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Windows Server 8 Is A Radical Departure From Previous Releases
Julie188 writes "While the world is distracted with the Window 8 client, Microsoft is simultaneously working on Windows Server 8. At BUILD, Microsoft unveiled its next-generation server OS under heavy secrecy to a room full of analysts and product testers. WS8 is radically different than its predecessors. There's an argument to make that it's not actually Windows. The code they saw was pre-beta and an obvious attempt to put an arrow in the heart of former-softie-turned-VMware-CEO Paul Maritz. Windows 8 Server editions are to be run in Server Core format (the GUI will be optional). PowerShell has gotten an overhaul and its command list will exceed 2,300 native commandlets in Windows Server 8. Hyper-V has also been revamped and will become massively scalable in the number of VMs supported and in the size of each VM."
In related news, it appears that Java now runs on Microsoft's Azure platform.
Microsoft isn't saying anything about linux, however this is a direct attack against linux and unix in general
Its real competition, not "an attack". This is a good thing.
These just sound like incremental improvements. I'm not complaining but adding extra commandlets and features isn't a "radical departure". Plus, the GUI is optional on the current version of Windows Server.
Actually, it seems like Microsoft sees VMware as its actual competition.
C'mon, Bill, do you really expect us to fall for that AGAIN?
(Of course, some will... I'm depressed now...)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
On Slashdot, competing with Linux is an "attack" and makes you evil.
I just don't understand why Microsoft can't just make a good BASH variant for Windows, so us folks who administrate heterogeneous networks can create a common stock of admin scripts, and a common scripting language to do them in. Microsoft still can't get over the fact that it isn't the only boy in town in the server world, and making proper integration tools, as opposed to trying to force itself on us at every turn, should take precedence.
Yes, I know there's Cygwin, but it's huge and a major pain in the ass and I consider the ugliest of hacks.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Personally, I think PowerShell is a lot closer to the ideal shell for today than Bash is (and I'm typing this on Linux). PS is kind of maddening to use because of some things like the tab completion differences (I've tried to give it a fair shot, but I really don't like it) and the god-awful "terminal emulator" that it runs in.
But I strongly feel that if the Linux folks would take a step back and acknowledge that it's no longer 1970, they'd see that have programs set up to pass objects around instead of text can be hugely beneficial.
(I'm open to some textual serialization of objects, such as JSON or similar.)
So you are bashing PowerShell for allowing you to do more than what you need with it? Seriously? You don't need to use those extra features if you don't want to, but for anyone actually doing some work it's a great tool (you know, for those that actually do something else than play around with their wardrobe servers).
I don't think you have even used PowerShell, you just want to hate on it because it's Windows-based and that "ooh Windows admins must be stupid!" line makes it even more visible. The hard cold truth is that Windows Server is used on around 50% of servers, and is usually much better choice for certain things than Linux based server, especially in corporate environments. Linux is fine for hobbyist stuff and some real work, but the real world still uses Windows Server a lot.
And yet, for all of that, the SH-variants have an enormous body of code behind them. I'm willing to concede there are aspects of Powershell that might be desirable, but it's a fucking nightmare to code in, and for scripting, I don't really want to code anyways. The whole point behind sh and all its children wasn't so that you could have some full blown programming language, but rather that you could automate tasks, and at that, the sh family works remarkably well, and has done so for decades.
I have no problem with choice, but I would love it if a properly integrated bash variant was available on Windows. Not one that requires some awful layer like Cygwin, but one that runs natively without some ghastly compatibility layer.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Visual Studio is great, but Eclipse is just as good as a platform. For some reason, every time I say this, I get modded down.
Yes, there is. UNIX shell and command line in my opinion is the best development environment ever made. And it's been around for a long time. The usual arguments given why this isn't so all boil down to it takes average developer too long to learn it. But nothing can ever come to the level of productivity you get when you finally do. After you do, IDEs and Visual Studio in particular start being impediments rather than productivity boosters.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Apparently, desktop versions will be more pad-like than windows-like.
