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Windows Server 2008 One Year On — Hit Or Miss?
magacious writes "Friday marked a year to the day since Microsoft launched Windows Server 2008, but did it have quite the impact the so-called software giant expected, or did it make more of a little squeak than a big bang? Before its arrival on 27 February 2008, it had been five long years since the release of the last major version of Windows Server. In a world that was moving on from simple client/server applications, and with server clouds on the horizon, Windows Server 2003 was looking long in the tooth. After a year of 'Vista' bashing, Microsoft needed its server project to be well received, just to relieve some pressure. After all, this time last year, the panacea of a well-received Windows 7 was still a long way off. So came the new approach: Windows Server 2008."
Love them or hate them, Microsoft is a factual software giant...
I run a few 2k8 servers and must say that there are very few features that distinguish it from 2k3. For me, those are the new remote-apps terminal server feature and hyper-v. not a whole lot has changed other than rearranging a bunch of stuff.
Excellent improvements and additions behind the scenes (such as the new group policy controls) but the usability has dropped considerably. "Roles" and "Features" are terribly silly and incongruous.
I've installed Win2008 a few times and it always surprises me that I have to dig up the driver disks for the storage controllers... never have to do that when I install Fedora or Debian.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
because none of the businesses I see have adopted 2008 server.
Very few have any Vista desktops either.
Outside of removing ISA Server from the Small Business suite, I've read very few negative opinions on 2K8. If you dont need 64-Bit goodness, it might not be worth upgrading from a stable 2K3 environment.
I can see why that would be a terrible idea for a server.
You can mock all you want, but I find decreasing the attack vector for an out of the box install a sensible approach. Something all server intallations should do, regardless of their creators image.
Yeah, I know. Thankfully a new installation is safely locked down so that you can only browse the Microsoft website. Imagine what might happen if you could browse the web freely. You might accidently end up here which everybody knows is a site full of trojans and malware.
The obscure thing you need to do is to add the site in question to your trusted sites zone.
Of course if you are trying to download firefox which sends you to a different mirror each time, it could take a few goes until you get enough firefox mirrors listed.
Erm, not even Microsoft's own site is normally opened by default with the IE enhanced security enabled. All it does is severely lock down the ability to run scripts. It is also trivially easy to disable (remove it from add/remove windows components). Then again, why the hell are you browsing the web from your server? Do that from your workstation with a Remote Desktop/VNC/network KVM connection open to the server for any work that needs to be done on the server. I know its an extra step to download something from your workstation and then transfer to the server to install.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
A command line only Windows Server OS that is able to run on lower end hardware sounds good in theory, but the current implementation cannot provide most of the functionality of its non-Core counterparts. Is anyone using Windows Server Core 2008? If so, what do you use it for?
The terminal service gateway is also pretty good. A controlled way to allows TS from the Internet into the clients on the subnet.
Hmm... Except for the part where it costs $1k for the "standard" version, or almost $500 for the "Web Server" version.
Vista Ultimate is $320, and that's retail. More like $120 more on a Dell.
So... Is it actually fast enough to justify spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on software, instead of hardware?
Or I'll just stick to Ubuntu, and spend the thousands on hardware.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Its just the next Windows server. If you want to buy a Windows server its fine that you get 2K8 but there hasn't been a reason to upgrade a Windows server since Win2k.
Server 2008 has a much improved backup utility. It's easy to setup (I just make one backup job that repeats nightly), and will provide a BMR (Bare Metal Restore). The best part however, is the ability to assign multiple USB drives to a backup job. Which ever one is plugged in at the time, it will backup to it. This allows the admin or employee to swap drives before they leave office at night.
My only major gripe is that the backup utility will only do a file level backup. Exchange 2007 is not supported. In theory, you could stop the Exchange Store prior to the backups taking place, be we all know that's just not feasible. Instead, Microsoft states you *must* use a 3rd party backup program or their DPM 2007 product for backup/restore of Exchange! Damn :(
Life is not for the lazy.
