Windows Server 2008's Radical Features

Windows Server 2008 is the most substantial upgrade to the Windows Server product line since Windows 2000, with a sweeping set of new capabilities and a reengineered core that will usher in a new era of 64-bit server computing. Like its Windows Vista stablemate, Server 2008 was in development an achingly long time, and some of its many features were originally slated for its predecessors, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2003 R2. Unlike Vista’s schedule, however, Server 2008’s lengthy schedule hasn’t proven problematic. In fact, it’s arguably worked to the product’s advantage: This is a refined, mature, and stable OS that will no doubt power server systems of all kinds for years to come.

Though Server 2008 uses an evolved version of the Active Directory (AD) infrastructure that first debuted in Win2K, many of the features of this new OS are radical and revolutionary. Key among these major advances are Server Core, which provides a lightweight version of the server aimed at specific workloads, and Hyper-V, Microsoft’s hypervisor-based virtualization technology. As befits a major Windows Server upgrade, Server 2008 also includes a slew of smaller, functional advances as well as key gains in scalability, reliability, manageability, performance, and security.

Server 2008 is a feature-rich upgrade with numerous functional advantages over its predecessors. Here are some the changes in this release that I feel will have the biggest customer impact. (For more information about the specific Server 2008 versions, see the sidebar, “Windows Server 2008 Availability and Licensing,” page 30.)

Componentization
Microsoft has completely redesigned Windows Server to be functionally componentized, a major change that has widereaching ramifications. At a high level, componentization allows for a more easily serviceable system, both for Microsoft and its customers. It also provides a more secure and reliable system, because it minimizes communication and dependencies between individual components.

More specifically, componentization enables some of Server 2008’s most exciting new functionality, such as its image-based deployment facilities, roles-based management, and Server Core.

Server Manager
While previous versions of Windows Server featured separate management consoles for all of the various roles and features in the OS (although Windows 2003 did have a simple Manage Your Server dashboard), Server 2008 provides Server Manager, a true one-stop shop for daily management needs.

Microsoft Management Console (MMC)-based Server Manager provides a UI, which Figure 1 shows, for managing each installed role and feature on the system, including Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), Application Server, DHCP Server, DNS Server, File Services, Terminal Services, Web Server, and many others. It also includes numerous valuable troubleshooting tools such as Event Viewer and Reliability and Performance Monitor; configuration tools such as Task Scheduler, Windows Firewall, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Control, and Device Manager; and the new Windows Server Backup.

Thanks to deep componentization within the system, Server Manager also handles any required system security settings when you add a role or feature. There’s no longer any need to separately run the Security Configuration Wizard every time you add or change a system feature.

What makes Server Manager even more useful is that each section of the console’s UI gets its own dedicated home page, which Figure 2 shows. Each home page offers information pertinent to the role or feature at hand, along with links to fix problems, get Figure 1: Windows Server 2008 Server Manager UI Figure 2: Windows Server 2008 console UI more information, and access other tools. It’s a well-thought-out and well-designed application, both logical and useful.

Server Core
Unlike previous Windows Server versions, most Server 2008 product editions can be installed in one of two modes: the traditional GUI-based server we’ve had since Windows NT 3.1 and a lightweight new command-line–based environment called Server Core. In this new installation mode, Microsoft has stripped out virtually all the GUI, so there’s no shell (Start Menu, taskbar, Explorer windows), and little in the way of end-user applications; such things as Windows Media Player (WMP), Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), and Windows Mail are all missing, though a few GUIbased applications such as Notepad and Task Manager are still available. For the most part, the only UI you’ll see in Server Core is a single command-line window floating over an empty blue backdrop. It’s the ultimate anti-demo.

So what’s the point of stripping out the GUI? Server Core is designed to reduce the attack surface of the server to be as small as possible. As such, a Server Core installation is also more limited than that of a standard Server 2008 installation. It supports just nine roles—AD, Active Directory Lightweight Domain Services (AD LDS), DHCP, DNS, File, Print, Virtualization (Hyper-V), Web Server, and Windows Media Services (WMS)— compared to 18 roles in the full server.

Local management of Server Core is performed using command-line tools only. But because Server Core is still Server 2008, all of the familiar GUI-based management tools will work remotely just fine against this server. What won’t work, in addition to the missing roles, is anything that requires a true GUI or the Microsoft .NET Framework. This cancels out some key Server 2008 functionality unfortunately, including ASP .NET. Server Core’s Web Server role is pretty much static, supporting only older, non– .NET technologies such as ASP.

Thanks to the reduced number of ondisk components, Server Core will need to be patched far less frequently than comparable full installations of Server 2008. Microsoft says that Server Core’s smaller footprint reduces patching by an average of 60 percent. My expectation is that Server Core will prove hugely popular as an infrastructure (AD, DNS, DHCP, file, print) server and as a low-cost, low-end Web server. It’s a product that should compete well with Linux-based solutions.

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