Windows Server 2008 : Top 10 features

[gxsaurav]

Found this on Betanews.

Windows Server 2008 is upon us. The existing Windows Server 2003 R2 is already a full features server operating system, although it is taking a serious competition from Linux due to lack of exploits out there for Virus etc & it being low cost. Despite of that Linux even in servers doesn't provide that much features compared to Windows Server 2003, & with the new version, this difference will just increse.

Here are the top 10 features in Windows Server 2008 formarly knows as Longhorn Server. Many of these features were supposed to come for Windows Vista, but wasen't included due to Time limit. These features will be included in Vista SP1 though.

The presentation was given by well knows Sysinternal Mark Russinovich

#10: The self-healing NTFS file system. Ever since the days of DOS, an error in the file system meant that a volume had to be taken offline for it to be remedied. In WS2K8, a new system service works in the background that can detect a file system error, and perform a healing process without anyone taking the server down.

#9: Parallel session creation. "Prior to Server 2008, session creation was a serial operation," Russinovich reminded us. "If you've got a Terminal Server system, or you've got a home system where you're logging into more than one user at the same time, those are sessions. And the serialization of the session initialization caused a bottleneck on large Terminal Services systems. So Monday morning, everybody gets to work, they all log onto their Terminal Services system like a few hundred people supported by the system, and they've all got to wait in line to have their session initialized, because of the way session initialization was architected

#8: Clean service shutdown. One of Windows' historical problems concerns its system shutdown procedure. In XP, once shutdown begins, the system starts a 20-second timer. After that time is up, it signals the user whether she wants to terminate the application herself, perhaps prematurely. For Windows Server, that same 20-second timer may be the lifeclock for an application, even one that's busy spooling ever-larger blocks of data to the disk.


In WS2K8, that 20-second countdown has been replaced with a service that will keep applications given the signal all the time they need to shut down, as long as they continually signal back that they're indeed shutting down

#7: Kernel Transaction Manager. This is a feature which developers can take advantage of, which could greatly reduce, if not eliminate, one of the most frequent causes of System Registry and file system corruption: multiple threads seeking access to the same resource.


In a formal database, a set of instructed changes is stored in memory, in sequence, and then "committed" all at once as a formal transaction. This way, other users aren't given a snapshot of the database in the process of being changed - the changes appear to happen all at once. This feature is finally being utilized in the System Registry of both Vista and Windows Server 2008.


"The Kernel Transaction Manager [intends] to make it very easy to do a lot of error recovery, virtually transparently," Microsoft software engineer Mark Russinovich explained. "The way they've done this is with the [KTM] acting as a transaction manager that transaction clients can plug into. Those transaction clients can be third-party clients that want to initiate transactions on resources that are managed by Transaction Resource Manager - those resource managers can be third-party or built into the system

#6: SMB2 network file system. Long, long ago, SMB was adopted as the network file system for Windows. While it was an adequate choice at the time, Russinovich believes, "SMB has kind of outlived its life as a scalable, high-performance network file system."
So SMB2 finally replaces it. With media files having attained astronomical sizes, servers need to be able to deal with them expeditiously. Russinovich noted that in internal tests, SMB2 on media servers delivered thirty to forty times faster file system performance than Windows Server 2003. He repeated the figure to make certain we realized he meant a 4000% boost.



#5: Address Space Load Randomization (ASLR) Perhaps one of the most controversial added features already, especially since its debut in Vista, ASLR makes certain that no two subsequent instances of an operating system load the same system drivers in the same place in memory each time

#4: Windows Hardware Error Architecture (WHEA). That's right, Microsoft has actually standardized the error - more accurately, the protocol by which applications report to the system what errors they have uncovered. You'd think this would already have been done

#3: Windows Server Virtualization. Even pared down a bit, the Viridian project will still provide enterprises with the single most effective tool to date for reducing total cost of ownership...to emerge from Microsoft. Many will argue virtualization is still an open market, thanks to VMware; and for perhaps the next few years, VMware may continue to be the feature leader in this market.


#2: PowerShell. At last. For two years, we've been told it'll be part of Longhorn, then not really part of Longhorn, then a separate free download that'll support Longhorn, then the underpinning for Exchange Server 2007. Now we know it's a part of the shipping operating system: the radically new command line tool that can either supplement or completely replace GUI-based administration

#1: Server Core. Here is where the world could really change for Microsoft going forward: Imagine a cluster of low-overhead, virtualized, GUI-free server OSes running core roles like DHCP and DNS in protected environments, all to themselves, managed by way of a single terminal

[mediator]

Windows wont be able to give much competition to Linux in server department until and unless
1. It operates without needing restarts
2. Price of the software becomes very low and comparable to free Linux servers!!
3. A solution to infections is found and an architecture similar to Linux that relies on permissions is established and implemented!
4. Remember it is closed source and so obviously any 0 day exploits will last longer.

