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Most titles like that requires some clarification. I would hope that, to anyone that has read even a little of my work, it’s obvious that I’m not anti-Microsoft. The vast majority of technologies that I work with at my regular job are from Microsoft. This blog is focused on a specific Microsoft product, namely Hyper-V. My books and other work are all about Microsoft tech. It’s pretty clear, at least to me, that Microsoft provides my bread and butter. However, I strongly believe that my pragmatism must always be tempered by my realism, and the realist in me insists that regardless of how much I depend on something, or even how much I like something, I must always remain aware of its flaws. I think that in order to be truly useful and trustworthy in my line of work, I must be able to take an unflinching look at any product and be able to identify its strengths and weaknesses and make a neutral assessment.
So, in that light, there are three things I’m not going to do in this post. The first thing is that I’m not going to make or provide that complete neutral assessment. A blog article really isn’t the proper venue for it for a number of reasons, one being that it would be much too long to consume in a single sitting.
Second, I’m not going to nitpick Hyper-V over minor issues. If you want to see someone arbitrarily select one or two little features that Hyper-V doesn’t have or doesn’t implement in a particular fashion and inflate them into a full-blown temper-tantrum, you won’t have to look far, but you will have to look elsewhere. I understand that Hyper-V doesn’t have every possible feature, but I’m also aware that Microsoft’s normal approach is to start by building products that match target customer needs in the 80th or 90th percentile and then fill in the blanks over time. This article also will not argue over the merits of such an approach.
Third, I’m not going to rehash the discussion over the management tools. I think that’s been stated loud and clear, and if Microsoft hasn’t heard us by now then they’re just not going to.
Instead, I’m going to talk about the larger things I believe that Microsoft should truly be doing differently with Hyper-V. In simple terms, these mainly boil down to backward compatibility.
It feels strange to criticize Microsoft over this. While the anti-Microsoft crowd usually claims that Microsoft only ascended to greatness through clever marketing and cutthroat business tactics, that’s really not true. Regardless of any influence those things had, how Microsoft managed to really draw people into its ecosphere was through its novel idea of backward compatibility. Before Microsoft’s rise to prominence, any sort of system upgrade usually involved a complete replacement of everything. Today’s figurative term “forklift upgrade” used to be very much a literal reality. When you wanted to get the latest operating system and the latest line-of-business application, you took out everything, hardware and all, and brought in replacements. It was Microsoft that normalized the upgrade process of inserting floppy disk #1 and typing “install.exe” at an A: prompt. Even though the whole world learned (sometimes very painfully) that Microsoft’s upgrade process was a risky gamble, we at least got to keep our hardware and usually our software too (except Lotus). In the days when any computer system cost at least thousands of dollars (and don’t forget that inflation made those thousand dollars quite different from today’s thousand dollars), the ability to update your software while keeping your hardware was a complete game-changer.
Fortunately for everyone, Microsoft kept it up. Applications that ran under DOS 2.1 would run under DOS 5.0 (except Lotus). Documents from the first version of Word for Windows could still be opened when the name was shortened to simply “Word”. 16-bit applications written for Windows 3.1 got their own little backward-compatibility universe so they would run in the 32-bit environment of Windows 95. And 98. And ME. And, about as often as not, XP.
Enter Hyper-V
In Hyper-V Server 2012 R2, the oldest version of Windows Server that’s supported to run as a guest is Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2. Now, I expect some of you to say, “But Eric, don’t you know that Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 was on its way out when 2012 R2 released and is now officially out of support?” Yes, I do know that. Furthermore, I don’t really expect anyone at Microsoft Product Support Services to burn any time trying to help a customer get an older OS working under Hyper-V. But, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Microsoft to throw a bone to Windows 2000 Server and Windows NT 4.0 Server administrators either. Those poor admins already have enough problems, given that they are still being forced to support Windows 2000 Server and Windows NT 4.0. Nothing in those operating systems has changed recently, so I suspect that keeping the Integration Services code alive for them probably wouldn’t be that much of a challenge. Here’s a thought: The Integration Components for Linux are open source, why not open source the Integration Services for Windows? Let someone else whip up support for Windows NT 4.0 under Hyper-V; then the community can say that Hyper-V will run it and Microsoft won’t have to support it. Win-win!
