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Microsoft Releases Windows Server 2012
Barence writes "Microsoft has released Windows Server 2012, letting businesses test it for 90 days on the Azure cloud platform for free. There are two versions of the main edition of Windows Server 2012: one with virtualization support and one without. The former, the Data Center version, costs $4,809, while the Standard edition will cost $882. There's also an Essentials version, which replaces Small Business Server, for $501 per server, and Windows Server 2012 Foundation, which will only be available pre-installed on hardware."
Ars has a detailed look at the new edition.
$4k to enable visualization support (that the code already is there for?)
Yet MS wonders why they have such a comparatively tiny market share of the server market...
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
... it will need Metro-style management tools!
.sig: No such file or directory
This makes me sad... Microsoft needs to do more to enable everyone to use their software. Not everyone wants to pay a ridiculous amount of money just for one or two features. Even the @1k price tag is expensive for a server in my book.
This is really expensive for an OS, and it doesn't even come with awesome looking hardware.
> The former, the Data Center version, costs $4,809, while the Standard edition will cost $882.
Virtualization and incresed processor count is worth nearly $4,000?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FopyRHHlt3M
--
BMO
Functionally, Standard and Datacenter are the same. Even things like clustering, which used to be the sole preserve of the higher-end Windows Server SKUs, are found in Standard. The only difference is the number of Windows Server virtual machines supported per license.
So again: The only difference between the Standard and Datacenter is the licensing. Same software, two licenses.
Obsoletes some MCS* certificates perhaps.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Wait...Linux comes with support as well...you just have to pay for it.
3 days of grubbing around in the registry and it still doesn't work.
On the linux servers, The same task was done with 3 iptables lines.
including the "service iptables save" .
I was underwhelmed.
Run the 99% of commercial apps that are coded agaist the win32 api in a supported manner? Have vm management tools that don't suck horribly? I could go on but I'd just be further feeding the troll.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Ok, so your point is that you can run more commercial apps and that VM management isn't horrible. I have no experience with VM management under Linux nor Windows so I can't tell.
Is there anything else these $5k will bring over a Linux?
I'm genuinely asking as I'm not all that into Windows.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Does Mountain Lion Server include complete Active Directory, DNS, RADIUS, Terminal Server, Certificate Authority, Web Server and enterprise virtualization functionality?
At $40 I guess not.
1) You are unable to grow a neckbeard.
2) You've had sex without having to pay for it.
So bad and yet still miles better than any Linux based operating system or OS X.
That'll be why the world runs on Windows servers and no-one would think of putting any critical service on Linux.
Wait...Linux comes with support as well...you just have to pay for it.
http://www.debian.org/consultants/
$5K would keep me in doritos and cheetos for awhile.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
there will be a disaster in 2012
"Lame" - Galaxar
We run a heterogeneous shop split about 50/50 between Linux (Debian) and Windows (2003/2008). Windows excels at certain things, Active DIrectory, and running .net apps delivered to us by various contractors. Our Linux systems run mission critical services as well as file-servers, and virtualization via VMWare's ESXi products (horribly overpriced but it's the situation that I inherited). I poke fun at the Windows guys fairly often and I get joked at in return, but the reality is that we all realize that it's about the right tool for the job. I don't have a single metal Windows install at home and I don't feel at all left out of the commercial loop, but like everything in life your own mileage will vary.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Does Datacenter come with an unlimited number of CALs to go with the server licences? Or, are those separate?
In this case however, you truly get what you pay for. Lion Server is nothing in comparison to Windows Server, though it might be enough for many people.
(posting anonymous for obvious reasons)
It only took you three days. We were dealing with a screwy Microsoft Lync mobility issues whereby the iOS client just wouldn't work (but every other client under the sun worked). The only odd-ball thing about our setup was one of the four servers (at least four are required for any Lync deployment) was a Linux box acting as a reverse proxy. We opened up a ticket with Microsoft on April 30, 2012. The time spent with them since is a waste of time:
* We repeatedly requested the actual HTTP request/response data from the iphone's perspective, annotated with notes on how it differs from what the iphone expected. Every time we requested it, they provided us with the client's general iphone debug log (which was useless to us), even though we explained that it doesn't fulfill our request.
* We asked for details on what is expected of the Lync reverse proxy. They provided us with instructions on how to set up TMG. We replied that the provided information did not fulfill the request. Their response was a shrug and another link to the same instructions.
* We asked if there was anything specific to the iOS client that required ISA or TMG. They demurred on it, refused to research it, refused to acknowledge the bug for *four* months. I'm not exaggerating. It was August 31 when we inferred from the continued back and forth that the only way Microsoft can hope to grasp the problem is to make the reverse proxy an ISA server.
From this, I learned that Microsoft support really isn't much better than doing it yourself. They have no inside tricks, they have no way of getting a guru to weigh in on anything, and they hope that by sending you the same wrong information over and over they won't have to acknowledge faults in the product.
For my part, calling Microsoft support isn't an option any longer. It is a waste of time and money that could be better spent solving the problem myself.
It's probably time to seriously consider moving from 2003 to 2007.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
So basically, Windows is the right tool for things that only run on Windows ... otherwise, use Linux.
That has got to be one of the better examples of properly applied sarcasm I've see here in a while.
