Windows Server 2008:

It was known as Windows Server Codename "Longhorn" until May 16, 2007, when Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced its official title (Windows Server 2008) during his keynote address at WinHEC.^[1]

Beta 1 was released on July 27, 2005, Beta 2 was announced and released on May 23, 2006 at WinHEC 2006 and Beta 3 was released publicly on April 25, 2007.^[2] Release Candidate 0 was released to the general public on September 24, 2007^[3] and Release Candidate 1 was released to the general public on December 5, 2007. Windows Server 2008 was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008 and officially launched on February 27, 2008.^[4]

Features

Windows Server 2008 is built from the same code base as Windows Vista; therefore, it shares much of the same architecture and functionality. Since the code base is common, it automatically comes with most of the technical, security, management and administrative features new to Windows Vista such as the rewritten networking stack (native IPv6, native wireless, speed and security improvements); improved image-based installation, deployment and recovery; improved diagnostics, monitoring, event logging and reporting tools; new security features such as BitLocker and ASLR; improved Windows Firewall with secure default configuration; .NET Framework 3.0 technologies, specifically Windows Communication Foundation, Microsoft Message Queuing and Windows Workflow Foundation; and the core kernel, memory and file system improvements. Processors and memory devices are modelled as Plug and Play devices, to allow hot-plugging of these devices. This allows the system resources to be partitioned dynamically using Dynamic Hardware Partitioning; each partition having its own memory, processor and I/O host bridge devices independent of other partitions.^[5]

Server Core

Windows Server 2008 includes a variation of installation called a Server Core. Server Core is a significantly scaled-back installation where no Windows Explorer shell is installed. All configuration and maintenance is done entirely through command line interface windows, or by connecting to the machine remotely using Microsoft Management Console. However, Notepad and some control panel applets, such as Regional Settings, are available.

Active Directory roles

Active Directory is expanded with identity, certificate, and rights management services. Active Directory until Windows Server 2003 allowed network administrators to centrally manage connected computers, to set policies for groups of users, and to centrally deploy new applications to multiple computers. This role of Active Directory is being renamed as Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS).^[6] A number of other additional services are being introduced, including Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (ADLDS), (formerly Active Directory Application Mode, or ADAM), Active Directory Certificate Services (ADCS), and Active Directory Rights Management Services (ADRMS). Identity and certificate services allow administrators to manage user accounts and the digital certificates that allow them to access certain services and systems. Federation management services enable enterprises to share credentials with trusted partners and customers, allowing a consultant to use his company user name and password to log in on a client's network. Identity Integration Feature Pack is included as Active Directory Metadirectory Services. Each of these services represents a server role.

Terminal Services

Windows Server 2008 features major upgrades to Terminal Services. Terminal Services now supports Remote Desktop Protocol 6.0. The most notable improvement is the ability to share a single application over a Remote Desktop connection, instead of the entire desktop. This feature is called Terminal Services RemoteApp. Other features new to Terminal Services include Terminal Services Gateway and Terminal Services Web Access (full web interface). With Terminal Services Gateway, authorized computers are able to connect securely to a Terminal Server or Remote Desktop from the Internet using RDP via HTTPS without implementing a VPN session first. Additional ports do not need to be opened in the firewall; RDP is tunneled through HTTPS. Terminal Services Web Access enables administrators to provide access to the Terminal Services Sessions via a Web interface. TS Web Access comes with an adjustable Webpart for IIS and Sharepoint, which advertises the possible applications and connections to the user. Using TS Gateway and TS RemoteApp, the whole communication is via HTTP(S) and the remote applications appear transparent to the user as if they are running locally. Multiple applications run in the same session to ensure that there is no need for additional licenses per user. Terminal Services Easy Print does not require administrators to install any printer drivers on the server, but guarantees successful client printer redirection and availability of all printer UI and properties for use in remote sessions. Terminal Services sessions are created in parallel, instead of a serial operation - the new session model can initiate at least four sessions in parallel, or more if a server has more than four processors.

