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Sneak Peek at Windows Server 2008
stinkymountain writes to tell us that NetworkWorld got their hands on Microsoft's latest addition to the server OS market and had a chance to poke around inside Windows Server 2008. It seems that the new release is a vast improvement over older versions in both security and performance but still lacking in several key areas. "There's even a minimalist installation called Windows Server Core that can run various server roles (such as DNS, DHCP, Active Directory components) but not applications (like SQL Server or IIS dynamic pages). It's otherwise a scripted host system for headless operations. There's no GUI front end to a Windows Server Core box, but it is managed by a command line interface (CLI), scripts, remotely via System Manager or other management applications that support Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), or by Remote Terminal Services. It's also a potential resource-slimmed substrate for Hyper-V and virtualization architectures."
Do you think Windows Server Core will run on embedded hardware? That seems like the best place for something like this.
Powershell (Bash), XML Based IIS config (apache .conf), Hyper-V (Xen), GUI less installs (init 3 (or 2 on some systems))...
Hey Microsoft, Linux, BSD, etc... called they want their ideas back! Actually though I'm really glad to see this stuff. It really is a step in the right direction, and even if it isn't my platform of choice, a good idea is a good idea.
But I must say it seems you put the bar quite high!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Oh fuck, XML configs. Let's take human-readable text and turn it into XML, thus destroying its readability.
Is there something wrong with conf and ini files? Did the gods come down and declare that configurations must be system-locked registry hives, binary or XML (which is nearly as bad) files?
I wish every system/OS programmer that came out using the latest fad file format was beaten half to death, then given one final chance to amend their ways before they were taken and thrown off a minimum thirty storey building.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
What part of Server 2008 did you manage to miss? Bill Gates was talking about his largest market, which is the Windows client. No sysadmin is going to want to whisper sweet nothings to a server to release an IP lease.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Stripped down version, command line only.... Sounds like...
"Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." - Henry Spencer
Give them another 5 - 10 years, and maybe, just maybe, they'll get there.
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I think the important thing about 2008 is that it gives you the option to use a character-based environment, and it gives you a very good one at that (PowerShell). If you feel more comfortable with the GUI tools, they're all still there.
How sad indeed that Powershell will not run on Server Core. Neither (as far as I've seen) will IIS or SQL. I would love to see a DB Server as close to bare hardware as possible for performance reasons! But really, no PowerShell on their brand new Server SKU? That is just stupid.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
In fairness, reusing XML for any sort of structured configuration file (heavy emphasis on the 'structured') is just the simplest approach when you already have code to parse XML in the program. Otherwise, you have to reinvent the wheel (because doing structured data that has any sort of nesting more than one level deep in .ini/.conf type files is a royal pain).
--Rachel
is something like core server with cheaper licensing. One area where linux kills windows right now are on clusters, where you have numerous relatively cheap boxes doing lots of raw computation.
Using windows for this you get a lot of overhead both in terms of cost, wasted HD space, memory, and processor usage on software and services that are irrelevant to a headless cluster node. Windows would be a lot more compelling for this space if they offered some kind of really cheap volume license for a stripped down windows that came utilities for managing a cluster of them. Some kind of logarithmic pricing model for clusters would be nice and make them a lot more competitive.
Of course I'm sure a lot of Linux enthusiasts would like to see Microsoft continue to price themselves out of the market. Personally, I think some more serious competition from windows on this front would be a good thing and spawn more innovation in the distributed computing space.
And how do you, exactly, express a complex, hierarchical configuration (as is often needed for real servers, not your typical home *NIX box serving your e-mail) in an unambigious, standard, predictable, system-independent way using ini files? Sooner or later, you will end up with an unloved, messy bastard child of ini and something XML-esque in its nature, if not looks. And it'll be even worse than a well-known evil you can deal with easily.
Sure, more often than not, XML is an overkill, but sometimes there's no better way in the long run. Really, any extreme point of view is bad, pro- or anti-XML alike. So, know your enemy and be prepared to admit his strengths, for he has them regardless of what you think.
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
Because anecdotal evidence represents the pinnacle in accuracy and reliability, I offer my own experiences with the Windows registry.
I've experienced two registry corruptions - one was on Windows 98, and got eaten by the only virus I've ever suffered through.
The second one was on my grandfather's XP computer - the machine booted to the Welcome screen despite having only one user account, but there were no pretty pictures to click on. So, I hit CTRL+ALT+DEL (everyone's favorite key combination!) to get the old NT login screen, and find his username already filled in for me. Hitting OK gave me a "user not found" message.
I rebooted, and it bluescreened before launching the shell, saying that the registry hive was corrupted.
Crappy registry? Maybe, but chkdsk from the XP CD found that the hard disk had failed. >75% bad clusters, and the rest going, I'm sure.
So, I wouldn't worry too much about the registry. It's been there since Windows 95, and it even mostly functioned through a catastrophic disk failure. Besides, Windows keeps backup hives, and System Restore backs it up. Worst case, you're looking at a few minutes on the recovery console.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Just have include-style syntax like Apache does. You can configure pretty damned complex Apache server installs without needing to use all-but-unreadable xml files. I admit to trolling a bit in the last post, and am not saying that XML does not have its place, but so far as I'm concerned, it's an incredibly abused technology that renders the notion of plain text readability null and void. The idea of a conf file is that you can telnet/ssh into a server with a decent terminal emulator and work on the server. Admittedly XML configuration files solve one part of the problem, in that you can easily backup working configurations, make alterations, and if they explode, you can quickly get the server back to its previous working state. However, it's just horrific if you need to edit configurations in all but the most simplistic situations.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Another turn of Bob Barker's The Price is Right Wheel o Windows is a waste of effort unless it leaps ahead into outerspace in relation to the current feature set.
It has to run virtualization out of the box. It has to allow for per process and per CPU throttling. It has to run real time back up, support dedicated inline encryption and security subsystems. It has to support 16x more RAM and an order of magnitude larger AD spaces. It has to support virtualized patches, a journalled file system, a file system that spans physical volumes.
THAT's what solid improvement looks like, not fixing 70% of what they left out or broke before and calling that a new version.
Do you know of a remote code vulnerability in the default install of IIS6? I know of one in the default install and a handful with ASP turned on. Since IIS6 is 5 years old I would say that's pretty damn good, even having the source to Apache isn't going to get you much better security than that since it's programmed by humans and is a non-trivial application.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
That's because it's a lot easier to tell a quesion-asker to run
than to walk them through "open the control panel, click 'Sound Themes' then 'Color Editor', go to the 'Remote Widgets and Printing' tab, look for the 'Allow Zebras' checkbox, uncheck it, click apply, re-check it, click apply again, then close the window." Plus, users get it in their shell history so they can run it again without bookmarking the forum page and stepping through the instructions again.
Command line interfaces aren't just "lower level". They allow a different kind of expressivness which lends itself very well to certain tasks. Routine administration is very often that sweet spot.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Indeed. Using Apache config files as an example of good config file structuring is like describing limb amputation as a good weight loss method. It works, but there are much better ways. One of the biggest drawbacks of Linux config files is that they all have their own particular syntax, so knowing one tells you little about the syntax of other config files you encounter.
XML shares some of the same benefits and drawbacks of the Windows registry. The big drawback is you can't easily edit it by hand or output simple text. On the plus side is using a program that understands the file's structure, you always have the syntax correct.