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Sneak Peek at Windows Server 2008
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Feb 25, 2008 06:09 PM
from the still-fighting-the-fight dept.
from the still-fighting-the-fight dept.
stinkymountain writes to tell us that NetworkWorld got their hands on Microsoft's latest addition to the server OS market and had a chance to poke around inside Windows Server 2008. It seems that the new release is a vast improvement over older versions in both security and performance but still lacking in several key areas. "There's even a minimalist installation called Windows Server Core that can run various server roles (such as DNS, DHCP, Active Directory components) but not applications (like SQL Server or IIS dynamic pages). It's otherwise a scripted host system for headless operations. There's no GUI front end to a Windows Server Core box, but it is managed by a command line interface (CLI), scripts, remotely via System Manager or other management applications that support Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), or by Remote Terminal Services. It's also a potential resource-slimmed substrate for Hyper-V and virtualization architectures."
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IT: Microsoft Trying To Appeal to the Unix Crowd? 468 comments
DigDuality writes "With the news that Windows 2008 (recently discussed on Slashdot) will have GUI-less installs and be fully scriptable, that they've opened up their communication protocols for non-commercial usage and are providing a patent covenant (Redhat Responds), and now finally an interesting rumor floating around that Microsoft will be taking on GNU directly. Has Microsoft totally switched gears in how it is approaching the Unix and FOSS sector for direct competition? According to an anonymous email leaked from a Microsoft employee, it seems Microsoft will be developing a framework that will be completely GNU compatible. Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, said on Friday (23 February) that they are aiming to restore a Unix-like environment to its former proprietary glory, at the same time proving that Microsoft is committed to interoperability. Ballmer emphasized that Microsoft's new strategy is to provide users with a complete package, and this includes users who like Unix environments. According to the supposedly leaked email, UNG, which stands for UNG's not GNU, is set to be released late 2009."
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Embedded Hardware (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Embedded Hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
Lightwight secure OSs are pretty handy for industrial applications like robotics etc, but Linux is making huge inroads there too mainly because of reduced footprint (== lower cost) and better network management.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I cant see Microsoft getting a foot hold unless a company makes a kind of embedded small business server box.
It would have to be cheap though.
Re:Embedded Hardware (Score:5, Funny)
nice, the captcha is "exploit"
you got that right.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Embedded Hardware (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
They should make the GUI part like X windows (Score:4, Funny)
Re:They should make the GUI part like X windows (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, I've always said that Windows 3.11 was at least as good on the server as anything else they've released.
what about DX10/game performance? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:what about DX10/game performance? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:what about DX10/game performance? (Score:4, Interesting)
When you install server, you are given the choice of server core or standard server. Assuming you choose standard server, it installs server with a basic core of functionality. Then in server manager you add only those roles and features that you want for your system. For my notebook, I added the wireless feature and the search indexer, which is under the file server role.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wtf? I thought it was a server OS.
What does Microsoft think a server is? Admins cant find a config file so they need to search for it?
I feel a disturbance... (Score:5, Funny)
(yes, I know that some Windows admins can use a CLI for nearly anything that'll run on one, but I'm almost willing to wager that the majority do not).
Hey, MCSE! (Score:3, Funny)
Lucky for you then, huh? ;)
A CLI ! But, Bill no-likey keyboards. (Score:4, Interesting)
Someone should let Bill know about this.
and this: Gates predicts fall of the keyboard [presstv.ir]from: Gates: Keyboard use will decline [investors.com]
Crazy with command lines (Score:5, Interesting)
The worst part for me is that they're reducing support for a lot of their "old" API and everything has to be rewritten using command line tools. Essentially what I'm doing is making pretty web interfaces for something that should be part of their own product. Madness!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Actually this isn't anything new for Microsoft, in fact they've gone so far as to require editing your system DLLs with a hex editor to adjust basic network configuration settings [tech-faq.com]. And people think us linux hackers are amazing compiling source code, how about those windows guys reverse engineering binary code in DLLS. :)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Stripped down version, command line only... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." - Henry Spencer
Give them another 5 - 10 years, and maybe, just maybe, they'll get there.
