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A Run Through Windows Server 2008
amcdiarmid writes "Tom's Hardware has a review of Windows Server 2008 RC0 up on their site. It has a few good points, and at 19 pages is certainly 'in-depth'. From the article's conclusion: 'Microsoft has used the time since the release of Windows Server 2003 very well. The new Server Manager simplifies system administration immensely. Unlike Windows Vista, whose new dialogues still confuse even experienced users, Windows Server 2008 makes the admin feel right at home and in control ... However, it's not all sunshine, either. Although our test system used a beefy Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 with generous 2 GB of RAM, the Server's user interface felt sluggish with Windows being drawn very slowly ... Microsoft also gets low marks for failing to include SSH support in the operating system. On Linux servers, working without SSH is simply unthinkable. At least the Redmond company includes its encrypted remote shell WinRS. However, secure FTP is still a missing feature. The FTP client is being treated like an unloved stepchild, to the point where it is not even included in the Server Manager.'"
> "and at 19 pages is certainly 'in-depth'."
19 pages - more pages to serve adverts. A few paragraphs on each page, and on "print" so you can't just read the whole thing in one page.
Come off it - take away the pictures, and the whole articles is a couple of paragraphs. In-depth? For people who never read anything harder than a comic book, maybe.
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Not Linux, but the rest of the computing world. Every other OS, including router operating systems like Cisco IOS, comes with ssh these days. Solaris has it. OS X has it. Cisco IOS has it (even their wireless access points have ssh). BSD of course has it. So does Linux. Microsoft is the only OS vendor that doesn't have an ssh server by default.
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It does however make me wonder if my graphics card was pushing the speed of the interface, how am I going to justify to my department head that I need the latest gaming card for my server? I have been trying that excuse for years to no avail :)
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
If you'd RTFA, youd learn that Server '08 doesn't have Aero. It doesn't even have hardware-accelerated graphics support(By default) and renders the whole desktop in software. Sounds stupid, until you find your server's crashed because of bad graphics drivers. Server '03 EE is the same way.
Oh please. If you work remotely, you can use Remote Desktop. Its encrypted. Ssh isn't the end all be all of server products, and not having it hardly qualifies as "crippling" an OS.
Printable view -- http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/25/windows_server_2008_reviewed/print.html No ads either :P
Some things to keep in mind about Server Core: The box can only be used as a Domain Controller, DNS Server, DHCP Server, and File Server. This would limit the amount of updates required; no updates for IE, IIS, Sharepoint, nada. Server management can be done through MMC on any client machine.
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well, if you'd RTFA then you'd have seen it's replaced with windows remote shell. And i suspect you can execute remotely through powershell as well.
and as pointed out by myself and others SSH is rarely, if ever used with windows servers.
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Both Vista and 2008 suffer from 'backup-itis', use a tool like SpaceMonger on a fresh install of either and you'll see that well over 50% of the used space is copies of system files (sometes 3 or 4 copies). This is all part of the "self-healing" bit, but I think it's a waste of space.
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A server shouldnt even have a video card...
Physically entering the datacenter to do work on a server is stupid, and using a graphical remote management card is bandwidth intensive and slow and a quite unnecessary and ridiculous idea.
All my servers use serial consoles and have for years... Each server is connected via serial to a central terminal server, to which i can connect using SSH and choose a serial line to connect to. From the console, i can interact with the OS and even interact with the firmware if the OS is not running, so i can install an OS from scratch by doing a network boot...
I have successfully repurposed some old servers (by completely reinstalling the OS) remotely recently, without setting foot in the datacenter. I have only entered the datacenter to physically install remove or repair hardware.
The datacenter is a few hours drive away, if i had to do lots of physical work on the servers we'd have to use a closer more expensive datacenter.
And because of this, the idea that any server would be powering unnecessary video hardware or running unnecessary video hardware is utterly ridiculous.
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The Microsoft philosophy is that you'd use Remote Desktop/Terminal Services to log in to do any administration task you need. I don't see it as inferior to SSH, just a different way of doing things. (And it's definitely a hell of a lot faster than the Unix equivalent SSH+VNC.)
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Wikipedia entry here (lots of interesting info), Microsoft's Windows Power Shell Page (formerly known as Monad) (has links to FAQs, documentation, sample scripts, and discussion blog, as well as downloads for XP, Vista, and Server 2003).
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I also run Windows Server 2008 RC0 as my desktop OS. Has anyone noticed how fast Visual Studio debugging programs run on it? I'm developing a very intensive software application and if I launch the thing from Visual Studio in Vista for debugging things are really, REALLY, slow; usually around 2 refreshes per second (real time is critical here) but when I'm debugging from Visual Studio in Server 2008 the thing runs almost as if I were running the release version outside Visual Studio.
Makes me wonder why such huge improvement.
Sigs are for morons... Wait a minute...
Actually, it may be launched in 2007 even. SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 are "officially" launched in 2008, but will be RTM (and will be able to be purchased through regular means) at the end of 2007, and it was hinted Server 2008 may do the same.
This link explains at a very high level why there is no SFTP out of the box, but it is a downloadable option.
SSH is not just command line. Check out SFTP, FreeNX (remote desktop over SSH), and SSHFS. Using just one open port, you can have full SSL encrypted remote desktop, remote file system mounting, ftp, and (if you so desire) command line access using ssh.