Windows Server 2008 One Year On — Hit Or Miss? 386
magacious writes "Friday marked a year to the day since Microsoft launched Windows Server 2008, but did it have quite the impact the so-called software giant expected, or did it make more of a little squeak than a big bang? Before its arrival on 27 February 2008, it had been five long years since the release of the last major version of Windows Server. In a world that was moving on from simple client/server applications, and with server clouds on the horizon, Windows Server 2003 was looking long in the tooth. After a year of 'Vista' bashing, Microsoft needed its server project to be well received, just to relieve some pressure. After all, this time last year, the panacea of a well-received Windows 7 was still a long way off. So came the new approach: Windows Server 2008."
Not a matter of opinion.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not a matter of opinion.. (Score:5, Funny)
Second comment on the thread, and it's already been Godwin'ed. I _am_ impressed.
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Man, have you seen the picture [photobucket.com] of his cat?
Re:Not a matter of opinion.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not useless, and in fact, it's the very first thing I thought to myself when I read the summary.
To further your own analogy, how seriously could you take an article that, in it's first paragraph dismissed the Nazi Germany as a something the world over-reacted to, and never should have taken seriously?
It sets a tone, that perhaps the author's views are badly colored.
whats it give us? (Score:5, Informative)
I run a few 2k8 servers and must say that there are very few features that distinguish it from 2k3. For me, those are the new remote-apps terminal server feature and hyper-v. not a whole lot has changed other than rearranging a bunch of stuff.
Re:whats it give us? (Score:4, Insightful)
2k3 just works.
Does anyone have a compelling reason to use 2k8?
Re:whats it give us? (Score:4, Informative)
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...and can fully leverage the new GP features in Vista, assuming you chose to deploy Vista in the first place.
Yes that's true, but you can push a "Group Policy Client Side Extension" package (with WSUS if you have it setup) that gives you those features on XP and Server 2K3 as well...
RODC seems like a good idea... your AD forest has to be upgraded to 2K8's schema though, right?
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2k3 is good, but I have having to restart every week or so when MS puts out updates..
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I've been curious why all the sudden there are several servers that announced regular routine maintenance cycles where they would be unavailable... They used to be available 24/7.
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There are multiple issues which can cause what you describe, the most commonly one i've encountered in the wild is the combination of a WS08 bug (for which there is a hotfix) together with McAfee.
Most likely:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959816 [microsoft.com]
Maybe (SMB2 only):
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948572 [microsoft.com]
Basically: If you have issues like that, don't reboot the servers. Open a PSS case.
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While I wouldn't automatically shriek with horror at seeing a NT 4 SP6 server in a production environment, I might sort of wonder if the people running the thing might be better off with a Win2kSP4 server.
I ran literally one of the largest NT4 backed networks in the world (military) for a while, and liked it just fine, but you have to admit it had some serious problems.
Besides, you can play game4s on Win2k. NT sucked for gaming.
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Re:whats it give us? (Score:5, Informative)
The main things is the ability to do a "core" (minimalistic) install, hyper-v, the terminal service enhancements as you mentioned, IIS7 (thats actually a very, very big deal for .NET shops) and souped up Active Directory. The rest is mostly enhanced management (incremental upgrades and some new features here and there to make stuff faster/easier) and incremental improvements on most things, and support for Vista specific features. Its also decently faster overall.
The first things i mentioned are actually pretty major, if you need them, but obviously are irrelevant if all you're using it for is a file server, of course :)
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I would say a minimal install is very relevant for a file server... Who wants tons of crap on a machine thats only acting as a file server?
Re:whats it give us? (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, it handles AD just fine. I use it every day for that. To map UIDs properly you need one of: a replicated /etc/passwd file, schema extensions for AD, or an LDAP server. Depending on what you are doing, I think those are acceptable solutions for most situations, the first one being the most common for one or two file servers hanging out on a Windows domain. But, like you say, Samba 4 will eliminate the need for this and make it that much easier to integrate.