There may be more, but this is what I can think of right now. For rest u can google!

[shantanu]

Originally Posted by mediator

Windows wont be able to give much competition to Linux in server department until and unless
1. It operates without needing restarts
2. Price of the software becomes very low and comparable to free Linux servers!!
3. A solution to infections is found and an architecture similar to Linux that relies on permissions is established and implemented!
4. Remember it is closed source and so obviously any 0 day exploits will last longer.

There may be more, but this is what I can think of right now. For rest u can google!

r u not sounding kiddish..

free linux servers ? better check the level of software before comparing..

windows server is widely used and companies are migrating to windows server leaving linux ones.. and you have not seen windows server 2008, first see it and then go on with conclusions...

linux servers are good , but windows servers are excellent..

[mediator]

What do u mean by level of software? Does that mean open source is inferior!!?? I guess u really don't know about windows closed sourcedness!!
Better check the reality here and then decide who's being kiddish!!

Its not a coincidence that server department is being ruled by *nix and not windows. But I don't think its a coincidence that windows suffered a stupid flaw that shudn't have been there or that shoud have been corrected in alpha stages itself. Doesn't MS gain experience from past? So did u say the level of software?

Do u even know how much loss a company sufferes if the server OS is prone to infections, requires restarts and if a 0 day exploit gets on unnoticed for a large period of time??

BTW, I hope u know what free servers mean!! I can very well start a server on my FC5 with a full fledged LAMP architecture. How much did u pay for windows?

linux servers are good , but windows servers are excellent..

May be thats why most servers out there run on Linux?

[gxsaurav]

Windows wont be able to give much competition to Linux in server department until and unless
1. It operates without needing restarts
2. Price of the software becomes very low and comparable to free Linux servers!!
3. A solution to infections is found and an architecture similar to Linux that relies on permissions is established and implemented!
4. Remember it is closed source and so obviously any 0 day exploits will last longer.

There may be more, but this is what I can think of right now. For rest u can google!

Lolz...Time for eye opener

1) It does, who told u windows servers require restarts? With Windows server 2008 & Vista, updates do not require reboot.

2) Yup, price has to be low, but hey, isn't red hat taking lots of money too for licensing there server OS
3) Architecture of Linux? Why is it needed, if a better way can be implemented.
4) He he, yup U got a point there. Lets see how many Windows servers 2008 goes down.

What do u mean by level of software? Does that mean open source is inferior!!?? I guess u really don't know about windows closed sourcedness!!
Better check the reality here and then decide who's being kiddish!!

I don't know much about servers, but so far I haven't seen Linux providing more features then Windows server. Win Server comes with Windows Media server, SQL server support which needs to be installed seperately in Linux.

Its not a coincidence that server department is being ruled by *nix and not windows. But I don't think its a coincidence that windows suffered a stupid flaw that shudn't have been there or that shoud have been corrected in alpha stages itself. Doesn't MS gain experience from past? So did u say the level of software?

The flaw is long fixed Dude, did u read the whole thread?

[mediator]

Great, guess MS learnt something from Linux on "reboots".

2. Red hat isn't the only company that does work on servers!! U've been long enough in this forums and still make such analogy?? Read and learn from some. Like I asked how much did u pay for ur windows server? Now try Ubuntu/fedora server from ur home itself!! I hope u r not a pirate who pirates all closed source stuff!!

3. "a better way can be implemented". Like? Anything practical?

4. Sure!!

I don't know much about servers, but so far I haven't seen Linux providing more features then Windows server. Win Server comes with Windows Media server, SQL server support which needs to be installed seperately in Linux.

Please check out the full form of L.A.M.P. U can install posgreSql too if u like!! Neways I don't know much about Windows media server, but is this what u meant?
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

VLC - the cross-platform media player and streaming server

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

The flaw is long fixed Dude, did u read the whole thread?

And did u read in what context I put that statement in?

[Charan]

#3: Windows Server Virtualization.

Im very much intersted in this technology , By adding more virtual servers, the server CPU can be utilised a lot more. For network load balancing virtual network cards can be added in a snap . I guess there will be some kind of similar technology in Linux world

[Fred Mackie]

If you want to try it out yourself, you can download the Windows Server 2008 trial.

[phreak0ut]

Still haven't got a chance to play around much with 2k8, but features have greatly improved. I agree that MS has learnt quite a bit from the *nix servers end