Server version with "GUI optional" implies you install the GUI package and get on with your workstationy stuff.
As for 7 to 8, it looks like a whole new paradigm. Windows 7 is still, in look and feel, a windows-on-a-desktop-analog GUI in the Xerox PARC mold. The pad paradigm is a whole new kettle of fishsticks, even if you're using a mouse and keyboard instead of your digits.
The problem is the complexity, dumping users, especially windows users who have little or no CLI experience into a powerful environment like powershell is not a good approach.. Especially when it's something completely new, rather than a logical extension of something users will already have been familiar with.
Bash is simple yet flexible, and builds on the bourne shell which has been around for many years... You don't need to learn anything new in order to get on with it, and bash is very good for the majority of people's tasks.
For the small subset of people who need something more powerful, there are a large number of existing scripting or full on programming languages available.
The same can be said of ACLs, windows only provides acls while unix provides both acls and regular unix permissions... Windows also provides different APIs for adjusting registry and driver ACLs, while unix uses the same filesystem APIs for both.
Unix permissions are less flexible, but provide everything that 99% of users require. The complexity of windows ACLs and the multiple different APIs for setting permissions in different places however discourage people from using them, so you get lots of users with weak permissions on their files, device drivers with weak permissions and programs that set poor permissions on their installation files or configuration.
You need simple but flexible for 99% of users by default, and an optional more powerful system for the 1% who need it.
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It might come in handy, I suppose, in processing XML-based configs, but those still make a pretty small chunk of all the conf files in existence. For any heavy duty processing like that you always have awk or Perl if you want a full-blown language. Heck, I remember writing a ten or fifteen line awk script that processed some weirdo mainframe style inventory list of about 100,000 items into a csv file using awk.
The issue here, I think, is that *nix doesn't really use objects at all for base OS interaction. That's a Windows thing. So maybe Powershell really is a Windows necessity, though, as I said, even in my Windows scripting, I can't really think of any occasions where I need it desperately. At the end of the day, the underlying Windows configuration system still is largely name-value pairs, no matter how much OOP veneer Microsoft chooses to put on top of it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Regularly work with millions of lines of code. My tools scale perfectly well, and for dozens of languages too, not just like VS which works OK for C#, but absolutely sucks for C++ or say Perl, or Eclipse which is good for Java, but sucks for C++ or Haskell for example.
I think before you make judgement on this, perhaps you owe it to yourself to learn it first, or at least watch someone who knows what they are doing (if you can find someone).
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
And I still can't quite figure out how exactly VMWare is a threat to MS. VMWare made it easier for shops to run more MS servers by combining them.
Besides how long is it going to take MS to release the next server OS with the features they are advertising?
I hope in the long run they do VMs like they do Terminal Servers. MS isn't putting Citrix out of business by providing some basic TS capabilities built into the product. If you need more then what MS provides then you go to a vendor that goes beyond the basics. Citrix for TS and VMWare for VMs.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Probably because sh-derivatives like bash are common on more operating systems that GNU/Linux, and because bash itself is frequently used on other Unix-like OSes. It is also the case that bash has been around for a long time, and there are a lot of bash scripts that IT guys have lying around that they would love to use on Windows.
Palm trees and 8
Thats how PowerShell works, too...
2300 "commands" really means there are a few hundred objects with some number of operations you can take on them, and you do so by chaining them together like named pipes. Imagine, if you will, that every config file on your Unix system was an object that you could pipe commands in and out of. That's how you have to compare it to Unix.
So, in some ways its easier. Rather than having to do piping through grep/sed/whatever to switch some setting in a config file, you just call an operation on that object in PowerShell, then you can pipe that object to something else to do another action.
If VS "sucks" for C++, I'm not sure what works well. Probably nothing. Have any suggestions?
(It certainly doesn't have the level of support that C# has, but IMO VS works way better for C++ than anything else I've tried. In particular, I think it generally works way better than Emacs + Bash + GCC + etc.)
