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Windows Server 2003 Is A Small Step Forward
b17bmbr writes "According to eWeek, 'The release of Windows Server 2003 is a small step forward for the platform -- an effort that really should be considered Windows 2000 Server Second Edition. With the exception of Internet Information Services 6.0, there aren't any far-reaching or fundamental changes in the product.' And from CNet Microsoft prepares Windows Server ads, 'The ads are geared toward IT managers on tight budgets.' This is probably Microsoft's last chance to turn the tide and take mindset and market share from FOSS."
Infoworld says, Ironically, Microsoft is touting its Windows server platform as a cheaper alternative to Linux. "We really feel that we deliver some unique value in terms of dependability, manageability, and performance relative to open-source products," Oldroyd said.
I stopped working at Microsoft in January, after being there from June 2000. I was there during the whole "Whistler" cycle
Kernel improvements:
* Low-Fragmentation Heap: People use SmartHeap because NT heap serializes and sucks. LFH heap uses heap-per-processor on SMP.
* Desktop Limit: Remember "running out of resources" before running out of memory in Win 3.1? The 32-bit analog of that limit (higher but still there) is STILL in Windows, even in XP. This keeps you from spawning thousands of processes IF those processes use any functions from user32.dll. They did some lazy registering of U/I threads vs. kernel threads that makes the limit less painful.
* Gigabit ethernet, zero-copy networking stuff. Don't know as much about this but that it's much better.
* Unisys ES7000 32-way blows f'ing chunks on W2K. It doesn't suck as much on 2K3 (NUMA API).
* Tons of other perf tuning adjustments, mostly to make SQL Server run better. All SQL Server-TPC-winning numbers have been on 2K3 betas for the last year or more.
* Junk like that. Dumb-ass bug fixes. It really is a better kernel, but it still sucks. As someone who now loves Linux, my honest assessment of the situation is, at best, the whole Linux (in its current state, mostly usability drawbacks) vs. Microsoft (usable as hell but stagnant due to lack of competition) is a draw. But Linux has more promise because its fresher and interesting. MS wins in business because business likes staid "comfortable" not necessarily better technology.
Really all they've done is made the underlying metabase database an XML database rather than proprietary, though it really wasn't difficult before to propagate metabases among machines before. Microsoft still recommends that you leave the xml file alone and instead either use the administration tools, or the powerful IIS administration components for programatic changes.
I am running Windows Media Services 9 on Windows Server 2003 RC1. It is simply awesome as a streaming media solution. First of all, if the client is a WMP 9 client.... there is no buffering! Instant start (on broadband only, naturally). Plus, you get a ton of configuration options on the WMS9 side. You can insert adverts automatically, apply all sorts of access control on the media (IP based, user/pass login, DRM, whatever you please).
.htm and .txt files to the outside world unless you go into the server configuration and edit this explicitly.... did I also mention that IIS 6 now stores its data in XML (similar to Apache directives) which can easily be exported to other servers if you're cloning or making a server farm.
The new IIS 6 comes in a super-secure default setup... allowing only
Plus it's pretty damn stable. My server has been running for about 60 days now... and it handles a decent amount of traffic.
I like the new Remote Desktop/terminal services. You can remote to the actual server console now, instead of starting a new TS session. The OS itself also seems faster than Windows 2000. I'm running it on a PII/350 w/ 256 MB ram and it screams.
It also comes with that HTTP.SYS kernel serving thingee for IIS, but I'm a strict believer that a web server doesn't belong in the kernel (this applies to Linux too).
So far my experiences have been all positive. How bout everyone else?
like say clustering up from 2 node max to 12 nodes, addressable memory support up to above 64 GB, 64 bit OS support, NIC load balancing, TRUE DEVICE ADDRESSING (ie no drive letters)for extended SAN support, and from what I hear a .8 version of a connectix vm system, plus features like BUILT IN document license management, full remote control support. The primary reason we're moving is for the extended clustering support.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
No kidding, We run 10 IIS webservers and were experimenting with load balacing -- it was a complete failure. IISsync is suppose to work great; however, it didn't work at all like Microsoft said it would. Half the time it wouldn't even start to sync and then if it did, it would hang at the end. I know the fun of using IIS Export, we had a machine crash and had to transfer 600 sites or so to another machine.
Free Open Source Software.
Just a guess.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
The configuration files in IIS 6 are XML documents, which are reasonably easy to view and modify. The files can be stored anywhere, unlike the old backup files which had to be in a particular directory in order to be used. The files also seem more robust -- the old-style backup files didn't always import into a clean install correctly, but I haven't had any problems with importing the new files.
Multiple sites can be stored in a single file, which is pretty handy. I was only able to import one site at a time though, which makes re-loading the server a bit painful if you have multiple sites on the same server.