Good play...
I've no idea what "AD" exactly is, but the rest is. Apple also opensources much of their server software.
Sure, a Mac Pro or a Mac mini + external Thunderbolt RAID may serve fine as a pedestal server. But I was under the impression that only Windows, Linux, and the like ran on rackmount hardware now that Apple has discontinued Xserve. Or has it already become common practice to put pairs of Mac mini computers into 19 inch racks?
where are the dual PSU's and hotswap HDD's?
the mini does not even have a easy to get to HDD (next to all other desktops) in it.
It's POSIX-complaint? :|
That'll be why the world runs on Windows servers and no-one would think of putting any critical service on Linux.
The Oracle world (big business, government) is definitely running on Linux instead of Windows. With the decline of Unix running on "big iron", with the exception of IBM's RS/6000 and AIX being the last holdout, everyone is moving their enterprise, mission critical apps to Linux. Especially with Oracle themselves releasing a tweaked version of RHEL, Linux is an "officially supported" platform that even satisfies the corporate PHBs and bean counters.
I make a pretty good living porting Oracle enterprise databases and apps to Linux. Just a couple weeks ago, we ported a Windows-based Oracle WebLogic middleware server from Windows to OEL Linux running on the very same piece of hardware, and got a tenfold boost in performance. With results like that, business loves Linux now.
Granted, only server-side things on Linux are welcome in the business world. The desktop will sadly *never* be adopted in any significant numbers in any enterprise. All because Windows and Active Directory rule that market segment.
Keep the once trapped client in the environment where it belongs, why?
So basically, Windows is the right tool for things that only run on Windows ... otherwise, use Linux.
That sounds about right to me.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Active Directory is worth the price of Windows Server alone, and I say that as a Linux sysadmin who's implemented an OpenLDAP infrastructure (everything from AuthZ/AuthN to Puppet ENC backend to a single point of truth for Nagios). AD is miles away from anything any Open Source or Apple product has ever implemented.
For server functionality pure bullshit. I have a decade's experience running Windows and *nix servers, often in the same networks and while Windows has AD and GPOs to its benefit, in other respects it is horribly backwards and painful to use. Just backing up the system config in Windows is appallingly difficult compared to *nix.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Look like they may be trying to be a really compelling alternative to VMWare in the medium to large business space here. Pay 5000 per two sockets to use Server 2012 core as host OS for VMs, pay an extra 4000 per two sockets for the few System Center 2012 Datacenter boxes you need, evaluate you migration costs and savings from not having to have vSphere licenses.
Could be cost effective for some shops. Especially that it's pretty easy to figure out the costs with this new model compared to VMWare model.
Which, up until Windows 7/Windows 2008 R2, was more of a toy than a true enterprise solution.
In comparison, it's quite a bit more difficult. But yes, there are complex tools available to handle all the nasty stuff behind the curtain.
Active Directory - effectively yes, DNS - yes, RADIUS - yes, Terminal Server - yes, Certificate Authority - yes, Web Server - yes, enterprise virtualization functionality - neither does server 2012 unless you cough up an extra 4K
Haha.
On a serious note, though, you actually can run POSIX apps on Server 2012. NT has, since its inception, included support for POSIX APIs and filesystem behavior. These days it's called SUA (Subsystem for UNIX Applications) and a smallish but fully functional operating environment for it, called Interix, is available for free. The installer will also let you enable various tweaks such as SetUID/SetGID behavior and filesystem case sensitivity, things you can't get with Cygwin or the like. It's implemented as an NT subsystem, same as Win32, so the speed is basically native as well. Interix comes with a working build toolchain, plus you can get a package manager for a repository of precompiled software and updates from http://suacommunity.com./
I'm not sure I'd advocate adopting it at this point if you haven't already - MS has been making moves toward discontinuing support for some years now, and it appears to no longer be in any of the client editions but Enterprise - but it exists, and it works. MS themselves used it to host Hotmail on Apache before they ported it to run on IIS. I use it (on client) both for various utilities that I prefer the POSIX versions of (git and ssh and such, plus sometimes there is no Win32 version) and for bash (my primary shell).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
So what exactly does it do that similarly equipped Linux machines/vps' can't do that justify the cost?
* New resilient file system ReFS (think BtrFS when completed)
* Storage Spaces (think ZFS storage pools)
* SMB 3.0 - higher performance network transfer, transparent failover, SMB scaleout (multiple servers serve same shares and aggregates bandwidth), SMB Direct (efficient remote direct memory access), SMB Multichannel, Volume Shadow Service (VSS) for SMB file shares, SMB encryption, SMB Directory Leasing (negotiates and updates local caches of metadata over slow networks)
* Dynamic access control (claims and policy based access control). Think SELinux, grsecurity. Access control based on what application the user is running (sandboxing), from what type of device the user is accessing the resource, on other user attributes than security groups (e.g. who is the manager, what department does the user belong to etc), access control based on attributes of the file (e.g. classification, select words of a Word document)
* RemoteFX improvements, e.g. virtualized GPUs (can use local or remote shared GPUs during RDP sessions), remote low-latency multitouch.
* Direct Access over IPv4. Think hassle-free VPN.
