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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
'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