Being text based makes it much easier to review configurations for errors and allows me to now use Perforce to track my changes with simple diffs. I wish more software used text based configuration files!
Actually, you should see a huge ROI if you move from NT4 to 2003 with Active directory. Also, 2003 server will have fancy UNIX features like controlling/guaranteeing processor/mem to individual programs so you'll be able to take 6 old machines and roll it up into a 2 node, 8 way cluster. HUGE return on your investment from a manageability standpoint and also very flexible to add more servcies to it.
I've been an MS hater for a long time (sellin' commercial UNIX solutions), but honestly, there is a lot of compelling tech wrapped up in this that will pay off big in SOME environments.
What they did was put the IIS metabase (which used to be a binary file) into an XML file. It is all very slick...
IIS 6 really is a big deal for Windows... IIS 5 is a steaming pile of crap compared to Apache, but IIS 6 seems really promising. I'll hold out my opinion until I actually use it though... but it can't get much worse than IIS 5.
Which is why a careful analysis is required before moving forward with any upgrade -- especially of the server OS. Exchange 2000 doesn't run on Windows 2003, but Exchange 2003 will. So you wait for Exchange 2003 and only upgrade your non-Exchange servers before that. Not really anything to be floored by.
had a 2:1 split on Feb 18. still worth less since those $60 shares would be worth relatively $30 each, and MSFT closed $25.50 today.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
"How did you do this without difficulty?"
adsutil is really pretty painless to use from a script. The metabase entries are pretty well documented thru MSDN, and one can usually use metaedit to learn more about how things change, etc.
What is it that you are trying to do? I imagine it might be a bit more difficult if you are trying to make changes thru the UI on one machine and then propogate that through... There are some utilities for that purpose.
But if you know exactly what changes you want to make, and then script those changes...(which you really should be doing anyway so you can rebuild your config from scratch if needed) it is trivial to execute that script against 10 different servers.
If you want help with configuring and managing IIS let me know. Just drop an email to anything at sodablue.org.
FOSS = Free Open Source Software
I think this is to clarify that is free, because there is the idea of nonfree open source software. Though I think nonfree may be considered "shared source" these days.
--Drunk as in Beer
I've been running windows 2003 as a desktop for a couple weeks, and am really liking it. It comes with virtually everything disabled by default, and all the security stuff maxed. The main reason I moved over is cause I read an article here a while ago stating that microsoft had actually tried to release an OS with as few bugs as possible, and if I remember correctly the bug count is somewhere low like 100 or less (obviously this is known bugs only, I'd bet it's way higher). After the install I found it had everything XP had, themes, directx, everything. Believe it or not, games performed better on win2k3 server than on winXP. I had both installed for a couple days, and did some other comparisons like memory usage, etc, and it turned out it uses WAY less. My 7 month old XP install used 400mb of virtual memory and 250 physical memory with no programs running, while 2k3 used 100 of each. That is a HUGE difference. It also boots alot faster as well. I haven't found any incompatibilities yet, so I'll be keeping this as my desktop. I do run a server on linux, and will definately keep it that way simply due to resources difference.
Try Win4Lin. This is what allowed me to migrate finally to Linux. Win4Lin is kind of like a "light" version of VMWare that only costs $89, and I presume there would be volume discounts available if you migrate your whole company.
Point is, Win4Lin lets you run virtually every business-critical Windows program there is. I use it to run Word, Excel, Powerpoint, VB6, VC++, Quicken, Quickbooks, PaintShopPro, Metrowerks Codewarrior (for Palm development). Multimedia apps, such as Windows Media and RealPlayer, both work under IE under Win4Lin.
Win4Lin is a great way to incrementally move away from MS. First you install Linux and Win4Lin throughout the enterprise, freeing yourself from Microsoft OS's. Then, as time goes on, you'll find that need fewer and fewer of the apps you thought you "needed" under Windows. I have Win4Lin for the applications I listed above but, to be honest, I use them very seldomly. But Win4Lin is a great idea for a company that would like to free itself from MS licensing but can't "risk" going cold-turkey.
Heck, try all your enterprise Windows apps on a single Linux machine with Win4Lin. If it doesn't work, oh well. If it does... Ready, set, deploy! :)
The new stand alone Active Directory (application mode AD, as it is called) for apps that require directory service but don't really require a full blown domain. That change alone is worth a major rev. level.
There is also the "restore from media" option that lets you build *new* DCs from the system state backup of an old DC. Previously, you couldn't do that, and bringing up a new DC meant running dcpromo and replicating all the data from the various domains. Big deal you say? An HP IT department had to sync a new DC that was also a global catalog over a WAN line. It took 3 DAYS just for the replication. Obviously this will save some serious amounts of time.
Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
Get a 180 day Windows Server 2003 Evaluation Kit at this link
The following items are included in the Windows Server 2003 Evaluation Kit:
Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, RTM CD
Windows Server 2003 Resource CD
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There is no fee for the Windows Server 2003 Evaluation Kit. As a special promotional offer, Windows Server 2003 Evaluation Kits will be shipped at no charge to customers in the United States, through July 31, 2003. (However, fees will apply if customers choose to receive their shipment via express methods.) Orders from outside the United States are subject to shipping charges and may be subject to import duties and taxes. When ordering from this site, you are considered the importer of record and must comply with all laws and regulations of the country/region in which you are receiving the shipment.
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'The ads are geared toward IT managers on tight budgets.'
:)
Lets see...
Samba as a PDC/BDC : cost of hardware
Apache as a webserver : cost of hardware
Microsoft as both : cost of hardware and obscene license fees.
Take Economics 101.
To give some context, this is a short column I wrote for this week's (4/21/2003) eWEEK news package on Windows Server 2003. It's short because of print space limitations. The whole collection of related news articles in this week's issue is at http://www.eweek.com/category2/0,3960,1034194,00.a sp.
Next week, eWEEK is publishing an eWEEK Labs review of the product. In that package, there are six pages of copy covering Windows Server 2003 overall security changes, IIS 6.0, 64-bit Windows, Active Directory changes, file and print changes, development, and storage and SAN changes.
Thanks,
Tim Dyck
eWEEK Labs West Coast Technical Director
In short the benefits are for the admins (no, not the idiot IT guys who manage to correctly install Win2k at least 80% of the time) The benefits are found in the scriptable administration. Task scheduling from script works correctly. The funky WMI to SNMP to Perfmon counter crap is gone providing scriptable interfaces via WMI to standard and preformatted counters. The holes in ADSI administration if IIS are fixed. Add to that a journaling filesystem with the ability to do point in time recovery over the network (what, didn't the article mention a flavor of journaled network file system?) Oh, what, you didn't even know they existed. You'd be really amazed at what a real admin can do with Win2k and not Win2k3. But most don't look, they are too busy trying to get their new open source browser to run correctly on the latest patched up version of their open source os of choice. I agree with premise of the article, but not the content.
I can see how moving a service like this into the kernel could have stability implications, but you didn't say anything about that
You obviously didn't read the first line of my post, so here it is again:
good thing IIS has proven itself both secure and stable. otherwise, this could really be an issue
I could have sworn that 10th word is stable, my bad.
Concerning security, you're partially correct. Running the HTTP stack in kernel mode doesn't make it inherently less secure. It does allow any subsequent exploit to run without any of the protections built into the OS, though (don't even try to tell me that that won't happen, either. network stack code is notoriously susceptable to buffer overflow). Want to destroy the partition table? Easy, just access the drive directly. Access kernel data structures? Sure, kernel memory is wide open. Pass bullshit to the hardware to try and get it to fail? OK, the system bus is yours. And, I could be wrong, but I'm fairly sure that kernel level access is all that's required to update the system bios, which could be especially nasty. Finally, causing a system crash is trivial, as the OS is no longer able to kill/deny the HTTP stack process when it trys to do something it shouldn't. But, isn't that stability and not security?!? The truth is that it, and virtually all the other things I brought up, are BOTH. A lack of stability is a security risk and vice versa, as anyone who has suffered a ping-of-death style DOS attack will gladly tell you.
Honestly, I don't hate Microsoft. As you noted, they have been extremely successful and I respect that. It just urks me that they seem entirely willing to unleash bug ridden code without much thought for what happens when said bugs are used to compromise a substantial chunk of the systems on the net. Running an application level network protocol stack in the kernel is just one of many examples of this. Another good one was their narrowly thwarted attempt to allow any user process access to raw IP sockets in XP, which would have exponentially increased the difficulty in dealing with DDOS attacks. Even a little forethough on their part on issues like this would go a long way, and it's a sham that they don't use it.
Hope I answered your question.
The two offerings are not comparable. The MS offering gives you software, the Linux offering gives you support.
If you were to actually be stupid enough to do this, the first time you had a problem with your MS setup you would be thrown to the wolves, otherwise known as per-incident support and you would land there without a support budget.
For Win 2003 standard the support page is available here and in short it's $245 per incident and $1225 for a 5 pack.
The problem with buying that 5 pack of incidents is that it's only good for win2k3 incidents. Unlike the RH support which covers many products, each prepaid pack is only good for the covered product.
You get to have 48 incidents over 6 years (assuming prices do not change) or 8 incidents per year. RH does not set incident limits in its standard support contracts.
If only 8 things go wrong per year in a 6 server MS shop in both server OS and server apps, you're having a very good year. To expect to have 6 very good years in a row is not very probable.