I did test Win2003server for a year and I completely fail to grok the logic behind needing a special OS just to run a bunch of servers. Oh, I understand full well the need of MS to sell you a more expensive OS. But for me a server is an application. Win*server contains several, some more or less well written but that's not the point. The point is that this test convinced me to run Linux, where if I want a web server I just do "aptitude install apache" or "yum install apache", if I want an ssh server, I do "aptitude install openssh-server, likewise for vnc, sql, ftp, etc... And the rest of the OS continues to work the same.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
let me google the fix for you
"el-cheapo" seems appropriate enough in this case. Dell 530s start at $280, with no special deals or shopping around, and take DDR2, which you can get in a 4x 2GB kit, again without any real shopping around, for ~$100.
Obviously, on the world stage, that is still nontrivial money for a lot of people; but you can, easily, get a machine with 8gigs of RAM for under $500. A genuinely decent machine with 8gigs for under $1000.
That's not completely true. The default list trusts Windows Update, which in XP/2003 was still web based. Thats probably what the GGP referred to.
Of course, microsoft.com itself isn't given any special treatment.
Wait! What?
You are browsing the Net with a Server-OS during Installation? And you think that's a Core Feature on a Server-Grade-OS?
There's no need for a Browser on a Server (or a Mailclient or...). Such Tasks should be done with your Admin Notebook or the needed Files could be copied over Network or USB or...
MSs IE on 2k3/2k8 is a tribut to their OS-Strategy, not a Core-Service for a queer Admin ;)
jm2c
nothing travels faster than light - except the mind
I installed w2k8/64 and exchange 2k7 on a vmware esx (kept waiting for hyperV, but even when it came out M$ would not say it supported exchange). There have been many issues along the way - I did not think that doing the upgrades six months after the release would be so 'bleeding edge', but it seems to have been. Even late in 2008 some third party apps were not supported on server 2008. I want to move forward with other server upgrades, but others recommend keeping stable apps running on 2003. BTW - exchange 2003 to 2007 did NOT go smoothly - I am still suffering from issues of decommisioning the 2003 (public folders, GAL, OAB). We don't/won't use Vista so there is no advantage seen there. I have yet to setup the TS (which I understand is probably the biggest improvement).
I work for an IT consulting company (~40 people), and we've upgraded our internal production network to WS08 in April 2008.
So far, we've had few issues, most of them due to ISVs not being completely ready to support WS08 back in April 2008.
By now, we've killed of most of the WS03 VMs as vendors started supporting Server 2008.
WS08 offered lots of improvement - SMB 2.0 is getting a lot of love from our users, as access data over the VPN is now much faster, without the need for expensive WAN accelerator appliances.
Terminal Services were also much improved, being now able to eleminate the need for Citrix for some of our smaller customers. For them, this is a great value proposition.
Otherwise, Server 2008 seems like a good incremental upgrade. There is no need to throw out all 2003 servers right now, but transition them when the hardware is due for replacement.
A product that IMO has a much bigger impact is the release of SBS 2008. It finally gives you 64bit & Exchange 2007 for the smallest of customers.
We just switched to 2k8 in my shop (not my choice, AD and Exchange are "mandatory") and I've gotta say, I don't like it.
The only new feature that I've seen is DFS and even that is broken. The UI design team moved stuff for the sake of moving stuff and made everything bigger and chunkier. It also spams new windows that have a tendency to put themselves in the background like nobody's business. Also, the new DC's are giving all kinds of DNS errors.
Now maybe the DFS and DNS problems will be worked out in time (it's a new setup) but I still don't like the UI.
I don't see the point of switching.
Shhh! Those Windows only Admin boys don't understand that. They think because they dropped a few thousand dollars for the OS license (frequently more than what the hardware costs) that it has more features and capabilities than any of those dirty *nix systems. I have watched more than a few of those guys stare in disbelief as I showed them how trivial it is in Linux to add support for multiple cpus, higher memory, larger drives, etc. You know...all of those things MS charges you a goddamned fortune to add support for. Nothing quite like watching that realization that the extra few thousand they paid to "upgrade" to the next highest version of WinServer to support their hardware was nothing more than a few minutes of changing settings.