Re:whats it give us? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't disagree with what your saying, but I don't think thats the main reason people should go for a NT based solution.
I really, seriously think its the Trained Chimp factor.
If you set up a NT network properly, lock it down, and make sure someone with a clue looks in on it every once in a while, you can have a much lower pricepoint trained chimp fix the day to day problems; sure, there will be more day to day problems, but your chimps are a lot cheaper, and easier to find.
Also, I had a lot of problems trying to work with earlier versions of Samba; I imagine a lot of other people did, as well, it's going to take a while to get over the distrust.
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Actually no, I'm a busy admin and I don't have time to follow these instructions for getting Samba hooked up to Active Directory: http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba_&_Active_Directory [samba.org]
Then I have to install ACL support and headache that goes with that, hoping something doesn't scramble my file system. In most businesses, Windows Server is not terribly expensive and allows the admin to get more done in less time.
Note, there are distros that offer GUIs for getting this done but they generally cost $$$.
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This is all true... the best admin advice I can think of was when Scotty (from Star Trek lore) fairly yelled at a young engineer "How many times do I have to tell you, the right tool for the right job!"
Re:whats it give us? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a busy admin too. Fortunately it doesn't take long at all to install Ubuntu Server, apt-get install likewise-open, and then type "domainjoin-cli join my.domain my-username" in the command line.
When you use being "busy" as an excuse for being ignorant of your options, you do your employer a disservice. That page you linked to hasn't had a major edit in two years or so, and it does not reflect the current best practices for setting up a simple Linux/Samba file server with AD integration. And no, no extra $$ is required for Ubuntu Server.
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When you use being "busy" as an excuse for being ignorant of your options, you do your employer a disservice
Not necessarily. They hired a windows admin, they should expect to have a windows admin. Seeing as they made that decision, they're fine with him using Windows options that cost money, and it's almost certainly worth more to the employer to have him save time using Windows. Is it worth it to the employer to pay him to learn to use samba? Maybe, but that's their decision, not his. It's entirely possible, even likely, that when all is said and done, the cost of training and the extra support time will easily
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Re:whats it give us? (Score:5, Insightful)
That page you linked to hasn't had a major edit in two years or so, and it does not reflect the current best practices for setting up a simple Linux/Samba file server with AD integration.
Then what the fsck is it doing on the samba.org site? Why isn't it removed if not updated? You know, this IS one of the real pitfalls of Linux, whenever you're looking for a guide you're likely to find something that's two years old and may or may not be valid. If documentation sucks, documentation re-verification on newer versions suck even more. I bet that's 99% of the reason Ubuntu got their code names down the way they do, if you search for "active directory hardy", "active directory intrepid", "active directory jaunty" you're much more likely to get relevant hits than "active directory ubuntu" or worse yet "active directory linux".
Re:whats it give us? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oh please, in Debian installer, at the stage formatting disks before copying base system, installer offers you choose mount options, which include mounting with acls, anyway as far as I know, any modern distro comes with acls installed and any moder file system supports acls, you just need to enable them by adding a mount option in fstab, so I wouldn't call this the most difficult step in configuring linux file server, may be that was true 10 years ago, but not now.
Then it takes about a whole afternoon to f
Re:whats it give us? (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah, powershell is slick. Though making commandlets is so simple in C# (or reusable scripts in powershell itself), that this is more of a "nice to have" than something worth paying for. Though im guessing they'll push Powershell 2.0 with it (it is in the Windows 7 beta), and now THAT is slick.
I do find it a little ironic, that of all things that Microsoft could have done better than Unix, one of the ones they wiped the floor with, is the -Shell- scripting. Go figures.
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NTBackup in 2008 can no longer backup data located on a remote share which is a PITA (at least I can't do this, does anyone know different?). I need this because I backup several servers onto 1 backup device. So today my backups are still done on a 2003 server.
