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Sneak Peek at Windows Server 2008

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday February 25, @06:09PM
from the still-fighting-the-fight dept.
Windows IT
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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Firehose:Sneak peek at Windows Server 2008 by stinkymountain (962420)
[+] 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)

    by Bryansix (761547) on Monday February 25, @06:10PM (#22552070) Homepage
    Do you think Windows Server Core will run on embedded hardware? That seems like the best place for something like this.

  • They should make the GUI part like X windows (Score:4, Funny)

    by Joe The Dragon (967727) on Monday February 25, @06:11PM (#22552090)
    so you add or remove / trun it on or off at any time with out havening to reinstall widnows server.

  • what about DX10/game performance? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 25, @06:12PM (#22552102)
    anybody know?

  • I feel a disturbance... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Penguinisto (415985) on Monday February 25, @06:18PM (#22552198) Journal
    It is as if millions of GUI-dependent MCSE's cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.

    (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).

    /P

  • Stripped down version, command line only.... Sounds like...

    "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.

  • sounds like unix (Score:5, Funny)

    by 192939495969798999 (58312) <info.devinmoore@com> on Monday February 25, @07:07PM (#22552800) Homepage Journal
    Windows core server sounds a lot like Unix, only without the 25+ year history and renowned stability record... why did we need this again? /supposed to be funny, but headache causing tumors in funny region

  • GUI-est CLI Ever (Score:5, Informative)

    by LlamaDragon (97577) on Monday February 25, @07:58PM (#22553304) Journal
    I've been playing with this at work, and for a "trimmed down CLI" version of the OS I find it telling that it uses just 60 mb of memory after booting than the GUI version and it still requires some 3.5 gb of hard drive space (this isn't precise, I'm not at work right now). And the weirdest thing about it is that it's not just command line. It actually loads, to a point, the windows GUI. There's no explorer, but the command line box it gives you is a window. You can move it with the mouse. You can open notepad, and it opens in a window. Regedit is still there. Just to see if I could, I installed Firefox. They leave out a few handy odds and ends like Explorer.exe so you don't get your usual file manager, but if they're serious about going with a real command line, this ain't it.

    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:So command line now? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dedazo (737510) on Monday February 25, @06:33PM (#22552364) Journal
      No, not really. Most good admins that manage Windows servers tend to use the Win32 console as much as possible. A great majority of them finally picked up on what WMI can do and actually took advantage of it.

      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.

      • Re:So command line now? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by QuantumRiff (120817) on Monday February 25, @07:04PM (#22552756)
        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.

        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.

      • Re:So command line now? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Just Some Guy (3352) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Monday February 25, @10:28PM (#22554640) Homepage Journal

        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.

        That's because it's a lot easier to tell a quesion-asker to run

        $ sudo /etc/rc.d/sshd restart

        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.

    • Re:But still, why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jugalator (259273) on Monday February 25, @06:39PM (#22552450) Journal

      This requires a rational, knowable system to even be reasonable to attempt. If you don't have the source, you cannot know it--and I don't give a damn how wonderful your knowledge base is.
      Whoops! I've never analyzed the details and intricaties of the Apache source code -- I guess I'd make a bad webmaster. :-(

      But I must say it seems you put the bar quite high!

      • Re:Great ideas but late to the party (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MightyMartian (840721) on Monday February 25, @06:45PM (#22552536) Journal
        Oh fuck, XML configs. Let's take human-readable text and turn it into XML, thus destroying its readability.

        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.

        • Re:Great ideas but late to the party (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Sparks23 (412116) * on Monday February 25, @07:10PM (#22552834)
          In fairness, reusing XML for any sort of structured configuration file (heavy emphasis on the 'structured') is just the simplest approach when you already have code to parse XML in the program. Otherwise, you have to reinvent the wheel (because doing structured data that has any sort of nesting more than one level deep in .ini/.conf type files is a royal pain).

        • Re:Great ideas but late to the party (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Enleth (947766) on Monday February 25, @07:18PM (#22552916)
          And how do you, exactly, express a complex, hierarchical configuration (as is often needed for real servers, not your typical home *NIX box serving your e-mail) in an unambigious, standard, predictable, system-independent way using ini files? Sooner or later, you will end up with an unloved, messy bastard child of ini and something XML-esque in its nature, if not looks. And it'll be even worse than a well-known evil you can deal with easily.

          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.

      • WinGUI arguments on slashdot for the last decade.. (Score:5, Funny)

        by LingNoi (1066278) on Monday February 25, @06:50PM (#22552604)

        XML Based IIS config
        That's ridiculous, you mean I have to waste my time going through a text file instead of just selecting the correct tickbox. You Linux freak wil... oh wait Microsoft is doing it? How innovative!

        • MS-DOS 8.0 (Score:5, Interesting)

          by tverbeek (457094) on Monday February 25, @11:07PM (#22554870) Homepage

          Windows 1.0 wasn't graphical,
          Huh? By what definition of "graphical"? Windows 1.0 wasn't pretty or quite as icon-happy as later versions, but it most certainly had a graphical user interface, complete with a bitmapped pixel-addressible display, an arrow-shaped mouse pointer, tiled windows with little control widgets in the corners, and icons along the bottom of the screen showing you what programs were running (a bit like OS X's dock). Perhaps you have it confused with OS/2 1.0?

          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?

    • Crazy with command lines (Score:5, Interesting)

      by PIPBoy3000 (619296) on Monday February 25, @06:47PM (#22552558)
      They're really pushing the command-line thing for all their products. We got a demo of Exchange 2007 and not everything is configurable from within the GUI. Where it is, it gives you the PowerShell [microsoft.com] command at the bottom.

      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!

          • Re:um yeah (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Z34107 (925136) <zealoussniper.netscape@net> on Monday February 25, @07:19PM (#22552926)

            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.

    • Re:It has to either be 40% faster or exploit HW (Score:5, Informative)

      by Johnno74 (252399) on Monday February 25, @10:18PM (#22554560)
      Windows 2003 already does most of what you said.

      per process and per CPU throttling

      you have a point there, it would be nice...

      It has to run real time back up

      see volume shadow copy

      support dedicated inline encryption

      See encrypting file system, or bitlocker.

      security subsystems.

      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.

      It has to support 16x more RAM

      Really? 2TB isn't enough for you?

      and an order of magnitude larger AD spaces.

      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.

      It has to support virtualized patches

      Yep, you are right, that would be nice.

      a journalled file system

      See NTFS. Its only been around for 10+ years,

      a file system that spans physical volumes.

      See DFS.
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