So that’s backward compatibility, but what about forward compatibility? The newest version of Windows Server that’s supported by Hyper-V in its 2008 R2 offering is 2012. You can read more about virtual machines and operating systems in this TechNet article. While I can understand why Microsoft is hesitant to add operating systems that are past their support lifecycles into their supported guest list in the newer hypervisor, the idea of not supporting newer guests in still-supported versions of the hypervisor doesn’t sit as well with me. The reasoning why is pretty much the same as for the previous issue.
The Real Pace of Business
Out there in the world is a common freight carrier that you have probably heard of. To protect the somewhat less than innocent, I won’t name any names, but their acronym starts with a “U”, end with an “S”, and has a “P” somewhere in the middle. Now, this carrier actually trademarked a slogan that claimed that they move “at the speed of business” (source). It’s clever and the commercials were catchy, but it’s really not speaking to any sort of reality. Business transactions often move very quickly, but business itself? Businesses typically move like a herd of turtles stampeding through a vat of peanut butter. The bigger they are, the slower they move. Business timetables are almost always in months and very commonly in years, and that’s when everything is internal. When one business depends upon another, or multiple others, or government entities, the timetables get even longer. Have you ever bought a server for a brand new project and had to renew its warranty before the software was installed? I have. This is why the issues I raise are so important.
If you got on the Internet just once at any point in the past two years, you were likely exposed to at least a half a dozen articles about the end-of-life of Windows XP and/or Windows Server 2003 and how you would personally be responsible for the downfall of humanity and/or cosmically-induced elimination of various cute, furry animals one-at-a-time if you didn’t immediately place all your equipment that had ever been within twelve miles of a Windows XP/WS 2003 disk into an industrial oven and set it to “Solar Flare”. Much like the hoopla over Y2K, none of these doomsday scenarios occurred, but their authors did have an important basic point.
Unfortunately, even though the core reasons to stop using out-of-support operating systems are definitely legitimate, not everyone has the choice. Hopefully, no one has to run XP in large quantities, but there are likely hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of companies that are being forced to continue running at least one installation of XP due to some particular vendor restraint. It’s not rare to find server applications running on Windows desktop operating systems, especially in small environments.
It’s not just Windows XP. Some vendors insist on some insanely outdated versions of Windows for their software. I personally know of two vendors that require NT 4.0 and one that requires Windows 98. Fortunately, these are for server applications and each of their client organizations only needs one instance. Just from what I’ve read from others, I know that these vendors aren’t alone (although they are, happily, fairly rare). I’ve heard horror stories about how a vendor is purchased by a competitor and then their entire product line is immediately killed off with no upgrade or migration path available. Clients aren’t certain what to do or where to turn for help, so they leave things as-is far beyond what is reasonable. I know that the common refrain from pundits is, “go to a competitor!”, but in the real world, this isn’t always an option. Sometimes, there are no competitors. Sometimes, the “best in the industry” is only the best because everyone else in their industry is worse. Other times, the client company doesn’t have the pull. Sometimes, the utter lack of a migration path means that the pain of change exceeds the pain of staying the same.
And then, there’s just the straight fact that businesses don’t really move all that fast. I recall reading most of those “get off XP now!” articles and their authors almost always blamed stupid and/or lazy IT people for not getting off of XP. It must be nice to have never gone before an executive board with an airtight case that correctly concluded, “We can’t afford not to do this,” and still walked away empty-handed (but then, there are also reasons why some people write about IT for a living instead of doing IT for a living). It makes me wonder what sort of experiences these folks have had throughout their careers. Here’s a few things I learned during mine:
- Sometimes the organization just really doesn’t have any money to spend and they make very hard choices as a result. If yours is in that place and they haven’t let you go, then maybe you should be careful with your criticisms.
- Sometimes the people that try to explain why it’s necessary to perform an upgrade or system replacement aren’t up to the challenge. I know that I’ve been successful in my career through a combination of technical ability and diplomatic skill. Some highly technical people can’t interface well with the living, and as such, they fail at things that others might consider a no-brainer.
- There are some people out there that absolutely no one can explain anything to, even the obvious. Sometimes, those people run their own businesses.
- Sometimes, corporate politics are insurmountable. It’s not strange to find institutions where executive and managerial bonuses are negatively impacted by planned upgrade expenditures but are not impacted by emergency expenditures. The less scrupulous of those executives and managers will happily wait for computer systems to fail and then replace them piecemeal at greater expense to the overall organization.