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Backup in 2008 is "cooler in other ways" though - backup images that are made are VHDs (Hyper-Vs image format) and are bootable! How about that for bare metal restore
You can get NTBackup working on Windows Vista: http://www.petri.co.il/installing_windows_xp_ntbackup_on_windows_vista.htm [petri.co.il]
I'd imagine those instructions would work on Server 2K8 as well... they're based on the same codebase afaik
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Remote apps instead of a full desktop - already done by X11 and citrix for many years.
Hyper-v - already done by xen, kvm, vmware and a whole load more, most linux distros already had some kind of vm shipping by default.
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Been trying to talk them into a *nix back end with the app on a Samba share, but they ain't buyin it...
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Some good, lots bad. (Score:2)
I expected more driver support (Score:4, Interesting)
I've installed Win2008 a few times and it always surprises me that I have to dig up the driver disks for the storage controllers... never have to do that when I install Fedora or Debian.
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Basic Open Source versus Proprietary issue. It's a lot easier for a hardware company to get drivers added to Linux distros than to Windows install disks.
Re:I expected more driver support (Score:5, Interesting)
This is really an about face... 10 years ago, Linux was the platform you often couldn't get running due to missing hardware drivers -- you really had to be very careful about what hardware you chose.
Also, Windows 2000 was the easy-to-use OS.. Linux was the server OS with usability issues..
Is it starting to change, so that Linux is actually more usable than Windows server?
That would be the day...
Now if only we could get a true match for Windows Active Directory. So that the software on Windows Desktop machines, works EXACTLY as if the environment was powered by Windows servers, Exchange for e-mail, etc.
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>This is really an about face... 10 years ago, Linux was the platform you often couldn't get running due to missing
hardware drivers -- you really had to be very careful about what hardware you chose.
Nothing has really changed here, if your hardware is not supported on Linux out the box then the chances are it won't work at all. In Windows land you expect to have to provide a driver disk, this option doesn't really exist on Linux.
This is really caused by the infrequent releases of Windows vs the yearly o
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Samba4 is excruciatingly close to true AD support. I'm now using it for my own network for a handful of WinXP computers. I think in about 1 year Samba4 will be ready for production.
OpenChange is also moving at a fast pace.
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That's a very unfair comparison. Servers need to be extremely cautious with drivers in order to provide the sort of 99.999% uptime expected for industry. Fedora and Debian are more comparable to MacOS or Windows XP this way, where it's easier to update and support oddball hardware configurations.
No, install CentOS or run Oracle or VMware servers on it, something with commercial support expected on it, and you're going to run into driver limitations because they've not had a year or more to test it under ser
Re:I expected more driver support (Score:5, Informative)
You don't get 5 nines out of a single server install, sorry. The only way you get that is with HA clustering and automatic failover.
PC hardware, even expensive stuff, is not reliable enough no matter what $VENDOR's sales pitch is.
You might get lucky and get a single reliable box, but if you deploy a non-trivial number of servers you will need to plan for hardware/software failures.
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Nope... (Score:3, Interesting)
RHEL 5.3 still has tons more drivers than Win2k8. I know from very painful experience.
It's a natural consequence of
a) as mentioned before, the nature of the licensing, but probably more importantly...
b) the release cycle. RHEL is pretty good about timely major updates compared to eternities for MS service packs.
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The biggest reason for the "extra step" for a lot of drivers in Ubuntu is because of "non-free" drivers. Because of the spirit of Ubuntu, they have to make you feel guilty about using an nVidia or Broadcom driver before you go "It's on $#@!ing notebook, just install it."
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You must have some vastly different hardware than anything I've used in years. For a concrete example; I am a devotee of Lenovo Thinkpads, especially the T series. Linux installs on these like a dream. To install Windows on them, you have to go into the BIOS, set the SATA controller to compatibility mode, do the install, get a very hard to find disk from Lenovo's site since Windows will not try to re-detect the root volume's storage controller if it changes (it will blue-screen with INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEV
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If you are trying to install vanilla Windows XP (i.e. no applied service packs or anything) on that laptop, then I'm not surprised given that XP was released 2 years before SATA (XP in 2001, Serial ATA in 2003). Kinda hard to have DRIVER SUPPORT for something that won't be released for another 2 years.
