A leaner, meaner Windows Server
REVIEW: New OS offers networking upgrades, stripped-down configuration
By Jason Brooks Core supports only a limited set of sibling, Vista, and the product is well
Faster” and “slimmer” are predetermined roles, such as those worth evaluating both for organiza-two adjectives to which few for file or domain services. tions currently running Windows
soft ware upgrades can lay What’s more, due to its monolithic and for those that are not.
legitimate claim—particularly if the packaging and broad dependencies, upgrade in question is a Windows Microsoft’s .Net Framework cannot Installation
operating system. be installed on Server Core instances, windows server 2008 is avail-
Andyet, Windows Server able in five versions: a
2008, which recently hit the $999 Standard edition
RTM (release to manufac- that comes with five client
turing) milestone, demon- access licenses; a $3,999,
strates that Microsoft can 25-CAL Enterprise Edi-produce a lean, mean server tion; a $2,999-per-proces-
machine—and do it, no less, sor Datacenter Edition; a
atop the same code base that $2,999-per-processor ver-backs the company’s oft- sion for Itanium-based
maligned Windows Vista systems; and a $469 Web
client operating system. server edition.
Thenew Windows Server Versions of Windows
boasts a set of networking Server 2008 also are avail-enhancementsthatdramat- able for x86, x86-64 and
ically boost file-serving per- Intel Itanium 2 platforms.
formance. In addition, the I tested the x86-64 ver-product can be deployed sion of Windows Server
in a new, stripped-down 2008 on a Dell PowerEdge
Server Core configuration 830 server with a dual-core
that significantly reduces Intel Pentium D processor
the attack surface of sys- and 2GB of RAM. I also
tems hosting certain Win- tested the system in both
dows Server roles. full-install and Server Core
Toss in a more modular configurations in a variety
and securable Web server of virtual machines under
in IIS (Internet Informa- VMware’s ESX Server.
tion Services) 7.0, Micro- I installed a couple
soft’s new hypervisor-based (Top) Windows Server 2008’s Server Manager gathers the oper- of my Windows Server
virtualization functionality ations needed to conduct on the server. (Bottom) Windows Server 2008 instances using the
and a host of management 2008’s overhauled TCP/IP stack and a new version of its SMB product’s spruced-up net-
enhancements, and Win- service together deliver greater performance in file sharing. work install facility, WDS
dows Server 2008 merits eWeek which, among other things, bars (Windows Deployment Services). I
Labs’ Analyst’s Choice designation. Microsoft’s innovative PowerShell installed the WDS role on one of
However, that’s not to say that command-line interface from the my Windows Server 2008 machines
the product is without its warts. For command-line-centric Server Core. and directed the service to fetch an
instance, while it’s great to see Win- However, assorted quibbles aside, install image from my Windows
dows Server 2008 take a page out Windows Server 2008 comes with a Server 2008 install media.
of Linux’s book with support for value proposition that’s significantly From there, I was able to boot a
slimmed-down deployments, Server stronger than that of its client-side new system on my network using