The entire Windows product line is defective by design. They intentionally cripple their "cheaper". The funniest thing is that Bill Gates himself said that having multiple versions of Windows would destroy the computer indusry during his antitrust trial...but then a few years later turns around and does it anyways.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
It does beg the question, why does a "server" os need directx 10?
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I have this vague suspicion that AC obtained his copy via the "Port 6881 Volume Discount Licence Program", so to speak...
Actually, despite what MS will tell you, a server should be fundamentally different to a desktop, it should have a lot less software installed... MS's server versions are quite the opposite, they're basically desktops with additional server applications installed, they have a ton of desktop related functionality that is completely useless on a server sitting in a rack somewhere.
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I'm actually really impressed with it as a workstation OS. It is as fast as XP due to the significantly fewer number of background services running as compared to Vista, with the prettiness and features of Vista (including Direct X 10 for gaming). Vista drivers work just fine. I installed it mostly as a joke after having received it at one of those Heroes Happen Here conferences, but now I don't even boot to my XP partition anymore.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
I've been using Server2008 x64 on my t61p laptop since it first came out.
It's great! It feels zippier than Vista. It has a smaller install footprint. (actually even wireless isn't installed by default: you have to add it manually). It's been completely rock-solid.
I even use Hyper-V when giving demos at conferences. (unfortunately Hyper-V doesn't cooperate with wireless and disables sleep/hibernate, so I can't use it routinely.)
Two position statements first: 1) I'm primarily a Unix sysadmin of multiple flavours and love it, 2) I've only used Server 2008 on my test VM network.
Having setup a private network thanks to a company purchased Technet subscription, I now have two Active Directory Domain Controllers, a WSUS server and Terminal Server. My take on 2008 is that when approached the right way, it's actually a very nice operating system.
I like the new Terminal Services seamless window capability, the default policy of only installing the minimum required services, the new look Server Manager, even IIS7 looks nicely moduler. In fact, I could imagine managing a network of 2008 machines in a way that I never could with 2003. Now that might be my lack of fundamental 2003 knowledge (I can use it, but wouldn't describe myself as a "Windows System Administrator").
The reality, even for us Unix/Linux advocates, is that we're probably going to have to interop with Windows Server from time to time, and if it's Server 2008 that I'm having to work with, then I can live with that.
I just left an unnamed Well known tech company which... lets just call them Intel for convenience sake. They still use Windows 2000 (and lots of 2k3, but maybe 50% max) for everything from small web servers to nas servers, terminal servers and clustered high usage sql servers. Its a pain in the ass not being able to use Asp.net 3.5 but... it works. I'm sure 2k8 would be a lot easier for some things... but wheres the one feature that everyone can look at and go "yeah, we need that"
Yeah, I know what you mean. IME, Linux is much more valuable to me because it offers more flexibility over the life of a system. If the organisation grows and I need more concurrent users, I don't need to worry about the license. If I need to add a service on an existing server, I don't need to worry about whether Moderately Enterprisey Edition has what I need, or if I can only do it on one of the Really Quite Enterprisey Edition boxes. I can install a zillion times in different VM's, and not have to read the EULA with a fine toothed comb to know if it was legal. In many ways, I'd consider an expensive Linux preferable to a free Windows.
That said, the Windows Server thing isn't that hard to grok. It's just market segmentation, plus a decision to only bundle the server and administrative application bundle with particular variations of the OS. If you prefer, think of it as buying the application bundle, and getting a free, tuned and tweaked version of Windows that is just there to run the expensive application bundle. Net result is that you don't need to worry about compatibility between the applications and your existing OS. MS comes to the table from a proprietary mindset. That's not inherently 100% terrible. And, more important than anything else, they bring some quite good tools. You can decide those tools aren't worth the headaches that come with MS for your situation. But, if you've ever set up NIS and NFS home directories on a bunch of Linux boxes, and you've joined Windows machines to a domain... You know that joining a Windows box to a domain is a heck of a lot more convenient than deploying NIS.
I'm a UNIX admin who has worked with Windows servers, but even coming from my "UNIX 4 eva" side of the fence, I have to admit that the MS solutions make some things very convenient compared to the most analagous UNIX options. Just make sure you know which edition you need, so you install the Windows Server OS that will actually use all of your RAM. :)
If you install "Server Core" for 2008 it doesn't have IE...
Did any one else notice they tagged Sony? Why?
wut?
That made me laugh -- apparently even Microsoft knows the security on its product is so bad that they have to ship it locked completely down. If they can't even trust their product, why should I?
If you think that's bad, wait until you see how bad OpenBSD's security is~
RHEL 5.3 still has tons more drivers than Win2k8. I know from very painful experience.
It's a natural consequence of
a) as mentioned before, the nature of the licensing, but probably more importantly...
b) the release cycle. RHEL is pretty good about timely major updates compared to eternities for MS service packs.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I have yet to see one, and I see a lot of servers. Seems like 2k3 is good enough and people run other OSs for bigger tasks and virtualization. So... I've seen way more recent deployments of RedHat, CentOS, Ubuntu LTS and W2k3 than 2k8. Maybe it's the Vista smell, I don't know.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
you obviously need tons of servers, as they still have the 10 connection limit imposed (on ports less than 1024) on WinXP.
Seriously, we haven't bothered.
Sure we will have to someday as servers are retired and 2003 goes off MOLP but it doesn't seem like a big deal to me to start some push to do it.
More of a quiet snooze then a dramatic miss.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Windows 2008's advanced firewall setting is now easier to use than iptables through webmin. I can finally configure an internet facing server securely!
This is really an about face... 10 years ago...
Changes that took 10 years to take place are more like a long hard slog than an about-face.
This has been an LHS not just for the Linux community, but for the larger Open Source community. OS has gone from a weird little movement supposedly based on programmers being willing to work for free to a serious player in enterprise computing. This has been based on changed business models and changed attitudes on all sides. Not the least of this is the end of the all-or-nothing attitude towards "free" software, at least on the part of the serious decision makers.
The logic is simple... There is a special OS for a server so the cost can be different. There is no technical reason that Windows couldn't be like Linux and allow you to add every server component to a single base operating system, The only reason is that they want to charge people that buy servers with 256GB of RAM $3000 per server and those that run small companies $600 per server. Both companies get a good deal (of course, not as good as free).
Where I work, a typical server costs $5,500, Windows costs around $600, physically putting the server in the datacenter costs $2,000, and labor for installing, configuring, and supporting the server costs $3,000 over the its life. At the end of the day, Windows servers cost around $11,100. Switching to Linux would save us $600, reducing our costs by 5%.
A typical server with 256GB of RAM would run about $60,000. This server would require the Enterprise editions of Windows Server, so that would run about $3,000. The other costs would remain the same and at the end of the day, the OS is still only five percent of the total.
So my name may pre-bias me... but in my life I've had many a Windows box with a year of uptime. Granted, that was generally in the era of NT 4, when attacks were fewer, and patches weren't out every fourth Tuesday.
It's an impressive uptime for Linux, too. It impresses upon me the suckiness of the administrator to leave a years' worth of kernel security bugs unpatched.
The fact that I have to activate my OS is annoying. With 2K3, there was a volume licensing option, but with 2K8, that option is gone, and I have to either allow my server to talk to a public Microsoft activation server, or run a KMS server in house.
Sorry, Microsoft, If you don't trust me, I don't trust you.
It's a shame that Slashdot can't just have news stories and leave opinion for the comments. Things like "the so-called software giant" just irk me.
But I suppose if I'm looking for news that isn't open-source biased, I shouldn't be at Slashdot!
even though server 2008 has it, i've only used it on Windows 7 beta. the performance is a lot better than the old SMB. downside is all your clients have to be at least Vista SP1
I know this isn't relevant to the post, since R2 is still in Beta at the moment, but I've been looking at some of the new features in R2 and they look pretty nifty. Particularly Branch Cache, Core parking, Offline domain joins, Live migration, Direct Access and Active Directory recycle bin feature. I'm sure these features will piss off a lot of people who have already purchased Server 2008 (and aren't on maintenance), but they are still pretty nifty. Of course half of them require Vista Enterprise to use the features.
How well did it sell? From what I understand, Windows Server 2008 has sold incredibly well, faster than any other server OS in history in its first year. That's certainly one measure of success.
No, it doesn't. Which is why its not installed by default.
2k8 is entirely "roles" based. DX10 comes along with the "desktop experience" role, which is not there by default.
As far as I can tell it is not as stable as Win 2k3 or as Linux (we run RedHat). Just installed a new division file server based on 2008 and it crashed last week, apparently because MS services for NFS caused it to Blue Screen on a race condition in NFS services. You have to install a hot fix! Separate from normal updates. ... some people lost a few hours of data and work! ... seriously considering shit-canning it and going back to a RedHat file server running Samba. 2008 is hardly something that should be called an "Enterprise" product. It's quite amateurish in its coding!
The people that modded me down and responded negatively have apparently never been exposed to a sensible server operating system. Locking a system down that tight is just ridiculous. Use your brains for a minute -- what is the only reason an OS has to be locked down absolutely that tight on boot? Because it's so insecure that any leaks can infect it before the admins have a chance to properly patch and secure it.
I know there are people paid by Microsoft to troll, mod down and post ridiculous responses to anything anti-Microsoft and/or pro-*nix (really -- I was told this by a Microsoft insider when the company I used to work for was doing some work with them), but it has really stepped up lately. One has to wonder the amount of sheer panic Microsoft has right now, and how good that looks for other OSes.
This is a sig. Deal with it.
Thank you. Finally someone stated the obvious.
Yea, don't get it. Neither do win admins. I run several linux based servers of all sorts. My Total Cost of Ownership, and also the only limit on my performance is my hardware + power bill + bandwidth bill. Any of my homegrown servers will take the Pepsi challenge with the thousands spent by the big boys just paying the license fees for windows. I can handle as much email, push as many web pages, do whatever. Don't get it. Where is the value?
Living in Chile
Wow, NT will soon catch up to NetWare's SALVAGE.EXE from the late 80s.
The Volume Shadow Copies sounds a lot like rsnapshot on *nix, which is really rdiff + some wrapper scripts.
Dude, take your fucking meds. Please.
Nobody is paying me to point this out, and I'm not a particular fan of Microsoft in any way - but you very obviously don't know shit about security. Stop talking now if you want to avoid looking like an even bigger fool.
Pretty happy with 2003R2 (which also includes SMBv2) here.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...there will be more day to day problems, but your chimps are a lot cheaper, and easier to find.
Unless you encounter a problem over the chimp's head that he tries to "fix," and he really screws something up (make sure you have strict backup schedules, of course), or the chimp tries to eat your face. Both of these things happen, apparently.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
It's rare to combine Ad hominem argument and beg the question in the same sentence.
Actually, server 2003 R2 does not trust Windows Update by default.
I find it amusing that people would make fun of Microsoft for doing this to their browser when people were mocking them for shipping things insecure out of the box. Just goes to show, when it's Microsoft, you can't do anything right even if it is actually right. People will complain anyways.
Wow dude, you're out there! First of all, there are a lot of people out there that value the straight forward setup approach that Microsoft often gives you for that high dollar. Of course when I'm running Oracle and spend many thousands on it I install it on a free OS but I certainly can't apt-get install Oracle.
Aptitude is great and all, but you're forgetting apt-get install apache-modssl, mod_mysql, php and the myriad of other things that usually have to get installed too in order to do anything useful with your webserver.
You also seem very misguided in the decisions that Bill Gates can make even though he no longer holds CEO or President as positions at Microsoft. He didn't do anything to which you give him credit for doing.
As for adding multiple cpu support, wtf? Why are you adding support to something that is universally supported in all camps and never required users to spend money to upgrade. Higher memory support was never a reason to pay for an upgrade as they always had the 4gig 32bit limitation. Windows 98 had trouble dealing with that amount of memory but that's because it handled memory like crap to begin with.
Furthermore, trivializing the differences between Windows does your cause no good as there have been plenty of upgrades on the Linux side that haven't gone so smoothly, as an Ubuntu user I can assure you the world is far from perfect and often requires time consuming research to troubleshoot issues that crop up such as why my Sangoma card won't initialize despite lspci showing the card and using matching drivers. In the Windows world I get a nice easy to read event log that doesn't require me to go trapesing through /var/log looking for something that will give me a clue as to the cause of the problem. As a side note Asterisk can be a real pain in the arse.
Anywho, those of us that aren't Linux only and aren't Windows only admins will continue to laugh at you and your poor attempts to attack something you clearly don't understand.
Here's a hint for you, Linux is not free, not by a long shot. Time to deploy new technologies with Microsoft has almost always been significantly faster than time to deploy new linux based services, note this does not state whether or not the deployment was better. That time costs real money and isn't worth a lot of people's efforts. Often times paying for something instead of developing a solution yourself is the smarter move and saves you money in the long run. Of course this is not always the case so naturally, use the right tool for the job. Sometimes its Linux, sometimes it's Windows. My main issue is grappling with which distro to use for which task. CentOS or Elastix for Asterisk is a hell of a lot easier than getting the whole rig running on Debian for instance.
We pay much more than that for RHEL, by the way. But the good thing is, if we don't like it, we don't have to pay them anymore.
Windows licenses don't.
Which makes it a significant improvement over 2k3, which forced you to install all that crud.
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If you like Server 2008 as a workstation, you're liking Vista as a workstation. It's the same kernel with different services on by default. You can just turn off the services you don't want on Vista quite easily, and get an essentially identical experience.
And with decent server-class equipment, even the default install of Vista should outperform that of XP for typical use. There's a lot to be said for pushing the CPU hit of rendering the GUI to the GPU.
My video compression blog
I agree with the parent. I work in an MS shop running 2003 enterprise for our applications. We evaluated 2008 and found the following:
1. Very little new anything with clustering. By all appearances, I'm still completely hosed in some failure scenarios.
2. It looks like most of the 2008 'features' are meant to enhance the same old hostility to mixed Microsoft environments. Same old crack-dealer scheming and continuing small-business customer contempt.
3. IIS GUI has changed, but feature-wise it looks about the same. How long will this new scripting thing last before it's .Netified or abandoned? It's not a glue-like solution at all.
License fees have risen to astronomical levels for the Enterprise license we would, in theory, purchase. Management would look ridiculous even mentioning the numbers. Contrast this with hardware purchases that are quite easy to justify even in these times.
Management is *very* open to platform alternatives as a result of Microsoft's perceived reskinnng 2003 and calling it new.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
1. On aptitude. What is your point? You have to install stuff to do useful things? You don't say. You have to add all kinds of extra BS to an IIS install to do useful things too. I fail to see what the hell that has to do with anything. Most commercial software for Linux comes with very straightforward setup stuff to. Your point here makes no sense.
/var/log syslog stuff exists, not understanding why event viewer is broken garbage, not understanding the hardware limitations of Windows and how they are artificially enforced to drive licensing sales...yeah..I'm totally the one that clearly doesn't understand.
2. Bill Gates said this then Bill Gates proceeded to start doing this and then Ballmer made it worse by fracturing windows versions even more than before.
3. WRONG! Go look again the various versions of Windows have a max number of CPUs they will support. So when you had to have that extra power you had to shell out big bucks for the higher versions of Windows just to make use of your hardware. Now, here is another fun Windows world lie. There is no 4GB limitation. PAE support in the kernel allows 32bit Linux to go above the 4GB "limit". 32bit Server 2k3 Standard= 4GB limit, 32bit Server 2k3 Enterpirse = 64GB limit. So again, artificial software limitation of Windows requiring bigger investments to use more hardware.