Try creating a slipstreamed install CD with at least service pack 2 and possibly the drivers for the SATA controllers. Should save you a ton of trouble in installing a fresh XP installation.
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The problem isn't that it's difficult to get storage drivers into Windows -- Microsoft actively solicits all the major IHV's to provide them. The problem is that the cutoff date for submission can be a year or more in advance of when Windows finally ships. This guarantees that drivers for the latest hardware won't be included.
Re:I expected more driver support (Score:5, Informative)
Can't answer your question (Score:2)
because none of the businesses I see have adopted 2008 server.
Very few have any Vista desktops either.
Re:Can't answer your question (Score:5, Interesting)
To add a voice: I'm seeing more Linux installs than Win2k8 and Vista combined. This many mean nothing, or may mean I'm seeing what the average person is seeing. Consolidation and cost are driving what I'm seeing. When you see a row of several hundred blades running RHEL (replacing Windows in some cases) it's fairly convincing.
Re:Can't answer your question (Score:5, Interesting)
The data center where my servers are is a mixed client data center. It's not the decision of a single company there. There is one company who is using Windows server 2k3 but they are not upgrading. Some of their stuff is moving to Linux/Solaris. The RHEL stuff is a different company that replaced all their Windows servers and went full on RHEL. In my area, we use a mix of Win2k3, Solaris (5.8-10), and Linux (CentOS). There is a ton of telecomms stuff in half the data center as well. I'm not seeing any growth in Windows servers, quite the opposite. That's why I thought my experience might be 'average' so to speak.
Re:Can't answer your question (Score:5, Interesting)
Your experience would be average--for low-end stuff. Generally, if you have the money to be leveraging a lot of Windows Server, you have the money (and often need) your own DC, or a sizable chunk of one.
Anybody whose cup of tea is ASP.NET should be running, not walking, to Server 2008. IIS7 is so much more useful and performant it's not even funny.
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Generally, if you have the money to be leveraging a lot of Windows Server, you used to have the money (and often need) your own DC, or a sizable chunk of one.
there, fixed that for you :)
to be fair, his experience also is average for the high-end. Big shops tend to run larger systems, sometimes Solaris, sometimes IBM running RHEL. If they have the money that its no object, they *still* don't tend to run Windows servers.
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Depends on the business...
Technically oriented businesses often have a lot more linux, businesses where the primary focus is not computing related tend to have a lot of windows (often managed by external companies).
Also a lot of office related stuff is usually all windows, but backend and internet related stuff can be linux based... A lot of smallish companies who think they're 100% windows often have linux boxes and don't realise it... A huge amount of networking equipment runs linux these days.
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Our software (Dental Office Management, Kodak, Practice Works)is certified to run on W2K for the sever and XP pro only, we are actually running on W2003 and a collection of XP pro and one XP home machines for the client and are getting away with it. I don't see W2008 happening for years and Vista will be skipped. Our last system ran on Xenix originally and later on SCO Open Server!
No news is good news (Score:5, Interesting)
Outside of removing ISA Server from the Small Business suite, I've read very few negative opinions on 2K8. If you dont need 64-Bit goodness, it might not be worth upgrading from a stable 2K3 environment.
Re:No news is good news (Score:5, Informative)
I recently setup a client of mine with two Win2k8 64-bit servers (in a larger virtual VMware setup). So far, it's worked out very well. It's fast, stable (uptime is exactly equal to the number of days since we last had to reboot for a patch), and played nice with everything already present. Active Directory and Exchange 2007 migrated from the previous Win2k/Exchange 2k setup without a hitch. In other words: no complaints at all, other than the price (which wasn't too bad, since the client received non-profit pricing - but most of what I setup is Linux or FreeBSD and I greatly prefer that pricetag!).
