Michael Otey: Are there any features in Windows Server 2008 R2 that are important but easy to overlook?
Ward Ralston: Thinking back to the first question—Windows Server is a platform technology. There is a little something for everyone, depending on the roles you deploy it for. For example, a powerful technology in the DNS server role is DNS Security (DNSSEC), which gives you the ability to ensure DNS lookups are served from a trusted source. Or, from a management perspective, Server Manager now has the ability to connect remotely to other servers for administration. The File Server role now has the new File Classification Infrastructure (FCI), which allows you to classify files based on the business value and take action on those files—for example, moving all files that contain the word string “Company Confidential” to an encrypted folder.
One set of features that stands out more than others, though, is our power management capabilities. From throttling the voltage applied to CPUs through the new Power Process Management (PPM), to turning off unneeded cores with Core Parking, to monitoring the wattage of your power supplies—there is a lot of potential to save money on your power bill with R2.
Michael Otey: What are some of the benefits that you get by running Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 together?
As a joint development effort from the beginning, one of the goals of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 was to enable users to access the information that they need, whether they are in or out of the office, and in the case of Branch Offices, accelerate the delivery of that information and decrease WAN usage.
One of the challenges we’ve heard users have today when accessing resources that are inside the corporate network is establishing a VPN. VPN can be hard to use for users because it takes time and multiple steps to initiate the VPN connection and wait for the PC to be authenticated from the network. And if you’re lucky, the L2TP/PPTP ports will be open on the firewall from the location you are connecting from. Hence, most remote users try to avoid the VPN as much as possible and stay disconnected from the corporate network for as long as they can. At this point, we run into a chicken-egg problem: Since remote users are disconnected, IT cannot manage them while away from work. Remote users stay more out of date and it gets harder and harder to access corporate resources.
With the capabilities that R2 enables, users who have Internet access will be automatically connected to their corporate network without any user interaction—it’s just on. A user who is sitting in a coffee shop can open his laptop, connect to the Internet using the wireless access of the coffee shop, and start working as if he’s in the office. The user in this case will be able to not only use Outlook, but also work with intranet sites, open corporate shares, use line-of-business applications, and basically have full access to corporate resources.
This solution is also very appealing to IT pros as well—managing mobile PCs has always been an issue since they could be disconnected from the corporate network for a long time. With this work access solution, as long as they have Internet connectivity, users will be on the corporate network. Servicing mobile users (such as distributing updates and Group Policy) is easier since mobile devices can be accessed more frequently by IT systems.
Another area in which Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 shine is in the branch office. A new feature, BranchCache, is easily enabled using Group Policy. When enabled, R2 will intelligently cache data the first time it is downloaded from a corporate content server (either SMB or HTTP) so that subsequent requests for the same information are served up locally in the branch instead of taxing the WAN links. This is done in a way where we can ensure file changes, ACLs, file locks, etc. are all respected. Think of a branch where there are 100 users who all need to download the new employee manual, which is 50MB. Instead of 5GB going across the WAN in the early morning (slowly), only 50MB will go across and everyone will get the manual locally from the hosted cache in the branch. You just saved 4.5GB on that line.
Michael Otey: What’s the upgrade path for earlier versions of Windows Server?
Ward Ralston: People moving from Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 should have a fairly straightforward upgrade. Although we find most of our customers don’t upgrade, but rather migrate with new server hardware, you should still keep these steps in mind.
First, check with your ISV to ensure your applications are tested for compatibility. For a quick compatibility self-test check, you can take advantage of our free downloadable certification toolkit (use the Works with Windows Server 2008 R2 tool) as a black-box validation tool for application compatibility compliance verification. (You can find the Toolkit at microsoft.com/windowsserver/isv). If your ISV has not pledged support for Windows Server 2008 R2 (you may find a complete list of server pledged supported apps on our WindowsServerCatalog.com), we have application compatibility resources including the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 (MDT), which has the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5 (ACT).
Second, remember that Windows Server 2008 R2 is x64 only. You can’t upgrade from an x86 operating system to an x64 because the architectures are different. Also, keep in mind that WoW64 (Windows-on-Windows 64-bit) is capable of running 32-bit apps on a 64-bit OS. Third, check out the MDT as your first step in assessing your upgrade, migration, or new deployments of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.