4. The versions of Windows have nothing to do with the differences between Windows and Linux. The point the differences in the versions of Windows are artificial, in Linux there is no such artificial barrier. Further nice easy event log? Seriously, you need to do some enterprise work. Syslog is the standard across unixes and most network hardware. That "nice and easy" event log is a nonstandard piece of trash that is damned near impossible to use to correlate events across multiple devices. There is a damned good reason why people are selling syslog services for Windows to translate that screwball event log garbage into something more useful.
5. Not understanding why
6. The time to deploy new technologies with Microsoft is "significantly faster" because you can get trained monkeys to do it. When you have trained and experienced unix/solaris/linux admins that "significantly faster" means horseshit. Now, if your organization can't bother to invest in real admins and would rather just have that guy that knows how to sorta get things running in linux that is an organizational fuckup, not a software fuckup. The reverse is true as well, you don't hire unix admins to manage Windows servers. As far as time...I can have a linux database server up and running in a fraction of the time it takes to get a Windows box doing the same thing installed. I also waste a hell of a lot less resources runnign that stupid f'ing useless GUI in the process (Though I hear MS finally pulled their heads out of their asses and got Win2k8 running headless).
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Nah, they're mostly Development or Staging web servers.
Apparently me saying that was Flamebait or something, though, I got modded down. Alas.
Comment of the year
(If your post is intended to be facetious, I apologize for the following)
And that is...? Sensible defaults that don't block your every move? OpenBSD has only had 2 remote security holes in its default installation for 16 years now, that is several orders of magnitude better than anything Microsoft has ever produced, it's even better than Linux distributions to a smaller degree.
Think how much more hardware you could buy with that extra $3000, if you went with Linux instead. Three grand would pay for a nice data backup solution, for example.
Why do you suppose Ubuntu comes in Desktop and Server versions?
Why does Red Hat have their Enterprise Server Linux and Fedora Desktop Linux?
Why does SuSE have a regular and a Desktop version?
Microsoft is not the only OS that has seperate server and desktop versions.
The reason is simple, Desktops tend to have all the bells and whistles installed. Fancy graphics, sound, etc... But servers are configured for higher network throughput, usually they have older (more stable) versions of the applications and drivers and kernel. Servers are tuned for different scheduling. Etc..
So why is that you think Microsoft is the only OS that comes in a special server version?
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We count the CAL as part of the workstation cost. They're cheap, only about $20 each ( http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=488489 ), and you only have to pay once per client, there is no additional cost for another server that is accessed by existing licensed clients. If you look at our accounts payable, Microsoft server licenses are a very small portion of our overall cost of doing business. I like Linux. But if I switch, it won't be because of cost. Windows just isn't all that expensive.
Most of my servers are at under 5% utilization because they were purchased for a specific project and whatever crackpot software we are running on them requires a dedicated server. This is the problem that virtualization is supposed to solve, but the same crackpot software vendor refuses to support it if we virtualize the server. Server consolidation is out of the question for me most of the time.
BTW, I've never seen MS recommend a specific workload for a server. They'll gladly support a tiny overloaded box with way too many clients on it. I've got a 900GB "dumping ground" shared folder accessed all day long by 100 people on a 7 year old single processor Xeon server with 512MB of RAM. The server has no processor or memory problems, the bottleneck is all IO.
I've got problems with a lot of software vendors. Microsoft is not anywhere near the top of the list of vendors I would like to see go away.
You seem to think syslog is the be all? Sorry, but I actually do use syslog and you have to specifically set it up for each service you wish to monitor. Windows has built in syslog services so it makes no sense that people are selling services for it.
Unfortunately for you I do enterprise work so I'll guarantee my automated image based installs are just as fast as your automated image based installs.