Things I noticed that have improved:
* The group policy editor is a bit easier to use, and less confusing.
* The Vista performance/health monitor is actually pretty good, and provides a really handy ntop-like interface for seeing which service is doing what with the network (not as fine grained as I'd like, but it's a good starting point).
* The old Services-For-Unix services are more tightly integrated, and it was very easy to get NFS up and running.
* Less is installed by default, and adding just the required services was very straightforward.
* The scheduler seems to have improved, because processes distribute over CPUs more widely, and throughput/responsiveness "feels" better.
* The new role-based manager for file serving is a bit easier to find, but is really similar.
* A couple of new diagnostic wizards have appeared, including one for Group Policy - it helped me find a couple of problems I hadn't thought about.
Items I wasn't so fond of:
* Activation. It doesn't matter if you have a charity volume license anymore - you still have to activate. That bugs me, because this server has to last for years, and I worry that if I have to restore a backup in 5 years time the activation wizard may make my life difficult.
* Volume shadow copies are STILL not configured to my liking by default.
* If you want to use some of the new active directory features, you need a pure Win2k8 domain on the server side. It works with "legacy" Win2k/2k3 systems around, but only if they aren't domain controllers.
* The start menu/icons are straight from Vista.
* License management makes less sense, since the license control tools are now hidden away - checking CAL status is a pain.
Overall, for an MS operating system it's pretty good. I don't see a compelling reason to run out and upgrade any Win2k3 systems that are working well - but for new servers, it works great.
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uptime is exactly equal to the number of days since we last had to reboot for a patch
So... last Tuesday?
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Re:No news is good news (Score:5, Funny)
Hello, this is Bob from Marketing here at FUD Advertising, and we've got this new account from these guys in Washington state called Microsoft.
We've decided to move them into full page adds in Technology and General Media, with short TV spots in support later. We want to go with "Movie-Style" ads: brief quotes from professionals who use the product and speak to potential buyers (Edit from Boss: scratch that ... they want us to call them "users". Sounds like drug addicts to me, but whatever. They write the checks).
We love the idea, because these short quotes are so meaningless, easy to manipulate, memorable and almost perfectly supportive. We think black background, big type with product name at the top, nice picture, and quotes with attributions below ... you know, like a movie ad in the paper.
So, this is what we have so far.
"Less confusing!"
"Pretty good!"
"A good starting point!!"
"Seems to have improved!!"
Send comments to my assistant by Friday.
Thaaaaaanks. That would be Greeaaaaaaaat.
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No, but you can slash this dot --> .
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"64-Bit goodness" was available with win2K3 [microsoft.com] as well so even that's not a reason to go with win2K8.
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There's also a hard to find copy of Win2k with 64 bit enabled.
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ISA provided unmatched flexibility for what it did, but in the (too often) wrong hands, it was a nightmare to configure. Under any circumstance, IMHO, Sonicwall sucks. Unreliable, prone to reset under load (multiple VPNs) and just cheap garbage.
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By the way, what were those "few negative issues" that you were referring to?
It's not made in white plastic or brushed aluminum with an Apple logo.
Does anyone use Server Core? (Score:2, Interesting)
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We deployed internally (we're an IT consulting company).
We use it to run our DC/DNS/DHCP primary infrastructure server. Works fine. I see no advantage right now though, and wouldn't deploy such a setup at a customers site.
In WS08 R2, .NET support will be added to Server Core. This will make it a great option for big web server farms.
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It's not really commandline only, it loads the gui components and then runs cmd.exe instead of explorer.exe, you still have a gui, can still use the mouse and move your cmd.exe windows around, and you can still load gui based apps... It's not like the pure text consoles offered by a unix based os.