My point is, ridiculously self-centered and woefully wrong-headed decisions are often completely outside the control of IT. We are the ones that have to make those bad things work. We’re accustomed to Microsoft helping us out.
Here’s where I’m really going with this. Let’s say you’re one of those poor IT guys stuck with one or more of these systems that you can’t upgrade for whatever reason. You know that the hardware is going to fail on you, you just don’t know when. This is one of those problems where virtualization is the obvious solution. First, you no longer have to worry about the hardware dying out from under you. Second, you can easily isolate that virtual machine so that its out-of-date security status is no longer a direct threat to the rest of your network. The only thing you should have to worry about is the questionable outcome of a physical-to-virtual conversion. If Microsoft would just open the door for these old versions, that would actually make it easier for organizations to move forward because they could replace and/or upgrade everything else without making major sacrifices over old systems (or heading to third parties that will handle their problem). Even better, it would be by providing the service that made Microsoft famous: backward compatibility.
Backward Compatibility by Forward Compatibility
So far, I’ve focused on new hosts supporting old operating systems. However, I think support for new operating systems is important as well. We’ve already come to the realization that businesses don’t move forward quickly. But, when an IT shop has a hypervisor at its disposal, sometimes it can move some things forward without needing the blessing of the larger organization. I’m not really going to expand on that due to the risk of opening a Pandora’s box that I really want no part of. We’ll just say that I only suggest that every IT department engage in the most highly ethical behavior and leave it at that.
So, from a purely technical standpoint, what I mean is that IT may not be able to get funding or support to upgrade a hypervisor to the latest version, but they might be able to create a virtual machine running the latest and greatest server operating system. In that case, they might find that Microsoft is the barrier. Let’s say your host is 2008 R2 (WS or HV, doesn’t matter). Mainstream support for that product just recently ended — well after Windows Server 2012 R2 was released. Extended support doesn’t end until 2020. So, why isn’t Windows Server 2012 R2 a supported guest of Hyper-V R2? Again, providing this support would actually make it easier for organizations to move forward. We all Most of us know that IT can rarely get anything approved without being able to demonstrate a fully working model and that we often have to provide that working model without spending money. Showing off the features of Windows Server 2012 R2 by standing up an evaluation copy on the Windows Server 2008 R2 system they won’t give you money to upgrade just might be that working model. But, if you can’t build it because Microsoft won’t support it, then there’s no model, there’s no demonstration, and there’s no funding.
I can hear some of you thinking, “Just because Microsoft doesn’t support it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work.” Yep, I know that. And at a great many places, you can do unsupported things and get away with it. But, in a great many other places, you cannot.
I implore Microsoft to return to its roots. Make Hyper-V the shining beacon of backward (and forward!) compatibility.
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About the Author
Eric Siron
14 thoughts on "Where Microsoft Gets Virtualization Wrong"
(NOTE: Love the Altaro backup software 🙂 )
I have to pretty much disagree with everything you have said here. Also, any business that says you can’t run an UNSUPPORTED guest OS on a host OS that also doesn’t support it is missing some marbles IMO.
Lets hit forward compatibility first:
1) Honestly, forward compatibility is pointless IMO. Your hypervisor should be so plain that upgrading to the latest version should at most require a guest OS reboot or two (MS has made great strides in 2016 to allow smooth upgrade paths at the hypervisor level, but to be honest, they have been really good at this anyway, now it is just easy with cluster aware host level upgrades from 2012 R2 to 2016). Bringing up vmware makes no sense either, as 2008 R2 was released in July 2009, competing with vmware ESXi 4.x, and looking at the latest version of ESXi 4, we see they only support OS’s up to… 2008 R2 as well.
2) I think the above refutes your points on forward compatibility needs in the industry, but if it doesn’t, also consider hardware features, as new hardware is released, software vendors should NOT be creating a new OS and then somehow figuring out how to back port that feature at the host level to be used at the guest level – it gets too complicated. I’d rather have MS creating new features or stabilizing current features in the latest release than worrying about old versions that have already gone out of general support.
2a) If you can’t upgrade your HOST to Hyper-V 2012 R2 without _significant_ issues or downtime, you aren’t using virtualization properly. A big company will have extra hardware to stage and live migrate, a small company will be able to deal with the few hours of downtime to wipe the host and install the latest Hyper-V. Licensing should NOT be an issue either, because 2008 R2 only allowed 1 virtual OS (4 with enterprise, unlimited with datacenter). Keep in mind, 2008 R2 had the old licensing mindset, MS only allowed the virtual OS if you didn’t use the physical OS for anything but Hyper-V. (If you run 2008 R2 with hyper-v roles enabled, a virtual OS using the virtual OS key, AND are running other services on the physical host, you are out of compliance with licensing!)
Backwards compatibility:
1) Why would Microsoft’s Hyper-V team be required to support an OS on their “product line” if that OS isn’t even supported by MS anymore? It makes no sense. From a business standpoint, they need to be very black and white, because if their hyper-v team is required to support 2003 R2 or 2000, you would get a lot of he said she said calls. They are doing this to avoid THAT. Does this mean Hyper-V 2012 R2 or 2016 doesn’t or wont run Windows NT, XP, 2000, 2003 R2? NOT AT ALL – they will still run, and I bet the Hyper-V team is required to test against those OS’s to make sure they can at least boot up and get all the basics. I say this because MS does offer paid support for XP and 2003 R2 (banks, healthcare providers, basically anyone willing to drop a few million to them for extended security fixes) and I bet if you were one of those customers and called in because of some Hyper-V specific bug that broke your 2003 R2 guest OS running on Hyper-V 2012 R2, they would fix it for you.
2) To touch on my “business is missing marbles” comment, I simply mean that if your business decision makers are saying that you can’t use Hyper-V 2012 R2 to virtualize a few remaining legacy XP or 2003 boxes SIMPLY because 2012 R2 doesn’t support them, I would find a new company to work for. XP and 2003 AREN’T SUPPORTED BY MS ANYMORE, YOU ARE ALREADY DOING UNSUPPORTED THINGS! (NOTE: I am yelling at the business owners, not you! 🙂 ) Put it on whatever hypervisor you want, if the OS has an issue, you are screwed regardless. Be glad you are virtualizing it and is now running on production hardware, is easier to manage, can be backed up much easier, etc.
I think that you entirely missed most of the points that I was trying to make, and it appears you didn’t even read it all.
Your point 1: Technological ease of upgrade is only one of many barriers to upgrading a hypervisor, and Microsoft does not have the community’s trust that this process will be as seamless as advertised. Bringing up VMware makes perfect sense because their current hypervisors will run all of these guest operating systems AND provide a solid experience doing so, current or not. Hyper-V does not do that. If I knew that I would need to hang on to a ridiculously old OS as a guest, then Hyper-V has an automatic mark against it.
Your point 2: If you’d read the text, you’d note that I proposed a solution for that concern that allows Microsoft to stay out of it entirely. Besides, have you ever written Integration Services? How do you know that it would take any major amount of work to allow a no-longer-updated guest OS to continue to communicate with the VMBus? As I said, Windows XP is not changing. I presume that the Integration Services are building upon already-abstracted hardware exposed by the HAL, not being completely rewritten each time Intel drops a new CPU. Besides, Microsoft kept the 16-bit thunk libraries around forever without directly providing support for 16-bit applications through PSS. It’s not like they don’t have experience and history doing this sort of thing.
Your point 2a: Again, the technological barriers are only one of a great many, and you are making the assumption that things will go as planned.
Your second point 1: Your point argues with itself by trying to make the case that Microsoft doesn’t have any reason to support something it is actively supporting with great incentive, and misses the fact that I said that Microsoft has at least one “out”.
Your second point 2: That’s not what I said. And, if your criteria for sticking with an employer is only working for one that always makes sound technology decisions, I assume that means you are self-employed? You’re also making an unfounded assumption that their decisions are unsound. It could be: “the server computer manufacturer doesn’t support the new Windows/Hyper-V version and we’re not replacing those until they can’t physically support the load or you can’t extend their warranties anymore.” Solid business practice, solid reasoning. There is also, “our primary line-of-business application vendor doesn’t support their app running on the new hypervisor version so you can’t upgrade until they do”.
Think bigger than just how easy it is to drop in a DVD and click Next a few times.
