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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."
(yes, I know that some Windows admins can use a CLI for nearly anything that'll run on one, but I'm almost willing to wager that the majority do not).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Lightwight secure OSs are pretty handy for industrial applications like robotics etc, but Linux is making huge inroads there too mainly because of reduced footprint (== lower cost) and better network management.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Absolutely, MS is well known for their lean, re-usable code which runs anything from watches, Zunes, XBOXes, Origami and mobile phones. It's a program once, use anywhere strategy that's been working quite well for them.
nice, the captcha is "exploit"
you got that right.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
I'd think that if Linux is "lambasted" for being geeky it's because users need to do certain things with it, whereas most Windows users rarely ever open a console window.
The number of things that you need to do with bash on any Linux distro have decidedly decreased in the past few years, so I doubt the label is really applicable anymore. Perhaps the problem is that a lot of the problem-solving advice you can find online for distros like Ubuntu tend to use command line solutions, which is predictable if those solutions are being provided by more knowledgeable people who don't have a problem using the console to begin with.
I played with some of the early betas and Server 2008 is actually quite cool. The fact that most everything is now scriptable (the subset that wasn't before through WMI, at least, or the things that have been simplified) is a life saver, and the switching of server roles is very useful when you want to re-task a box quickly for whatever reason. Hosting companies will probably love it.
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.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
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.
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.