TSGateway (Score:4, Informative)
The terminal service gateway is also pretty good. A controlled way to allows TS from the Internet into the clients on the subnet.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Why do you need a special OS to run a server ?!? (Score:2)
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Wow dude, you're out there! First of all, there are a lot of people out there that value the straight forward setup approach that Microsoft often gives you for that high dollar. Of course when I'm running Oracle and spend many thousands on it I install it on a free OS but I certainly can't apt-get install Oracle.
Aptitude is great and all, but you're forgetting apt-get install apache-modssl, mod_mysql, php and the myriad of other things that usually have to get installed too in order to do anything useful w
Re:Why do you need a special OS to run a server ?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, despite what MS will tell you, a server should be fundamentally different to a desktop, it should have a lot less software installed... MS's server versions are quite the opposite, they're basically desktops with additional server applications installed, they have a ton of desktop related functionality that is completely useless on a server sitting in a rack somewhere.
Re:Why do you need a special OS to run a server ?! (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, I know what you mean. IME, Linux is much more valuable to me because it offers more flexibility over the life of a system. If the organisation grows and I need more concurrent users, I don't need to worry about the license. If I need to add a service on an existing server, I don't need to worry about whether Moderately Enterprisey Edition has what I need, or if I can only do it on one of the Really Quite Enterprisey Edition boxes. I can install a zillion times in different VM's, and not have to read the EULA with a fine toothed comb to know if it was legal. In many ways, I'd consider an expensive Linux preferable to a free Windows.
That said, the Windows Server thing isn't that hard to grok. It's just market segmentation, plus a decision to only bundle the server and administrative application bundle with particular variations of the OS. If you prefer, think of it as buying the application bundle, and getting a free, tuned and tweaked version of Windows that is just there to run the expensive application bundle. Net result is that you don't need to worry about compatibility between the applications and your existing OS. MS comes to the table from a proprietary mindset. That's not inherently 100% terrible. And, more important than anything else, they bring some quite good tools. You can decide those tools aren't worth the headaches that come with MS for your situation. But, if you've ever set up NIS and NFS home directories on a bunch of Linux boxes, and you've joined Windows machines to a domain... You know that joining a Windows box to a domain is a heck of a lot more convenient than deploying NIS.
I'm a UNIX admin who has worked with Windows servers, but even coming from my "UNIX 4 eva" side of the fence, I have to admit that the MS solutions make some things very convenient compared to the most analagous UNIX options. Just make sure you know which edition you need, so you install the Windows Server OS that will actually use all of your RAM. :)
Re:Why do you need a special OS to run a server ?! (Score:5, Informative)
Where I work, a typical server costs $5,500, Windows costs around $600, physically putting the server in the datacenter costs $2,000, and labor for installing, configuring, and supporting the server costs $3,000 over the its life. At the end of the day, Windows servers cost around $11,100. Switching to Linux would save us $600, reducing our costs by 5%.
A typical server with 256GB of RAM would run about $60,000. This server would require the Enterprise editions of Windows Server, so that would run about $3,000. The other costs would remain the same and at the end of the day, the OS is still only five percent of the total.
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you obviously need tons of servers, as they still have the 10 connection limit imposed (on ports less than 1024) on WinXP.
My .02 (Score:2, Informative)
The only new feature that I've seen is DFS and even that is broken. The UI design team moved stuff for the sake of moving stuff and made everything bigger and chunkier. It also spams new windows that have a tendency to put themselves in the background like nobody's business. Also, the new DC's are giving all kinds of DNS errors.
Now maybe the DFS and DNS problems will be worked out in tim
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DFS isn't new, it's been around for years; the latest incarnation with delta replication appearing with 2003 R2. All 2008 adds is transparent Access Based Enumeration for DFS shares and the ability to have more than 5000 DFS targets in a single namespace.
Works well as workstation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Works well as workstation (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know whether to mod the parent or reply, but I second this sentiment wholeheartedly.
I am running one as a replacement for my 2003 server/domain controller at my house and also as a Vista-like workstation and game machine. I absolutely love it!