The RH offering costs you $600 per year but each year you get updated to the then current major release. Since MS updates their OS about every 2 years, that's $6k of software cost that hasn't been accounted for to keep things even and that drops you down on the MS end to 4 incidents per year across the OS and the relevant enterprise applications you'll be running. Good luck on having two major OS upgrades over 6 servers and only having 4 incidents per year.
Finally, before anybody starts whining about the free support options or MS' $99 online option they aren't comparable as RH is offering 4 hour support response time, not 24 hour and Linux forums exist with exactly the same price as the MS forums, free.
Nope.
5.2.3790
You don't get it. The instructor didn't know what he was talking about - really there is no issue here. Exchange 2000 is just like another application server. Sure it can't run on Windows Server 2003 but it can run fine on a Win2000 member server in a Win2003 domain - thats the approach that I know a lot of customers are taking
If only 8 things go wrong per year in a 6 server MS shop in both server OS and server apps, you're having a very good year. To expect to have 6 very good years in a row is not very probable.
:)
I'm not going to argue the price issue, but I will say this. I currently run 19 servers: 5 NT 4 and 14 Win2K. About half of the Win2k used to run NT 4 and were upgraded to 2k, the other 7 were fresh installed. I've had 12 of them up and running since 1998, the rest came online in early 2002. In all that time, I have NEVER had to pay for an MS support incident. I did have to call them once for an issue with Exchange 5.5 SP4, but they didn't charge me since it was an issue with a security fix (which, btw, they never charge for support problems with security fixes).
Now, I don't consider myself that lucky, so for someone running 6 servers to go a year, they shouldn't have a problem. Hell, most of my NT 4 servers had >1 year uptimes. So, I don't think it is uncommon for our shop (or any other) to go 4.5 years without a big issue. knocks on wood, and crosses fingers for next year or so
I think the key is directly related to the competency of the sysadmin. Yeah, sure, any kid straight out of HS could probably get a Windows server up and running, but keeping them running and running well does take at least *some* skill and planning, just like it does in the Unix world. It isn't as simple as running the autoupdates or visiting Windows Update every week, but it isn't rocket science either.
Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
Yes, it's 2^32 milliseconds, or 49 days and 17 hours. I ran my Win95 unpatched because I wanted to see it. One time I waited 48 days before I got some other "regular" crash. I never got more than 4 weeks uptime after that.
[quote]
Um, Windows XP was a drastic change to the OS over WinMe/98/95. At least in my opinion.
[/quote]
Actually, Windows XP was an upgrade from Windows 2000 which was an upgrade from Windows NT 4. So, in reality, Windows XP was not a drastic change as it was just upgraded from 2000 and never came from the 9x line.
Close. It's actually Free / Open Source Software. As in Free Software / Open Source Software.
;-)
It's an acronym to assuage those people who for some inexplicable reason prefer "free software" over OSS. So we get FOSS. (Aside: Then of course there's FLOSS, Free / Libre / Open Source Software, which is popular amongst those who know some french, because Libre means "freedom" in french.
(AsideAside: french actually has two words for free. One is libre, which means freedom. The other is gratis, which means gratis in english too. As in, beer.))
The slash matters because FOSS isn't to differentiate with non-free OSS.
Personally I just use OSS unless I know that someone from the FSF is listening
simon
home page
Wait. So, while Windows is getting better, Linux is becoming more like Windows, but is getting worse? No matter how hard I try, I can't reproduce the mental backflips necessary to figure that one out.
You can't have it both ways, either Windows is getting good and Linux is therefore going to get good as well, or Windows is bad, and as a result Linux will be bad also.
I also don't see the stability thing. The main problems these days are related to bugs in X, which are the only real stability issues I have. Even the software is pretty stable I find (at least, the software I use is).
the Linux community has to concede the desktop market to Microsoft and move on.
Except the Linux community wants a good desktop, more for themselves than anything else, and that isn't going to stop. There's nothing to concede. Go check out the latest OSDN survey of free software developers, you'll find that "beating proprietary software" ranks at the bottom of motivations.
It just always seems to me Linux is playing catchup to Microsoft on the desktop while MS is learnig from their mistakes and trying to move forward.
So they're both moving forward then. OK. That's probably true. What is more interesting to ask is, which is moving forward quicker? If Microsoft is moving forward faster than Linux, then Linux will never match up to Windows, indeed, you'd expect people to stop using Linux and go back to Windows. If it's the other way around, then you'd expect Linux to be rapidly maturing next to Windows, and more people to be leaving Windows and using Linux.
Now, maybe where you live it's different, but what I see is lots of the latter, and not much of the former.
I also see Wine catching up with Windows, which is more interesting. Wine has been able to run simple programs perfectly for a long time, and nowadays it can run even quite complex apps like Office, FoxPro and Internet Explorer. Of course new APIs are being introduced all the time, but Windows has a lot of inertia so we won't need to support them for many years.
I think you are needlessly pessimistic.