The CIO of FAST announced on February 4 that Microsoft will not move forward with Linux and Unix as a server platform for FAST ESP. Although this shouldn’t come as a surprise, it is noteworthy that Microsoft feels as though they’ve been able to improve the performance on the Windows platform enough to stop releasing on Unix. Microsoft will continue to support FAST on Linux per their standard support policy – up to 10 years.
This is potentially big announcement for some customers. FAST used to advise customers to install on Linux or a Unix platform to get the most performance and scalability. So there are many very large FAST installations being served on Unix. Now, as those customers determine how to move forward with the product, they’ve got to consider re-platforming their environment as well.
I imagine given our experience with the FAST product, enterprise search, and the Microsoft platform, we’ll be helping customers make decisions and potentially moving onto new server platforms in the near future.
