Google made Windows Server support generally available this week

Making good on commitments the cloud provider made in December last year Google has announced general availability of Windows Server on the Google Cloud Platform. The move comes the same week Windows Server 2003 reached its end of life.

“Making sure Google Cloud Platform is the best place to run your workloads is our top priority, so we’re happy that today Windows Server on Google Compute Engine graduates to General Availability, joining the growing list OSes we support. We’re also introducing several enhancements for Windows Server users,” the company said in a statement on its cloud blog.

“With its graduation to General Availability, Windows Server instances are now covered by the Compute Engine SLA. Windows Server users can now easily deploy a server running Active Directory or ASP.NET using the Cloud Launcher, and can securely extend their existing infrastructure into Google Cloud Platform using VPN.”

Google also said customers the purchase GCP support packages can get architectural and operational support for their Windows Server deployments on its cloud platform. And with Microsoft ceasing support for Windows Server 2003 Google is looking to lure in Microsoft developers by committing to support migration to more current Microsoft Server releases (2008, 2012).

In December last year the company announced it would begin offering Microsoft license mobility for the Google Cloud Platform, enabling existing Microsoft server application users to bring their own licenses and apps – SQL Server, SharePoint, Exchange – from on-premise to the cloud, without incurring any additional fees.

As before the move to expand support for the Microsoft ecosystem is likely to come as welcome news to the .NET crowd, which is fairly sizeable. Microsoft commands a 32.8 per cent share of all public web server infrastructure according to W3Techs.