I'm still trying to figure out what good it would do. Powershell, like its antecedents (WMI, Vbscript, etc.) is accessing exposed elements of the Windows API and various APIs for other systems like Active Directory and Exchange. *nix has never had those particular problems, because it's always stuck to a minimalistic approach.
I'm still waiting for someone to point out what advantage a powershell-like shell would do in a *nix system.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Worse than that: They're copying OS/2, which they helped write. (OS/2 could boot to a non-GUI text console for servers and ATMs.)
Heck, they're copying one of their own SAFE MODE boots.
Or maybe, They're copying DOS.
FUD
Tell Ballmer I said hi!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
... by turning a PC into an oversized, user-unfriendly smart phone.
Depends on the library. Most libraries I use are open source, reading documentation is reading code and comments. It's really fast to navigate code for about 550 languages that my tools are aware of (VIM with ctags, cscope, clang etc). But if I don't have the source, then reading documentation can also be done quite fast inside the shell, together with editor. I never understood people who hit . or -> in their IDE and then scroll through the list and choose what method they think they want to call. How are you ever going to learn like that. I'm not saying that good tools like VIM/emacs don't have the ability to complete code, by syntax (parse trees for some languages) or by textual analysis on other cases, but this is TYPING aid, not code writing aid.
If you can't open a notepad and write a simple program (let's say a dialog with a panel, a few text boxes and buttons) without an IDE in a language of your choice, then how good a programmer are you?
Get rid of mental clutches and start using your brain is my advice. You'd be surprised how much you can learn if your tool doesn't stifle you.
But this is just the first step. Learning more advanced things, how to search effectively, bend and transform code or text in general to your will, create mini reports of things you are interested in (some of the most basic things like class outline, or call hierarchy are dedicated views in most IDEs, but there are other things you might be interested in that are not) and are all learning aids. And the best thing is this knowledge and tools are applicable and transferable to any kind of programming task, whereas most IDE users would not even consider learning or programming a language their IDE does not support.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
No I'm not a Microsoft employee.
Yes, you are. If you are not Microsoft employee, you work for some astroturfer-for-hire outfit that works for Microsoft.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
50% is a made up number.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems
You won't find 50% here for MS, except the revenue counting channel, which doesn't count OS' properly that you don't have to buy.
The same is true of any set of tools. Someone who takes the time to learn their IDE of choice will be more productive in it than in other environments. Your tools of choice consist of UNIX shell and the command line. This doesn't mean they're better tools, just that they're better tools for you, because you've learned to be productive in them.
Software development is mostly thinking with a bit of typing thrown in. Tools can help productivity if you're familiar with them, but ultimately what interface a tool uses (ie. CLI vs GUI) is irrelevant. What's relevant in a tool is functionality. What's relevant in a developer is skill and knowledge of their chosen tools.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
> how do you connect to a remote PC with bash and run your commands there? Oh, you can't. With PowerShell you can easily do that.
man ssh
specifically the part about "if command is specified, it is executed on the remote host instead of a login shell".
Your move, chief.
Coz if they did MS would sue, sue and sue again.
Pure FUD. The PowerShell specification was released under the Community Promise specifically so it could be implemented on other platforms.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
Their claims of performance enhancements seem promising and I think the Live Storage Migration feature could really come in handy.
Of course I won't jump on board right away, but it's definitely something I'll try to get a hold of to set up in a test environment.
Your chances of already knowing bourne shell, which has been around for many years are much higher than knowing powershell which is a lot newer, and not an extension of anything existing.
You have chmod for traditional permissions, and setfacl/getfacl for advanced permissions (ACLs), you can use these same commands/functions for files, configuration (which are also files) and device drivers (which have files in /dev).
On windows you only have advanced permissions, and no simple option. You then have a set of functions for filesystem permissions, a different set for registry permissions and another set for driver permissions.
If you don't think this is a problem, take a look at digit-labs.org where there are privilege escalation exploits for a number of vulnerabilities in windows drivers where the vulnerable function never needs to be called by an unprivileged user anyway.