* Hyper-V 3: ethernet cable live migration (neat trick) lets you migrate VMs off one server onto another server over the network without the servers sharing anything. Many Hyper-V manageability improvements. Crazy scalability, e.g. a 63-node Hyper-V cluster runs 4000 concurrent VMs simultaneously. Hyper-V replica.
* Server manager: Yes, a Metro (oops - "Modern") style management app for multiple servers. Integrates with response files and powershell workflow scripts to manage multiple computers (servers/workstations) at once - e.g. install new software, perform configure actions.
* PowerShell 3 with new features such as resilient remote connections (you can detach from a remote session and pick it up later/from another device), workflow scripts which can perform actions with suspend/restart/repeat semantics. No, not just "suspend process" - but actually persisting the state of a script to be continued later, e.g. after a computer restart (or from another machine).
* Thousands of new PowerShell cmdlets (many/most automatically derived from WMI providers) to control virtually anything on local or remote computers.
* Block sized data de-duplication
These are features I could find by googling. I'm sure there are more. Obviously not all of them will appeal to Linux enthusiasts. But still...
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
Windows excels at certain things, Active DIrectory, and running .net apps...
Newsflash: can opener right tool for the job of opening cans, clip at 11.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
(Although it should be noted article is misleading as well) Server 2012 Standard as well as Datacenter fully supports virtualization through Hyper-V. However, Standard edition is only licensed for running only two instances of _itself_ (actually more generous than the 1 physical, 1 virtual of current 2008 R2 STD licensing). Datacenter supports unlimited licenses. I am sorry, but I can only link directly to the PDF: http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/1/6/C1667DE0-EAC8-4DE7-BC47-E27DAE5B38D6/WS%202012%20Data%20Sheet_All%20Up%20Product%20Overview.pdf
Yet MS wonders why they have such a comparatively tiny market share of the server market...
According to this arstechnica article (2011), Microsoft had a 25% webserver market share (IIS) as of 2010, and 15% as of 2011. For standard servers, they accounted for 71% of all quarterly server shipments (original source, IDC). According to a survey in 2010 (the only one I could find on smtp market share, and was linked in Wikipedia), Exchange is the third most popular SMTP server (17%-- behind exim @ 34% and postfix @ 21%, and just ahead of sendmail).
You can call that many things, but "comparitively tiny" it isnt. Microsoft server is remarkably popular in SMB situations, and even in larger companies, and trying to write it off as irrelevant or whatever your angle was is silly.
Also silly is the comment about "code already there"-- EVERYONE does this, from RedHat to VMWare to Adobe any other company that sells multiple tiers of its software product.
Wait, every single other client works, IOS doesnt, and your analysis is "Must be Microsoft's fault"? And you asked MS support for IOS details, and then wondered why they gave you the cold shoulder?
Seems to me youre better off bringing apple support in on this, or focusing on the "what is IOS doing wacky" rather than "what is IIS doing wacky".
Be able to integrate in a supported manner with 95% of business workstations out there? Be able to create an incredibly easy to manage LDAP system that integrates seamlessly with Exchange? Provides Exchange?
These arent exactly obscure features you know.
With 2008, the built-in backup facility no longer writes to tapes, so it essentially disappeared. Yes, tapes are still used a lot in the enterprise. But then, in the enterprise, you run an expensive 3rd party tape backup software... which all the big name brands support backing up the Windows system and its configs just fine and easy.
I find backing up the registry in a fashion that allows me to easily restore configurations a real pain. NTBackup and it's descendants are hardly backup wonders. Configuration via text file is infinitely easier to deal with than binary hives.
I don't even bother restoring failed domain controllers any more. I have other DCs replicating AD data so I just build a new server, promote it to a DC and let replication do the heavy lifting. Hrlluva lot easier than what passes for bare metal recovery in the Windows world.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The thing with *nix, or at least any version I've worked with, the functionality is already there. Configurations are almost always in human-readable text files, and I have a toolset that has been around in one form or another for decades to work with those files. I can easily make backups of daemon configurations, and indeed have been able to restore a server with the contents of /etc and the data files.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That's the Linux mentality alright... why use the right tool for the job when you can futz around for too long and end up with hand blood in the creamed corn.
For server functionality pure bullshit. I have a decade's experience running Windows and *nix servers, often in the same networks and while Windows has AD and GPOs to its benefit, in other respects it is horribly backwards and painful to use. Just backing up the system config in Windows is appallingly difficult compared to *nix.
So, how does Linux handle online backups of running server workloads? Does Linux have a way to signal to running services (like RDBMSs, hypervisors, file servers) that a backup is about to happen, negotiate which files are to be included in the backup and then in a fragment of a second work with the running service to synchronize disk content so that the backup will be consistent?
A running database server will almost invariably hold some state in memory. If the power is lost it will be able to rebuild from the disk state, but that can be a time consuming task. If the backup system is simplistic it will just back up the disk state of any file. Upon restoring it will appear as if the power was lost and the roll-forward log will have to be played.
A more advanced backup system will integrate with the services to ensure that for a very brief time (just enough to take a snapshot) the disk state is consistent and thus will not require a rebuild/roll forward if it is ever restored.
Windows comes with Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and a file system which supports block level snapshots. VSS works with VSS aware applications (VSS writers) such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database Server, Exchange Server, Active Directory, NTFS and Hyper-V server. When a service is a VSS writer it participates in VSS coordination/synchronization to create consistent disk state.
It even works through Hyper-V: When you back up the Hyper-V host, Hyper-V itself is a VSS writer which recursively invokes the VSS running inside guest OSes (if Windows) to ensure that any service inside the Hyper-V guest OS is also disk consistent exactly when a snapshot of the virtual hard disk image is created.
To my knowledge, Linux doesn't have anything like VSS. Which means that each application/service must be handled separately. Typically you will stop the service during the backup. Some services such as PostgreSQL can recover from a non-consistent disk image; others can not. Individual applications may have commands/services which allow admins to "dump" state to a file to be backed up separately. All in all reliably backing up a running Linux server is more complicated compared to backing up a running Windows server with VSS aware services.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
Welcome to the world of "Support From Companies Much Larger Than Yours". I've experienced that from many of the big, big corps out there.
But from the little companies that actually need your business? Typically the support is outstanding. Then again, maybe it just seems that way in comparison to the shit I'm used to.
That's utter nonsense. Windows Server Backup is about a billion times better then NTBackup. Pure image based backup, allowing multiple versions of files to be stored, Exchange aware, SQL aware and allowing individual files to be restored, easily. I would use WSBU over NTBackup any day of the week (and do). It works every time - and offers damn near instant bare metal recovery of corrupted servers. NTBackup, on the other hand, required you to rebuild from scratch and then manually restore files, apps, etc, painfully.
Just because you never learned how to use a tool doesn't make it bad. It is trivial to configure WSBU to backup individual components, such as system state, volumes or yes, even individual folders. Again - *you* not knowing how to do something doesn't make it impossible.
And for the obligatory Slashdot 2012: no, I am not paid or affiliated in anyway with Microsoft. Sometimes people like the changes they make because they actually tried them and found them better.
Dunno - I find it infinitely easier to just restore the VM from snapshot, and failing that, restore from the SAN snapshot, and failing all that, restore that VM straight off of tape (the last bit may be a hair outdated, but it still works).
The days of restoring a server on bare metal ended a long, long time ago for me. Kinda glad to see the $#@%(*! concept dying off.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Personally with all of the Enterprise level support I've dealt with (e.g. IBM, EMC, HP, Dell, Oracle, CA, etc.) Microsoft is among the best.
(I'm talking Enterprise support, as in paying 7 figures/yr for licensing and support. Not calling an 800 number to India for someone to tell you to reboot your computer as you would get from a el-cheapo Wal-Mart laptop.)
Don't get me started on Oracle. Most of the time the problem I'm calling about is less painful than dealing with Oracle support.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Well, if it's like the OS X client, then it's written by Microsoft. I have an issue with MS Lync client on OS X where all video is being handled on the CPU instead of GPU. And Lync is the only program I have that issue with. Hmm...
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
True, but I can't recall the last time I ever had to call RedHat for anything. At all. Closest I ever came was when a DBA wanted some custom tweaks in RHEL, and some kind soul put the best ones to dig into (with full explanations) on Oracle's KB site (yeah, I know... bet the devil got hypothermia that day too).
Microsoft OTOH, especially for bugs that aren't (yet?) in the KB? hoo-boy.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Yup, running Windows on bare metal is a total pain in the arse. Windows is only viable and supportable as a VM.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I couldn't agree more. I've never experienced support like we get from MS. Just recently we had a 12GB .dmp file analyzed and in less than 36 hours they were able to tell us which shitty 3rd party driver was causing our boxes to BSOD. The vendor that shipped this driver (mentioned in the parent above) is so far, completely useless.
So in other words, by your own description, things that you can already get in linux.
Did you miss the "when completed" part? Or are you that idiot admin who runs btrfs on production servers?
Yep, and regedit is as intuitive as vi.
It's deprecated, the reasoning afaik is that syswow64 is optional in core so developers should not be designing new apps that rely on it.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
That ars technical article makes the same mistake so many others do. It confuses hostnames with servers. It assumes a 1:1 ratio of servers to host names, and that is nowhere near the case. It also confuses "apache" and "iis" with windows and non-windows. There are lots of apache servers running on Windows out there (mostly because they have apps that require a java application server like tomcat and apache is typically used on the front end of tomcat, although IIS can be used as well).
The fact is, Windows web servers tend to have fewer domain names per server than Apache because Windows is used more commonly in enterprise environments while Apache is used more commonly in web hosting environments.
What that all boils down to is that any technical "journalist" who quotes Netcraft's host survey as evidence of server installation numbers is a moron.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Sorry, but at least two of your points are factually incorrect.
* ReFS is lacking a few notable features, including file compression / encryption, sparse files, hard links, extended attributes, disk quotas, and others[1]. You could say that the only notable improvements over NTFS that it has would be much improved resiliency and higher capacity limits. You can't compare this to BrtFS. At all. The two aren't even in the same ballpark. ReFS is there to store millions of large files and managed bad blocks in a smart way without taking the volume offline. It supports little else.
* Dynamic access control can't even be compared to SELinux. SELinux can restrict a program to running from a certain location, it can restrict which ports in the TCP/IP stack it can/can't open, it can restrict which hosts a specific process can talk to, and yes, it can alter the fundamental view of the file system hierarchy based upon access levels granted. Dynamic access control is really just more complexity in the form of an ACL on top of the already present windows file system ACLs, and it impacts nothing outside of files[2]. Now, you can use claims (which dynamic access control is built upon, at least partially) to control other aspects of your environment, but that isn't "dynamic access control" as far as MS is concerned. Further, it really is another layer of complexity -- if your claims server (which is a web server(!)) goes down, you're losing access to stuff (but if you're a decent sized MS shop, this will likely not be an issue, as you're already maintaining decent uptime on your DCs). Then the file system level ACL comes into play again. It's going to be crazy stupid hard to diagnose a claims access issue in a large production environment, no matter what MS has done towards fixing these issues. Somewhat amusingly, dynamic access control isn't supported on ReFS at all [2].
Now normally I'd just trust you that you googled around to find this stuff, but you've got some powershell in your signature, which leads me to believe that you've done a bit more checking than the "stereotypical slashdot linux sysadmin" and this only goes towards scaring me a bit.
[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/01/16/building-the-next-generation-file-system-for-windows-refs.aspx
[2] http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831717.aspx
So in other words, by your own description, things that you can already get in linux.
Did you miss the "when completed" part? Or are you that idiot admin who runs btrfs on production servers?
To be fair, I don't think ReFS will be on par - feature wise - with a completed BtrFS. ReFS focuses on the resiliency part. IIRC ReFS does not even implement all of NTFS's features.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
So in other words, by your own description, things that you can already get in linux.
BtrFS has not been completed yet. ReFS is shipping. ReFS will not have all the features of the completed BtrFS, but for now ReFS offers features not available in any shipping Linux.
I don't think ZFS is production quality on Linux yet either. Storage Spaces under Windows is nor shipping.
Dynamic Access Control actually ups the ante for SELinux, grsecurity apparmor etc. While it still protects access to resources it does so based on potentially very fine grained policies which can express rules based on a very wide range of properties. And it brings claims based security all the way into the primary access control of an OS. Linux does not sport claims based security.
Ok, things linux doesn't have yet, but are on the way.
Sure. I am not aware of any effort to bring something like VSS to Linux, though. Windows now extends VSS to remote file systems (shares), which means that clients can ensure consistency even if an application/service stores files remotely (e.g. a SQL Server keeping it's data files on a remote server).
I really don't understand what this is. An automagic VPN? Doesn't sound all that special. NetworkManager has been able to do system-wide VPN connections for a while now.
Yes, an automagic always-on, bi-directional VPN on steroids. No calling, no VPN client installations. Just take the laptop outside the perimeter and it is still connected, still secured, still managed.
So the equivalent of what you can already do on linux with a combination of SSH, Puppet/Chef, and Screen. Admittedly an improvement for Windows, but this has always been a strength with linux.
All in all a meh, in my opinion. If you really have a need for the high-end features, perhaps Microsoft is offering at a competitive price. But otherwise doesn't seem to offer much that you can't already get with a linux, bsd, or solaris distribution.
Uhm, not quite. But unless you experience the new Server Manager you are not going to understand. It has this "declarative" feeling - comparable to controlling your network with declarative network policies as opposed to relying on scripts running on each node to set thing up.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
Seems to me the issue you mentioned would skew it in favor of apache (it would over-estimate the number of apache installs), but honestly I disagree-- I think its reasonable to look at "number of webdomain instances" rather than fussing about the number of underlying OSes, which have become largely irrelevant in these days of "virtualize everything".
Last time I looked at it was when Server 2008 was released. This isnt an issue of "didnt take the time to learn it"-- at that time, the official stance as given on the official Exchange team blog was "it was crippled it so that noone would make the mistake of using it for business". To reiterate-- this was the OFFICIAL exchange blog, ie microsoft employees.
Its entirely possible that in the time since they have corrected the issues I mentioned, or brought it back as something new-- but they definately DID cripple the built in backup on the release of 2008. Im not sure how possible it would be to find that article as it was a blog entry and it was 5 or so years ago, but Ill give it a shot and post it here if I do manage to find it.
I found it:
Windows server backup not exchange aware
We have decided to develop and release a VSS-based plug-in for Windows Server Backup that will enable you to properly backup and restore Exchange 2007 with a built-in Windows 2008 backup application.
While you will be able to backup and restore Exchange 2007 on Windows 2008, you should not expect feature parity with the Windows 2003 NTBackup experience.
The removal of NTBackup / its (known) inferior successor:
(Reasons listed there roughly boil down to, 1) most people get third party software; 2) ntbackup was never meant to be an enterprise solution; 3) we think optical media is the future and that tape sucks)
There are lots and lots of other posts on this. More to the point, the features you mention are brand new as of R2-- they were not there in the original release:
Windows Server Backup in Windows Server 2008 R2 includes the following improvements:
More flexibility in what you can back up. Windows Server Backup enables you to back up selected files instead of full volumes. You can also exclude files based on file type and path.
That is, you simply couldnt do this prior to R2, which, along with no tape and no exchange support, made it utterly fall off of my (and many others') radars as utterly irrelevant. Basically all of the cool features you mention simply werent there in the initial release-- it was a straight dumb "image the whole box or nothing at all" program, except it wouldnt even work if you had stuff like Exchange or HyperV and no VSS plugin.
Not only that, but even if I had noticed that release-- which TBQH i did not-- NTBackup was already such a disaster that I would be hesitant even now to return to something like WSB.
It sounds like your experience is mostly with Win Server R2 and above, which is fine; if thats true, just keep in mind that there are a lot of us with horror stories of NTBackup, and that WinServer2008 was not always as polished as it is now.
enterprise virtualization functionality - neither does server 2012 unless you cough up an extra 4K
Wrong. Hyper-V is available in 3 packages:
- Free with little management
- Windows 2012 Standard (with a license for two VMs included)
- Windows 2012 Datacenter (which is Standard with a different license) which include unlimited virtualization rights.
Also, what hardware does Mountain Lion server support? Oh wait, since Apple retired Xserver, it is not supported on server class hardware... and to quote Apple: "OS X Server is perfect for a studio, business, hobbyist, or school. It’s so easy to set up, who needs an IT department?". Not really targeted at the enterprise, is it?
When trying to assess the market share of an OS in a given situation (such as web hosting), "fussing about the number of underlying OSes" is kind of the point, is it not?
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
I see nothing in that list which doesn't exist in the *nix world one way or the other...
So if I run PostgreSQL on Windows I can be sure VSS executes psql -c "select pg_start_backup(‘hourly’,true);" before creating the snapshot?
My FreeBSD PostgreSQL backup looks like this and runs hourly.
#!/bin/sh
prev=`date -v-1H '+%Y-%m-%d_%H'`
now=`date '+%Y-%m-%d_%H'`
psql -c "select pg_start_backup(‘hourly’,true);"
zfs snapshot tank/pgsql@$now
psql -c "select pg_stop_backup();"
zfs send -R -i tank/pgsql@$prev tank/pgsql@$now | ssh backup@hpbackup zfs receive -Fdu tank/backup/pgsql
You can do the similar thing with Linux as BTRFS now support send and receive.
All in all a meh, in my opinion. If you really have a need for the high-end features, perhaps Microsoft is offering at a competitive price. But otherwise doesn't seem to offer much that you can't already get with a linux, bsd, or solaris distribution.
I don't think I'll ever set up a Windows server, but it strikes me that this is probably good news for all those that run Windows servers. From the bullet points, it seems like impressive improvements.
Pay-for-it Microsoft support is often pretty useless.
A while back in the pre-Vista days, we had to develop a replacement GINA for a retail till system. The GINA is the thing that handles logging in, locking the screen, authentication etc. and is loaded by winlogon.exe. There was a document available from Microsoft on how to write GINA DLLs, but it wasn't very detailed, and we needed to do much more complex things. The Microsoft document only really covered writing a GINA DLL that hooked onto the Microsoft one, not writing a completely new one. Writing a new GINA meant you had to do everything to get the user set up on logging in rather than relying on the MS one to do it for you.
There were still a few odd problems we were having with ours. Anticipating that we may need support on this, we got a MS support contract before embarking on the project to the tune of >$40,000 per year, i.e. the ultimate gold plated support contract. Now we had to use it in anger. We actually got to speak to actual Windows developers directly, on the phone. It did us absolutely no good at all.
It turns out that Microsoft internally had no more documentation than we did. Even though they had source code access, they just weren't much help - I suspect the original developer had probably left, and the source itself probably was more or less completely undocumented. We ended up having to reverse engineer it all ourselves the hard way - we could have saved the $40K.
Incidentally, I suspect the real reason why Microsoft was uncooperative with the EU over the Windows server networking protocol documentation wasn't due to malice. It was probably because they had no documentation and were busy reading the source code and trying to write the docs as quickly as they could.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
BtrFS has not been completed yet. ReFS is shipping. ReFS will not have all the features of the completed BtrFS, but for now ReFS offers features not available in any shipping Linux.
Not all addons for BtrFS are completed, but the filesystem itself works -- and works well, while ReFS still lacks even basics such as booting. And as GP said, there's hardly anything in common between ReFS' and BtrFS' features.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
* Direct Access over IPv4. Think hassle-free VPN.
Is this a typo - did you mean to say 'Direct Access over IPv6'? That's the only way I can imagine VPN being hassle free. In IPv4, VPN is rarely hassle free b'cos the same set of private addresses tend to be used b/w networks, and resolving them is a major headache. With IPv6, if site-local addresses are used, it's easier to have hassle-free VPNs, since the chances of 2 networks having the same IP addresses is zero.
Given that from Windows Vista onwards, networking had been more IPv6 based than IPv4 based, I think that Server 2012 does direct access over IPv6. This is a welcome move, particularly in terms of accelarating IPv6 adaption.
Based on experience, I'd actually bet that Exchange number is higher. In most Exchange implementations I have seen of mid-to-large scale, the workload is distributed. In the survey case you linked, for inbound transit, it is completely sensible and in fact I would just about insist that the inbound transit be in something OTHER than exchange, such as Exim or Postfix, to both save money (why pay for yet another license to just pass mail along to inside resources?), as well as a security posture of managing risk with differentiating MX packages. If I carry that thought forward, a portion of those MX servers may well be in front of Exchange (or god forbid Notes or some other product).
Did you miss the "when completed" part?
BtrFS is not completed in the sense that Linux, Dungeon Crawl or Team Fortress 2 are not completed: new features get added all the time, but the core works remarkably well.
Or are you that idiot admin who runs btrfs on production servers?
What's the problem with that?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Have you ever heard of LVM and LVM snapshots? A zillion times better than VSS
and trying to write it off as irrelevant or whatever your angle was is silly.
I wasn't. "Comparatively" was intended to contrast their desktop numbers.
Also silly is the comment about "code already there"-- EVERYONE does this, from RedHat to VMWare to Adobe any other company that sells multiple tiers of its software product.
Doesn't make it right.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Uh... yeah, and then try copying that to another machine. Or comparing it for differences to see what you messed up that's causing some service not to work. On linux - diff -r /etc /backup_drive/2012-09-01/etc - oh, I messed up the dhcp.conf! Duh!
Backing up Linux is SUPER EASY, it's all text, and therefore comparable, compressible, clone-able. Windows is all binary and junk. That said, Windows prevents you from doing some stupid things (like putting a gateway outside of your netmask) because you have to use the GUI to make those changes, so it's not all roses on the Linux side.
. Define sqrt(x) as something really evil like (x / rand()), and bury it deep. Watch your coworkers go nuts.
How much will cost a
#IFDEF virtualization
?
And how exactly do you solve the problem of stale AD domain controllers? Restoring a DC image, particularly in a multi-DC environment means you have to then immediately restore all the AD objects from... You guessed it... backup.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
iOS 5 broke some SSL certs the iPhone previously handled without issue (notable among them x.509 certs with md5 hashes)
I wouldn't be surprised if that's the issue here.
This is flat out wrong regarding SBS. The essentials version is the previous Foundation version, not SBS.
Windows comes with Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and a file system which supports block level snapshots. VSS works with VSS aware applications (VSS writers) such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database Server, Exchange Server, Active Directory, NTFS and Hyper-V server. When a service is a VSS writer it participates in VSS coordination/synchronization to create consistent disk state.
...
To my knowledge, Linux doesn't have anything like VSS. Which means that each application/service must be handled separately. Typically you will stop the service during the backup. Some services such as PostgreSQL can recover from a non-consistent disk image; others can not. Individual applications may have commands/services which allow admins to "dump" state to a file to be backed up separately. All in all reliably backing up a running Linux server is more complicated compared to backing up a running Windows server with VSS aware services.
I am currently running a number of VMs using CentOS KVM with virtual disks being hosted on volumes being managed by LVM. Granted KVM and LVM are separate entities, but they can be made to work together to achieve the same result you mention above. I've backed up and restored VMs a number of times (as validation tests) and it's pretty robust.
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
BtrFS has not been completed yet. ReFS is shipping. ReFS will not have all the features of the completed BtrFS, but for now ReFS offers features not available in any shipping Linux.
I don't think ZFS is production quality on Linux yet either. Storage Spaces under Windows is nor shipping.
I guess I should have qualified...many features are available and stable with BtrFS today, on Linux 3.2. If you need something more, like ZFS, it is available on BSD or one of the free Solaris distributions (if you're setting up servers, chances are you will be using a mix of the three). However, the architecture and intent of ReFS vs. BtrFS/ZFS is not really the same. And if we're talking about filesystems, one of the strengths of linux is access to unique special purpose fliesystems, like GlusterFS, NILFS, and XFS, if you have needs that are better suited by one of those. On Windows you really only have NTFS and I guess now ReFS.
Dynamic Access Control actually ups the ante for SELinux, grsecurity apparmor etc. While it still protects access to resources it does so based on potentially very fine grained policies which can express rules based on a very wide range of properties. And it brings claims based security all the way into the primary access control of an OS. Linux does not sport claims based security.
Ok, but let's see how it actually gets used. I don't know if you've actually ever used SELinux...there's a reason why almost no distribution ships with it enabled. It's a huge pain in the neck. Red Hat ships it with generic policies that kind of work, but don't really make use of its full capabilities. If you are storing military secrets, fine, but for most general purpose computing it just gets in your way. Creating even more fine-grained control just seems to me to be a feature set nobody will ever use.
Sure. I am not aware of any effort to bring something like VSS to Linux, though.
If you mean snapshotting, it is available in a number of different formats: at the block level (ZFS, NILFS), file level (BtrFS, OCFS2), volume level (ZFS, BtrFS, LVM2), and filesystem hack level (RSnapshot). I don't see what difference it makes whether it is a local or remote filesystem. It will work in both cases.
Yes, an automagic always-on, bi-directional VPN on steroids. No calling, no VPN client installations. Just take the laptop outside the perimeter and it is still connected, still secured, still managed.
Well, to be fair, you do still need to set it up. It doesn't just happen. The capability sounds a lot like IPsec to me, and this has been available on Linux for a long time. Windows too, but it seems they have added better integration with Active Directory.
Uhm, not quite. But unless you experience the new Server Manager you are not going to understand. It has this "declarative" feeling - comparable to controlling your network with declarative network policies as opposed to relying on scripts running on each node to set thing up.
Maybe you're right, I won't understand without actually using it. But based on your description, this sounds exactly like Chef. I would put this firmly in the "Microsoft playing catch-up" category, because this type of management has long been a strength on Linux.
Please provide a reference for such a statistic. I could just as easily say "AIX is on 1.6 billion servers wordlwide," but no one would believe me. Not even me. If you ever want to believe in yourself, PROVIDE REFERENCES!!!
Have you ever heard of LVM and LVM snapshots? A zillion times better than VSS
Yes, I know about LVM. But LVM is a *file system* volume manager. It *cannot* ensure that applications which caches state in memory (such as databases and most other daemons/services) flushes the state to disk en refrain from polluting the state until a snapshot has been taken. LVM ensures that file system buffers are flushed to disk before a snapshot is taken. It does NOT ensure that the application has flushed state not already written to the file system. To tell me, how is LVM snapshots "a zillion times better than VSS"?
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
I am currently running a number of VMs using CentOS KVM with virtual disks being hosted on volumes being managed by LVM. Granted KVM and LVM are separate entities, but they can be made to work together to achieve the same result you mention above.
No, you still cannot integrate with applications. To my knowledge there is no OS defined way to tell applications to flush to disk, hold their breath, confirm, wait for an "as you were". It is actually a bit more complicated than that, because the application (e.g. a database server) may have state spanning multiple volumes - and snapshots need to be taken in synch on all volumes.
With the set of applications you use (PostgreSQL, for instance, is quite resilient) you may indeed not experience any problems. I would expect, however, that after a restore you will be able to find warnings indicating that the system was not shut down orderly - or something to that effect.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
So if I run PostgreSQL on Windows I can be sure VSS executes psql -c "select pg_start_backup(‘hourly’,true);" before creating the snapshot?
No. PostgreSQL is not a VSS Writer. That's a limitation of PostgreSQL - it fails to take advantage of a service provided by one of the OSes on which it runs. A service which makes backups (and recovery) simpler and more robust. Granted, I don't think Windows is the most important platform for PostgreSQL.
However, Oracle, for instance, is a VSS Writer, i.e. it registers with VSS and participates in the protocol that ensures file consistency during backups. So consider that you have an Oracle instance running inside a VM with virtual harddisks in files on the host system. When you backup that host system, the VSS will ask Hyper-V to ensure consistent state of the harddisk image file. Hyper-V does that by asking the VSS service of the guest OS to ensure disk consistency. This VSS service in turn asks the Oracle instance to ensure disk consistency (flush memory state and refrain from polluting it).
At this time the snapshot is created in the host OS and the the VSS service again tells Hyper-V to continue normal operation. Hyper-V tells the VSS of the guest OS to continue normal operation. The VSS of the guest OS tells the Oracle instance to continue normal operation - i.e. it is again allowed to service requests which can pollute the state. IIRC this entire process is guaranteed to complete in less than 1/10th of a second.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
Given the timeframe involved with restoring a snapshot, I bet I can bring it back up before the other DCs even realize it was offline :)
(and with FT on for the first DC in the environment, I don't even have to care that one of the VMs in the pair crashed. )
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Windows 2008 backup is already obsolete.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753528.aspx
Also, Windows 2008 Backup does not support 4k sector external backup drive. It will support the standard 512 or newer 512e sectors however (emulated and formatted with a vendor provided utility).
Basically to sum it all up, you *must* go with another backup solution. Even if you keep your internal server partitions under 2TB in size, almost all newer external drives are now designed with 4k sector sizes.
Yes, I'm a Windows Server admin. And yes, this fact is frustrating as hell having to inform clients they will need to go with Backup Exec or some other 3rd party backup solution. Especially if they desire BMR functionality.
Life is not for the lazy.
I'm bookmarking this thread. Benjy, this is an excellent point you bring up. I'm a Windows Server admin, and rarely if ever touch Linux. Though in production we do run a LAMP server as a VM in Hyper-V. Anyways, I hope some Linux guru can answer your question clearly as I would like to know the answer to this as well.
Life is not for the lazy.
Thinking you have good backups and knowing you have good backups are two entirely separate things. When it comes to backups, functionality is extremely important regardless of the interface. However, having a nice GUI helps immensely with visual identification of jobs, backup processes, and backup data sets (fulls and incrementals). However you can go overboard with TMI. Take Backup Exec for example. Holy shit is that visual mission control console or what?!
Life is not for the lazy.
> So what exactly does it do that similarly equipped
> Linux machines/vps' can't do that justify the cost?
Oh, that's easily.
By integrating seamlessly with a Microsoft-Windows-based business network (including Software Assurance licensing), Microsoft Windows Server 2012 provides a suitable framework for Microsoft-certified business solutions. By partnering with Microsoft and building your product on Microsoft technologies, you ensure your access to the largest possible customer base.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Why is this so hard for open fans to grasp? And this is just one example of closed source functionality beating the crap out of anything available in open source. Here's another: Exchange/Outlook. It's so sad that open source is such weak sauce, AND that, as a result, closed source gets away with all sorts of crappy behavior because, sorry, no competition to spur them to greatness - to justify the bondage.
Social Credit would solve everything...