It's just like Vista except for no UAC, no DRM and no annoying slowdowns. In other words, it's everything that Vista should have been, and this is running on only $500 worth of hardware (quad 6600, 4GB RAM).
The 64-bit Vista drivers were a bit difficult to find because my motherboard "doesn't support" Server 2008, but after crossing that hurdle (loading the network driver from a different motherboard with the same chipset because Asus locks out 2008), it's been the best computer I have ever owned.
Works great as a laptop OS! (Score:3, Informative)
I've been using Server2008 x64 on my t61p laptop since it first came out.
It's great! It feels zippier than Vista. It has a smaller install footprint. (actually even wireless isn't installed by default: you have to add it manually). It's been completely rock-solid.
I even use Hyper-V when giving demos at conferences. (unfortunately Hyper-V doesn't cooperate with wireless and disables sleep/hibernate, so I can't use it routinely.)
My experience with 2008 (Score:5, Informative)
Two position statements first: 1) I'm primarily a Unix sysadmin of multiple flavours and love it, 2) I've only used Server 2008 on my test VM network.
Having setup a private network thanks to a company purchased Technet subscription, I now have two Active Directory Domain Controllers, a WSUS server and Terminal Server. My take on 2008 is that when approached the right way, it's actually a very nice operating system.
I like the new Terminal Services seamless window capability, the default policy of only installing the minimum required services, the new look Server Manager, even IIS7 looks nicely moduler. In fact, I could imagine managing a network of 2008 machines in a way that I never could with 2003. Now that might be my lack of fundamental 2003 knowledge (I can use it, but wouldn't describe myself as a "Windows System Administrator").
The reality, even for us Unix/Linux advocates, is that we're probably going to have to interop with Windows Server from time to time, and if it's Server 2008 that I'm having to work with, then I can live with that.
Windows server what? (Score:2)
I have yet to see one, and I see a lot of servers. Seems like 2k3 is good enough and people run other OSs for bigger tasks and virtualization. So... I've seen way more recent deployments of RedHat, CentOS, Ubuntu LTS and W2k3 than 2k8. Maybe it's the Vista smell, I don't know.
Anyone even bothered? (Score:2)
Seriously, we haven't bothered.
Sure we will have to someday as servers are retired and 2003 goes off MOLP but it doesn't seem like a big deal to me to start some push to do it.
More of a quiet snooze then a dramatic miss.
Advanced Firewall settings (Score:3, Interesting)
ACTIVATION?? (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact that I have to activate my OS is annoying. With 2K3, there was a volume licensing option, but with 2K8, that option is gone, and I have to either allow my server to talk to a public Microsoft activation server, or run a KMS server in house.
Sorry, Microsoft, If you don't trust me, I don't trust you.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I can see why that would be a terrible idea for a server.
Re:Anything like 2k3? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can mock all you want, but I find decreasing the attack vector for an out of the box install a sensible approach. Something all server intallations should do, regardless of their creators image.
Re:Anything like 2k3? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I know. Thankfully a new installation is safely locked down so that you can only browse the Microsoft website. Imagine what might happen if you could browse the web freely. You might accidently end up here [samba.org] which everybody knows is a site full of trojans and malware.
Re: (Score:2)
The obscure thing you need to do is to add the site in question to your trusted sites zone.
Of course if you are trying to download firefox which sends you to a different mirror each time, it could take a few goes until you get enough firefox mirrors listed.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm... Except for the part where it costs $1k for the "standard" version, or almost $500 for the "Web Server" version.
Vista Ultimate is $320, and that's retail. More like $120 more on a Dell.
So... Is it actually fast enough to justify spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on software, instead of hardware?
Or I'll just stick to Ubuntu, and spend the thousands on hardware.
Re:2008 is the 2nd best desktop MS ever made (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
It does beg the question, why does a "server" os need directx 10?
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously, on the world stage, that is still nontrivial money for a lot of people; but you can, easily, get a machine with 8gigs of RAM for under $500. A genuinely decent machine with 8gigs for under $1000.