If unix permissions don't provide what you need, then chances are your needs are quite advanced and you are in a tiny niche, in which case you can learn how to use ACLs because modern unixes have these too. For the other 99% of users you can use a simple system instead of being forced to learn a complex one.
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IDEs are great if you are working with code generators, stubs, templates, and general-purpose APIs. But please don't pretend that that kind of work is "serious programming". They're called code monkeys for a reason.
Power shell can be good but..
I used PS scripts to build an 8 node cluster on 2008R2 Datacenter core for a HyperV project. It was interesting and the MS stuff was not hard to figure out and replicate. The problem was getting the other required vendor software and drivers properly installed and configured on the servers. We have HP servers connected to EMC SANs. The HP NIC teaming tools, Navisphere, Powerpath, our monitoring software etc.. was NOT as easy to get on there and configure without a GUI. Some just flat out had problems with no easy workaround. Vendors were not as "core server" aware as they should be. I've done a few more similar setups since and vendor support is getting better but don't be surprised if a few issues pop up with no immediate fix. Hopefully they are not show stoppers. On a side note, we have built more similar 8 node HyperV clusters and we did not use server core. In my opinion, this is the best of both worlds, you can still use your PS scripts for automation for the bulk of the setup and then use the GUI for the problem 3rd party support. Our HyperV clusters are not pushed to the limit so we don't notice any performance difference between core and the full GUI install.
And I still can't quite figure out how exactly VMWare is a threat to MS
They're doing something in the computer field and it's popular and not Microsoft. Look at the Zune - why did Microsoft need to be in the music player business? Only because Apple was and succeeding and they were jealous. How much time and energy did they waste on that?
Granted, they seem to be less viscous without Gates around to throw fits about stuff like this.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Your argument is literally "Powershell sucks compared to bash because it's more than I need."
Linux shells still pass data as text, when passing objects would make so much more sense and give a lot more options
Sorry, but no, passing data as objects sucks.
Text is the one and only universal interface. Passing data as objects limits you to one system. If you have powershell objects you need a powershell environment to use them.
When I want to get data from a website into my database text is the only format that both sides understand. Putting it into more general terms, when I want to get data from X to put it into Y text is the only format that both sides understand.
I can scan and OCR text from old books and newspapers. I can print text. I can edit text in any machine from a PDP-11 to a smart phone. When I'm limited to a slow and/or high latency connection text is the only format that works. I can use vi to edit a data file in a remote Unix system using a 300 bps modem if I need to. I can speak text on a phone for someone else to type it at the other end.
When I'm managing an important system that *must* keep running under emergency situations only text will do.
Object oriented system administration is bullshit.
You're lucky -- this is the first time in two weeks I don't have mod points. Are you Ballmer's grandson or something? Do you even know what an "object" is? MS's poo-pooing of text is one of the worst things about MS and one reason so many of us stay away. Text is human-readable, binary is not. If you're passing "objects" as text and your code goes kerflooey you can examine what was passed and easily figure out what went wrong. Not so with binary blobs. Mind explaining why you think passing binary makes more sense and gives more options?
Have you ever used a single program that didn't come from Redmond? Your posts all make it sound like MS is the best thing since sliced bread, when most of us are fond of saying "the day MS makes a product that doesn't suck is the day they start making vaccuum cleaners" (Well, personally I think Excel is the best spreadsheet and MS mice weren't too bad, and I'd take an Xbox over a Sony any day).
BTW, freeAVG just told me to reboot (I haven't got Linux on this box yet). Ironically, I don't mind rebooting Linux because it comes back exactly like I left it, but I never have to reboot. If I reboot Windows I have to restart every open program, yet I have to reboot every few days because something needed updating. Tell your dad to fix this, OK? And tell him to get rid of that God damned registry!
MS is easy to use if you don't know what you're doing. Those of us who have been computing for decades find MS products maddeningly annoying -- the "Redmond way or no way" syndrome.
I don't like Gnome, but IMO KDE is a far superior interface than Windows.