Being self employed allows me to choose clients, and a client that would rather allow their _legacy_ vendor to dictate their security and hardware practices is typically not a client I want. Any vendor that dictates their software can only run on Windows server 2000 or NT, is a vendor I do not want to work with and I would recommend the client move away from that vendor with impunity and also offer to help find alternatives. (How can the vendor THEMSELVES offer full support of their own product on a OS that is no longer supported!) Not only are they putting their company at risk, but they are also putting all their customer data at risk as well. I do not want to be liable for that!
As a side note, vendors that do not “support” virtualization are also vendors I try and stay away from*, because it means the vendor doesn’t understand virtualization at all.
* exceptions would be made for custom hardware, or things that need to interface with external sources – especially seen in manufacturing companies, however most of the vendors I have worked with in this space are MORE THAN WILLING to work with you on virtualizing, and will even go so far as to work with you on using portX to network dongles to interface with the actual manufacturing device. Then again, I guess it requires a company that cares about their clients.
IMO, everything you mentioned doesn’t point at an issue with Microsoft, it points to an issue with vendors that create applications on Windows. If a company uses Vendor X, and Vendor X doesn’t allow their app to run in a VM, or only supports NT / Server 2000 – get rid of that vendor, because they probably have no idea what an SSD is, or how a SAN works. Even worse, is if this vendor doesn’t have any path to upgrade – so not only do they only still support Server 2000, but they don’t have any new application that can be installed on a newer OS? This tells me the vendor hasn’t changed their code in a decade, and again, isn’t a vendor I would work with or want my client to work with.
Your point-of-view depends entirely upon the word “I”. Are you also saying that if you walk into a hospital and find out that their MRI controller can only run on Windows XP and that no one else on the planet builds a comparable MRI machine, that you would just skip having an MRI? And on the way out the door, as you’re saying, “get rid of that vendor”, who are you suggesting that they turn to? What about your insurance agent? What about your bank? What about the manufacturer of the car that you drive? If you call in to report that a tractor-trailer nearly ran you off the road and you find out that the system that reads the onboard computer to validate your claim cannot be newer than Windows 2000, are you just going to drop the complaint?
I guarantee that millions and millions of administrators in all of those verticals deal with this issue every single day. That’s not even touching on the gigantic enterprises that face intense logistical issues around replacing primary systems in timespans that are less than a decade. Are you counseling all of those admins to quit their jobs rather than accept a challenge like this and just leave the world without administrators? Virtualization is a prime solution to this problem that can give us the ability to isolate many of these systems safely while still providing their services. Besides, whatever you may think of the matter, administrators are dealing with it. They’re just buying vSphere licenses to do it. Based on history, Microsoft should own this space, not be the also-ran.
(NOTE: Love the Altaro backup software 🙂 )
I have to pretty much disagree with everything you have said here. Also, any business that says you can’t run an UNSUPPORTED guest OS on a host OS that also doesn’t support it is missing some marbles IMO.
Lets hit forward compatibility first:
1) Honestly, forward compatibility is pointless IMO. Your hypervisor should be so plain that upgrading to the latest version should at most require a guest OS reboot or two (MS has made great strides in 2016 to allow smooth upgrade paths at the hypervisor level, but to be honest, they have been really good at this anyway, now it is just easy with cluster aware host level upgrades from 2012 R2 to 2016). Bringing up vmware makes no sense either, as 2008 R2 was released in July 2009, competing with vmware ESXi 4.x, and looking at the latest version of ESXi 4, we see they only support OS’s up to… 2008 R2 as well.
2) I think the above refutes your points on forward compatibility needs in the industry, but if it doesn’t, also consider hardware features, as new hardware is released, software vendors should NOT be creating a new OS and then somehow figuring out how to back port that feature at the host level to be used at the guest level – it gets too complicated. I’d rather have MS creating new features or stabilizing current features in the latest release than worrying about old versions that have already gone out of general support.
2a) If you can’t upgrade your HOST to Hyper-V 2012 R2 without _significant_ issues or downtime, you aren’t using virtualization properly. A big company will have extra hardware to stage and live migrate, a small company will be able to deal with the few hours of downtime to wipe the host and install the latest Hyper-V. Licensing should NOT be an issue either, because 2008 R2 only allowed 1 virtual OS (4 with enterprise, unlimited with datacenter). Keep in mind, 2008 R2 had the old licensing mindset, MS only allowed the virtual OS if you didn’t use the physical OS for anything but Hyper-V. (If you run 2008 R2 with hyper-v roles enabled, a virtual OS using the virtual OS key, AND are running other services on the physical host, you are out of compliance with licensing!)
Backwards compatibility:
1) Why would Microsoft’s Hyper-V team be required to support an OS on their “product line” if that OS isn’t even supported by MS anymore? It makes no sense. From a business standpoint, they need to be very black and white, because if their hyper-v team is required to support 2003 R2 or 2000, you would get a lot of he said she said calls. They are doing this to avoid THAT. Does this mean Hyper-V 2012 R2 or 2016 doesn’t or wont run Windows NT, XP, 2000, 2003 R2? NOT AT ALL – they will still run, and I bet the Hyper-V team is required to test against those OS’s to make sure they can at least boot up and get all the basics. I say this because MS does offer paid support for XP and 2003 R2 (banks, healthcare providers, basically anyone willing to drop a few million to them for extended security fixes) and I bet if you were one of those customers and called in because of some Hyper-V specific bug that broke your 2003 R2 guest OS running on Hyper-V 2012 R2, they would fix it for you.
2) To touch on my “business is missing marbles” comment, I simply mean that if your business decision makers are saying that you can’t use Hyper-V 2012 R2 to virtualize a few remaining legacy XP or 2003 boxes SIMPLY because 2012 R2 doesn’t support them, I would find a new company to work for. XP and 2003 AREN’T SUPPORTED BY MS ANYMORE, YOU ARE ALREADY DOING UNSUPPORTED THINGS! (NOTE: I am yelling at the business owners, not you! 🙂 ) Put it on whatever hypervisor you want, if the OS has an issue, you are screwed regardless. Be glad you are virtualizing it and is now running on production hardware, is easier to manage, can be backed up much easier, etc.
Eric:
You have hit the nail right on the head!
I formally went full time IT in 1998 by obtaining my MCSE (NT 4.0) .
IT is my full time job first starting in the corporate world then starting my own IT Consulting business in 2003 (after the .com bust)
My target market is small business 2-75 people and I have a number of 2008R2 Hyper-V Enterprise Server Core installs running everything from Server 2003, Win7Pro, and even 2012R2 servers.
What you explained about the real pace of business is so true.
Thank you!
Maurice Werner
[email protected]
Eric:
You have hit the nail right on the head!
I formally went full time IT in 1998 by obtaining my MCSE (NT 4.0) .
IT is my full time job first starting in the corporate world then starting my own IT Consulting business in 2003 (after the .com bust)
My target market is small business 2-75 people and I have a number of 2008R2 Hyper-V Enterprise Server Core installs running everything from Server 2003, Win7Pro, and even 2012R2 servers.
What you explained about the real pace of business is so true.
Thank you!
Maurice Werner
[email protected]
excellent article and you hit the nail right on the head
MS has a lot of things to learn and I wish they would come off their high horse already
I think with the change of the guard recently, things are starting to look better again, but it will take time ….
excellent article and you hit the nail right on the head
MS has a lot of things to learn and I wish they would come off their high horse already
I think with the change of the guard recently, things are starting to look better again, but it will take time ….
You’re one of those, who understand the REAL world. Marketing people always show us the great new things we should buy but they forget that running IT is not the main part of the companys business, it’s producing products. So we just get the budget we at least need, not what we would like to get.
The CEO might understand me when I tell him we must move from 2003 Terminal Server an buy all those RDS-CALs new because it’s out of support but NOT when I want to buy new licenses because the new version has this nice little new feature.
We are running one Autocad machine for the carpenters software under XP because it would take so very very much time to convert all those drawings to a newer version and I really hope it will not crash before they changed to the newer version.
Regards
You’re one of those, who understand the REAL world. Marketing people always show us the great new things we should buy but they forget that running IT is not the main part of the companys business, it’s producing products. So we just get the budget we at least need, not what we would like to get.
The CEO might understand me when I tell him we must move from 2003 Terminal Server an buy all those RDS-CALs new because it’s out of support but NOT when I want to buy new licenses because the new version has this nice little new feature.
We are running one Autocad machine for the carpenters software under XP because it would take so very very much time to convert all those drawings to a newer version and I really hope it will not crash before they changed to the newer version.
Regards