Most people seem to miss... (Score:4, Informative)
For example, for a Server Core Active Directory Role, you can administer it from the standard AD Users and Computers applet from any client.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
sounds like unix (Score:5, Funny)
what I'd like to see (Score:4, Insightful)
Using windows for this you get a lot of overhead both in terms of cost, wasted HD space, memory, and processor usage on software and services that are irrelevant to a headless cluster node. Windows would be a lot more compelling for this space if they offered some kind of really cheap volume license for a stripped down windows that came utilities for managing a cluster of them. Some kind of logarithmic pricing model for clusters would be nice and make them a lot more competitive.
Of course I'm sure a lot of Linux enthusiasts would like to see Microsoft continue to price themselves out of the market. Personally, I think some more serious competition from windows on this front would be a good thing and spawn more innovation in the distributed computing space.
It has to either be 40% faster or exploit HW (Score:4, Insightful)
It has to run virtualization out of the box. It has to allow for per process and per CPU throttling. It has to run real time back up, support dedicated inline encryption and security subsystems. It has to support 16x more RAM and an order of magnitude larger AD spaces. It has to support virtualized patches, a journalled file system, a file system that spans physical volumes.
THAT's what solid improvement looks like, not fixing 70% of what they left out or broke before and calling that a new version.
Re:It has to either be 40% faster or exploit HW (Score:5, Informative)
you have a point there, it would be nice...
see volume shadow copy
See encrypting file system, or bitlocker.
Not sure exactly what you mean, but windows has got a pretty good fine-grained sercurity system. The main problem is out of the box it is largely turned off, and by default users are administrators.
Really? 2TB isn't enough for you?
Hmm I had never heard anyone complaining about any AD limits before so I did a quick search to find out what they were. I didn't find much, but I did see apparently korea.com has an AD implementation with 8 million accounts.
Yep, you are right, that would be nice.
See NTFS. Its only been around for 10+ years,
See DFS.
Parent
GUI-est CLI Ever (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe it does have it's place. If you just want to run basic DNS or some of the 10 or so other things it's intended to do, then at least it's going to do that for you with slightly less memory/space requirements and without quite so much other stuff running that leaves it so open to other vulnerabilities. But I still find it kind of silly, a good Sys. Admin can lock down the regular GUI version just fine and resource savings are so minimal as to be nonexistent.
But that's just my couple of cents...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Number two being that it most likely still relies on that crap Registry schema for all of its settings.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Number two being that it most likely still relies on that crap Registry schema for all of its settings.
At least it can now navigate and modify the registry like it was a file system, thanks to the (admittedly ridiculously named) Windows PowerShell [wikipedia.org].
Also, here's a video interview with the Vista kernel team [msdn.com] on the topic of the Windows Registry among other things, and why it has remained.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, at least with scattered .conf files, if one goes corrupt, so what? You only los
Re:um yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
Because anecdotal evidence represents the pinnacle in accuracy and reliability, I offer my own experiences with the Windows registry.
I've experienced two registry corruptions - one was on Windows 98, and got eaten by the only virus I've ever suffered through.
The second one was on my grandfather's XP computer - the machine booted to the Welcome screen despite having only one user account, but there were no pretty pictures to click on. So, I hit CTRL+ALT+DEL (everyone's favorite key combination!) to get the old NT login screen, and find his username already filled in for me. Hitting OK gave me a "user not found" message.
I rebooted, and it bluescreened before launching the shell, saying that the registry hive was corrupted.
Crappy registry? Maybe, but chkdsk from the XP CD found that the hard disk had failed. >75% bad clusters, and the rest going, I'm sure.
So, I wouldn't worry too much about the registry. It's been there since Windows 95, and it even mostly functioned through a catastrophic disk failure. Besides, Windows keeps backup hives, and System Restore backs it up. Worst case, you're looking at a few minutes on the recovery console.