Now I have to brush my teeth after biting that shilly troll. Ugh!
Free Martian Whores!
Get rid of mental clutches and start using your brain is my advice.
Because memorizing API's is what makes a good programmer? Spare me.
Because Mac's are not built with the Administrators in mind, nor the business market. Microsoft has more viruses, that could be because of Mac's obscurity or it could be because Microsoft is easily to write viruses for we may never know nor will I debate you on that. But Mac's have more security holes in them than Windows. I am not talking about viruses, I am talking holes and exploits which is what Pwn2Own is all about and why Mac's lose every year. Also Windows are easier to manage and deploy because Microsoft developed the tools for Windows such as WDS. Mac's are good on the personal user level, but not on the enterprise level. Plus the price would be tool high for any company to want to touch especially when you can just run little thin clients for Windows if the user is not doing anything that needs heavy processing power.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
I really doubt you're using the best tools for your jobs. You didn't even know that you can connect into UNIX machines remotely. You have no credibility in a discussion about servers or networking.
which is totally what she said
But it assumes the command name is sufficient to understand what it operates on.
Probably 70% as useful as "man -k" ever was.
But I strongly feel that if the Linux folks would take a step back and acknowledge that it's no longer 1970, they'd see that have programs set up to pass objects around instead of text can be hugely beneficial.
The advantage here being...? It sounds like a cool feature, but what would I be doing where I would actually want to have object oriented programming in my shell?
Ok, how about:
Boss comes to you and says something like:
"Can you tell me what version of windows is running on all of our machines, and what service pack they are on?"
"...and can I have that as a CSV?"
You: .\report.csv
gc machines.txt | % { gwmi win32_operatingsystem -computer $_ } | select __SERVER,Name,OSArchitecture,ServicePackMajorVersion,ServicePackMinorVersion | export-csv
Boss: Actually, can I have that in html? I need to put that up in a web site
You: OK..here you go
gc machines.txt | % { gwmi win32_operatingsystem -computer $_ } | select __SERVER,Name,OSArchitecture,ServicePackMajorVersion,ServicePackMinorVersion | convertto-html > report.html
I find that you can do things in PS that are a pain in bash (e.g. get a list of processes started within the last hour)
You really need to read this essay about filenames, as well as these two bits about parsing the outputs of ls and ps. In short: correct and secure work with filenames is made difficult by certain features of shells and their default configuration, and the output format of common tools (including ls) makes their output literally impossible to parse in a correct and secure manner. Parsing the output of ps is a very bad idea for similar reasons. It's fine if you're just doing one-liners for simple, everyday interactive work in the shell, but if you write shell scripts and don't understand these issues, you've likely been writing buggy, incorrect, insecure and exploitable code.
I've personally never used PowerShell. My solution to these difficulties has always been to learn to do things properly regardless of the difficulty. While I don't know enough about it to be convinced that it would be a proper solution, I can imagine many ways in which the idea of passing objects instead of text may make things easier. If you can't see why, you need to learn a lot more about shells and their issues. I'm not trying to be patronizing here or anything; it's just that shell scripting is a lot more complex than people typically realize, and such misconceptions cause security holes.
Every time there's a new article about Windows/Microsoft anything, ever, no matter what the subject 90% of the posts try and just poo-poo it. In the meantime, the real world will (normally) pick the right tool for the job and ignore the petty politics & gripes that gets in the way of real discussion which seems to be common-place here.
IMHO Windows does try to "be" linux as Linux is so flexible as to run on anything from $20 routers to incredably scalable multi-CPU servers. There is some overlap of course, by largely the two technologies service different needs IMO.
So calm down kids, we can all be friends, see? Some of us like MS toys, some of us prefer others. Let's try and not flame-war each other ok?
throw new NoSignatureException();
Its not very windows like lately that to accomplish typical normal useful system administration on a windows machine requires copy and pasting arcane powershell gibberish from KB articles.
Not needing to do text parsing on the results of commands?
I find PowerShell's use of an actual object model as opposed to text streams to be quite convenient.