny Windows Server stories out there, if you want, share them in the comments below.
So with that, happy 30th birthday Windows Server! 🥳
Tags: Birthday, Cloud, Datacenter, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Virtualization, Windows, Windows Server Last modified: July 28, 2023
Mr. Maurer I am surprised you knew windows server 2000 (windows 2000 server) because you look too young for that version. How old are you? I am almost 60 and I want to share my story. I live in Venezuela and at the end of the nineties (1995-1998) I only new Netware Server like file server. In my country Netware was the king for companies. Then I read a magazine (I believe 1996-1997) talking about WINDOWS NT 4.0 SERVER and its big reception for clients. I saw some technical specifications and I thought something like a user friendly server, from Microsoft with Windows GUI that works as a file server, as a workstation and more is going to change the industry. It happened, Netware died as leader I felt some enthusiasm to learn the product (no job for me with with Windows NT 4.0) that I decided certified me with MCSE and change my career and it also happened. I am certified with Windows NT 4.0 Server since 1998 and I have been happy working with Microsoft Products sinde 25 years ago.
Greetings, Armando Lopez
Whau Thomas
I can’t believe that it is 30 years since the first Microsoft OS server release. The first version I worked with was Windows NT 4.0. Since then I have been working with all versions.
Sometimes it is good to look back on a business that evolves all the time