Parent
Re:um yeah (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Great ideas but late to the party (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey Microsoft, Linux, BSD, etc... called they want their ideas back! Actually though I'm really glad to see this stuff. It really is a step in the right direction, and even if it isn't my platform of choice, a good idea is a good idea.
Parent
Re:Great ideas but late to the party (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there something wrong with conf and ini files? Did the gods come down and declare that configurations must be system-locked registry hives, binary or XML (which is nearly as bad) files?
I wish every system/OS programmer that came out using the latest fad file format was beaten half to death, then given one final chance to amend their ways before they were taken and thrown off a minimum thirty storey building.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
While I agree with you, I think MS wasn't thinking of humans reading and editing the XML by hand. They were undoubtedly expecting people to use the IIS Manager and it's probably easier for the programmers to generate the configs out of IIS Manager if it is a structured format like XML. Harder to systematically generate
Re:Great ideas but late to the party (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Great ideas but late to the party (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, more often than not, XML is an overkill, but sometimes there's no better way in the long run. Really, any extreme point of view is bad, pro- or anti-XML alike. So, know your enemy and be prepared to admit his strengths, for he has them regardless of what you think.
Parent
Re:Great ideas but late to the party (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
WinGUI arguments on slashdot for the last decade.. (Score:5, Funny)
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MS-DOS 8.0 (Score:5, Interesting)
I do have to say that I'm amused at the idea of a GUI-less Windows, considering that Windows began as nothing but a GUI, which ran on top of DOS. After all the effort Microsoft went through to make the GUI mandatory and supposedly integral to the OS itself, now they're talking about uncoupling it. MS-DOS 8.0 anyone?
Parent
Naked?!?!? (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know where you work, but at my job I don't have that nudity clause. In fact I'm pretty sure if I turned up to work naked I'd be fired. That's okay though because I'd rather quit than be around some of my coworkers naked.
Parent
Re:But still, why? (Score:5, Insightful)
But I must say it seems you put the bar quite high!
Parent
Re:But still, why? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:So command line now? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd think that if Linux is "lambasted" for being geeky it's because users need to do certain things with it, whereas most Windows users rarely ever open a console window.
The number of things that you need to do with bash on any Linux distro have decidedly decreased in the past few years, so I doubt the label is really applicable anymore. Perhaps the problem is that a lot of the problem-solving advice you can find online for distros like Ubuntu tend to use command line solutions, which is predictable if those solutions are being provided by more knowledgeable people who don't have a problem using the console to begin with.
I played with some of the early betas and Server 2008 is actually quite cool. The fact that most everything is now scriptable (the subset that wasn't before through WMI, at least, or the things that have been simplified) is a life saver, and the switching of server roles is very useful when you want to re-task a box quickly for whatever reason. Hosting companies will probably love it.
I think the important thing about 2008 is that it gives you the option to use a character-based environment, and it gives you a very good one at that (PowerShell). If you feel more comfortable with the GUI tools, they're all still there.
Parent
Re:So command line now? (Score:5, Insightful)
How sad indeed that Powershell will not run on Server Core. Neither (as far as I've seen) will IIS or SQL. I would love to see a DB Server as close to bare hardware as possible for performance reasons! But really, no PowerShell on their brand new Server SKU? That is just stupid.
Parent
Re:So command line now? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because it's a lot easier to tell a quesion-asker to run
than to walk them through "open the control panel, click 'Sound Themes' then 'Color Editor', go to the 'Remote Widgets and Printing' tab, look for the 'Allow Zebras' checkbox, uncheck it, click apply, re-check it, click apply again, then close the window." Plus, users get it in their shell history so they can run it again without bookmarking the forum page and stepping through the instructions again.
Command line interfaces aren't just "lower level". They allow a different kind of expressivness which lends itself very well to certain tasks. Routine administration is very often that sweet spot.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When has Microsoft ever opted to follow a industry standard rather than use their own?
Well... Besides TCP/IP... Though if it were up to them we'd be using NetBEUI for internet today.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows can BSOD just by having some hardware in the same room as it.
Re:Mod parent flameba..... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent