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."

Comments

No news is good news

[LibertineR]

Bottom line: It just works. Nice new GPO features, Hyper V is fine, but overall, nothing to get terribly excited about other than the fact that there have been few negative issues.

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.

Re:No news is good news

[TheBracket]

I recently setup a client of mine with two Win2k8 64-bit servers (in a larger virtual VMware setup). So far, it's worked out very well. It's fast, stable (uptime is exactly equal to the number of days since we last had to reboot for a patch), and played nice with everything already present. Active Directory and Exchange 2007 migrated from the previous Win2k/Exchange 2k setup without a hitch. In other words: no complaints at all, other than the price (which wasn't too bad, since the client received non-profit pricing - but most of what I setup is Linux or FreeBSD and I greatly prefer that pricetag!).

Things I noticed that have improved:
* The group policy editor is a bit easier to use, and less confusing.
* The Vista performance/health monitor is actually pretty good, and provides a really handy ntop-like interface for seeing which service is doing what with the network (not as fine grained as I'd like, but it's a good starting point).
* The old Services-For-Unix services are more tightly integrated, and it was very easy to get NFS up and running.
* Less is installed by default, and adding just the required services was very straightforward.
* The scheduler seems to have improved, because processes distribute over CPUs more widely, and throughput/responsiveness "feels" better.
* The new role-based manager for file serving is a bit easier to find, but is really similar.
* A couple of new diagnostic wizards have appeared, including one for Group Policy - it helped me find a couple of problems I hadn't thought about.

Items I wasn't so fond of:
* Activation. It doesn't matter if you have a charity volume license anymore - you still have to activate. That bugs me, because this server has to last for years, and I worry that if I have to restore a backup in 5 years time the activation wizard may make my life difficult.
* Volume shadow copies are STILL not configured to my liking by default.
* If you want to use some of the new active directory features, you need a pure Win2k8 domain on the server side. It works with "legacy" Win2k/2k3 systems around, but only if they aren't domain controllers.
* The start menu/icons are straight from Vista.
* License management makes less sense, since the license control tools are now hidden away - checking CAL status is a pain.

Overall, for an MS operating system it's pretty good. I don't see a compelling reason to run out and upgrade any Win2k3 systems that are working well - but for new servers, it works great.

Re:No news is good news

[gordguide]

Hello, this is Bob from Marketing here at FUD Advertising, and we've got this new account from these guys in Washington state called Microsoft.

We've decided to move them into full page adds in Technology and General Media, with short TV spots in support later. We want to go with "Movie-Style" ads: brief quotes from professionals who use the product and speak to potential buyers (Edit from Boss: scratch that ... they want us to call them "users". Sounds like drug addicts to me, but whatever. They write the checks).

We love the idea, because these short quotes are so meaningless, easy to manipulate, memorable and almost perfectly supportive. We think black background, big type with product name at the top, nice picture, and quotes with attributions below ... you know, like a movie ad in the paper.

So, this is what we have so far.

"Less confusing!"

"Pretty good!"

"A good starting point!!"

"Seems to have improved!!"

Send comments to my assistant by Friday.

Thaaaaaanks. That would be Greeaaaaaaaat.

Re:Anything like 2k3?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I expected more driver support

[mysidia]

This is really an about face... 10 years ago, Linux was the platform you often couldn't get running due to missing hardware drivers -- you really had to be very careful about what hardware you chose.

Also, Windows 2000 was the easy-to-use OS.. Linux was the server OS with usability issues..

Is it starting to change, so that Linux is actually more usable than Windows server?

That would be the day...

Now if only we could get a true match for Windows Active Directory. So that the software on Windows Desktop machines, works EXACTLY as if the environment was powered by Windows servers, Exchange for e-mail, etc.

Re:whats it give us?

[Shados]

The main things is the ability to do a "core" (minimalistic) install, hyper-v, the terminal service enhancements as you mentioned, IIS7 (thats actually a very, very big deal for .NET shops) and souped up Active Directory. The rest is mostly enhanced management (incremental upgrades and some new features here and there to make stuff faster/easier) and incremental improvements on most things, and support for Vista specific features. Its also decently faster overall.

The first things i mentioned are actually pretty major, if you need them, but obviously are irrelevant if all you're using it for is a file server, of course :)

Re:Can't answer your question

[zappepcs]

The data center where my servers are is a mixed client data center. It's not the decision of a single company there. There is one company who is using Windows server 2k3 but they are not upgrading. Some of their stuff is moving to Linux/Solaris. The RHEL stuff is a different company that replaced all their Windows servers and went full on RHEL. In my area, we use a mix of Win2k3, Solaris (5.8-10), and Linux (CentOS). There is a ton of telecomms stuff in half the data center as well. I'm not seeing any growth in Windows servers, quite the opposite. That's why I thought my experience might be 'average' so to speak.

Re:2008 is the 2nd best desktop MS ever made

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I have this vague suspicion that AC obtained his copy via the "Port 6881 Volume Discount Licence Program", so to speak...

Re:whats it give us?

[paganizer]

I don't disagree with what your saying, but I don't think thats the main reason people should go for a NT based solution.
I really, seriously think its the Trained Chimp factor.
If you set up a NT network properly, lock it down, and make sure someone with a clue looks in on it every once in a while, you can have a much lower pricepoint trained chimp fix the day to day problems; sure, there will be more day to day problems, but your chimps are a lot cheaper, and easier to find.
Also, I had a lot of problems trying to work with earlier versions of Samba; I imagine a lot of other people did, as well, it's going to take a while to get over the distrust.

Re:whats it give us?

[Kjella]

That page you linked to hasn't had a major edit in two years or so, and it does not reflect the current best practices for setting up a simple Linux/Samba file server with AD integration.

Then what the fsck is it doing on the samba.org site? Why isn't it removed if not updated? You know, this IS one of the real pitfalls of Linux, whenever you're looking for a guide you're likely to find something that's two years old and may or may not be valid. If documentation sucks, documentation re-verification on newer versions suck even more. I bet that's 99% of the reason Ubuntu got their code names down the way they do, if you search for "active directory hardy", "active directory intrepid", "active directory jaunty" you're much more likely to get relevant hits than "active directory ubuntu" or worse yet "active directory linux".