You completely missed the point of everything that I was saying since you were implying that Linux and accompanying philosophy is vastly superior when it simply isn't. You seem to be under a horrible impression that an experienced Unix admin is any more skilled than an experienced Windows admin. You write with a tone indicating that you are on the one true path and that just isn't the case. If it were the case Microsoft would never have made a dent in the world. People are inherently lazy and want the path of least resistance, very often that path simply means shelling out for a solution rather than coming up with one with a Linux kludge. Look at Proxmox VE to see what I mean, an all around great product but falls short in important places because they haven't been able to get the right tools working reliably. If I didn't have a SAN I would definitely not spend my money on VMWare or Xenserver and just install Proxmox.
As for event correlation I shouldn't even bother to explain the ridiculousness you are spouting. The only difference is that in Windows you have a central facility and in Linux you don't. That's not to say you can't have one in Linux, you just put a few tools together and you get the same thing. So one tool is Windows is 5 tools in Linux.
You also fail to understand why Microsoft products are significantly faster to deploy, they get you up and running with the latest technology in no time at all. From scratch you cannot setup a Linux distro that will provide all the same functionality as a Windows server install including your favorite directory services in the same amount of time and without documentation. Why should it be difficult to deploy new technology? Why should I have to bandaid qmail to get modern functionality? Oh right, I'll just install postfix or sendmail with the mail scanner suite which involves several separate installs and most certainly requires careful following of installation guides leaving much room for typos during configuration although as my email server can attest you get great performance although I can send and receive just as many emails with my Exchange server.
You seem to think that most businesses care about the quality of a deployment as opposed to the speed at which it is deployed. In most shops you are pressed to deliver or be replaced and that is a reality you clearly don't understand.
All your problems with Microsoft appear to stem from the fact that you have to pay for it and the divisions there of as a result of it being proprietary technology. This is a pointless argument as it makes no attempt to argue that open source software is superior because it plain and simply isn't. It can be in a lot of circumstances but the mere fact that it's open source doesn't mean it's perfect and the same goes with proprietary software so it makes more sense to attack things on merit that actually matter such as the manner in which Windows has historically mismanaged memory and process threading.
Who running Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard edition needs more than 4 sockets and doesn't also need the additional features you get with Enterprise edition? You might also note that the 64bit versions and editions you list don't have the same limitations. A pointless argument because you have to operate under the assumption that people are paying for a solution, an extra $600 for a copy of Windows that can handle the hardware you've spend 30k on is no big deal even though we both agree it would be a waste of money in some circumstances.
In short, you're way off base with reality man. First and foremost, lighten up and realize that a GUI isn
As if Microsoft's tech specs were any better.
In short, Ubuntu server is only an install with different default settings. In a few apt-get you can turn one into the other. You cannot do that with Windows and I find this very limiting. And I am NOT taking into account the price, even though I find it normal to pay for good software.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I noticed you casually disregard the fact that a 2008 license for my employer is ridiculously expensive. We don't use retail crack-pipe licenses.
Here we go with more hyperbole... .NET integration, for instance, is killer for shops that use .NET.
We've got .net apps runnning no one in there right mind would rewrite for an upgrade.
The ability to completely maintain IIS via config files is an even better feature.
OK, maybe but we've been getting along for years without it.
A whole new host of command line tools are also new, not to mention Powershell support.
Casually ignoring Microsoft's destructive tendency to launch something then not support it doesn't help your case. How many of these "new" toys will be actively developed going forward? Batch files anyone? Perl and Python are more than enough glue that work across *many* operating systems, widely supported, huge base of libraries.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Yet Ubuntu Server is a seperate download, and you completely ignored my point about the other distro's.
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Nice posting despite the unjustified moderation down. Good to see that someone is on top of these things tcpip wise and thank you because I had not been informed of these changes, which I do not care for either myself.
Modded your informative reply up even though the penguins or visiting bot masters here obviously gave you a down moderation as they often are wont to do when they say you are trolling, or off topic, yet with no backing justification, as this was here, which is a completely wrong. The topic is tcpip and you spoke of layers it has that were in older Windows than vista and it is gone now which I agree needs correction. I decided to mod you up to to spite them and also to reward an informative posting that has information I have not seen before that I find useful for technical things in Windows to protect myself online. Thank you.