Windows PowerShell

Windows Server 2008 is the first Windows operating system to ship with Windows PowerShell, Microsoft's new extensible command line shell and task-based scripting technology.^[7] PowerShell is based on object-oriented programming and version 2.0 of the Microsoft .NET Framework and includes more than 120 system administration utilities, consistent syntax and naming conventions, and built-in capabilities to work with common management data such as the Windows Registry, certificate store, or Windows Management Instrumentation. PowerShell's scripting language was specifically designed for IT administration, and can be used in place of cmd.exe and Windows Script Host.

Self-healing NTFS

In previous Windows versions, if the operating system detected corruption in the file system of an NTFS volume, it marked the volume "dirty"; to correct errors on the volume, it had to be taken offline. With self-healing NTFS, an NTFS worker thread is spawned in the background which performs a localized fix-up of damaged data structures, with only the corrupted files/folders remaining unavailable without locking out the entire volume and needing the server to be taken down.^[8]

Hyper-V

Hyper-V is a hypervisor-based virtualization system, forming a core part of Microsoft's virtualization strategy. It virtualizes servers on an operating system's kernel layer. It can be thought of as partitioning a single physical server into multiple small computational partitions. Hyper-V will include the ability to act as a Xen virtualization hypervisor host allowing Xen-enabled guest operating systems to run virtualized. Hyper-V is not currently part of Windows Server 2008, but will ship within 180 days after Windows Server 2008 is released, as both a standalone product and as part of special "with Hyper-V" editions of Windows Server 2008. Both will only support the x86-64 architecture.^[9]

Windows System Resource Manager

Windows System Resource Manager (WSRM) is being integrated into Windows Server 2008. It provides resource management and can be used to control how much resources a process or a user can use based on business priorities. Process Matching Criteria, which is defined by the name, type or owner of the process, enforces restrictions on the resource usage by a process that matches the criteria. CPU time, bandwidth that it can use, number of processors it can be run on, and memory allocated to a process can be restricted. Restrictions can be set to be imposed only on certain dates as well.

Server Manager

Server Manager is a new roles-based management tool for Windows Server 2008^[10]. It is a combination of Manage Your Server and Security Configuration Wizard from Windows Server 2003. Server Manager is an improvement of the Configure my server dialog that launches by default on Windows Server 2003 machines. However, rather than serve only as a starting point to configuring new roles, Server Manager gathers together all of the operations users would want to conduct on the server, such as, getting a remote deployment method set up, adding more server roles etc and provides a consolidated, portal-like view about the status of each role.

It is not currently possible to use the Server Manager remotely, but a client version is planned.

Other features

Core OS improvements

Active Directory improvements

Policy related improvements

Disk management and file storage improvements

Protocol and cryptography improvements

Improvements due to client-side (Windows Vista) enhancements

Miscellaneous improvements

Removed Features

Editions

Most editions of Windows Server 2008 are available in x86-64 (64-bit) and x86 (32-bit) versions. Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems supports IA-64 processors. The IA-64 version is optimized for high workload scenarios like database servers and Line of Business (LOB) applications. As such it is not optimized for use as a file server or media server. Microsoft has announced that Windows Server 2008 is the last 32-bit Windows server operating system.^[16] Windows Server 2008 is available in the editions listed below,^[17] similar to Windows Server 2003.

Server Core is available in the Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter editions. It is not available in Web edition or in the Itanium edition. It is important to note that Server Core is simply a server role supported by some of the editions, and not a separate edition by itself. Each edition has a separate evaluation DVD.

System requirements

	Minimum	Recommended
Processor	1 GHz (x86) or 1.4 GHz (x64)	2 GHz or faster
Memory	512 MB RAM (may limit performance and some features)	2 GB RAM or higher Maximum (32-bit systems): 4GB RAM (Standard) or 64GB RAM (Enterprise and Datacenter) Maximum (64-bit systems): 32GB RAM (Standard) or 2TB RAM (Enterprise, Datacenter and Itanium-Based Systems)
Video adapter and monitor	Super VGA (800 x 600)	Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher resolution
Hard drive disk free space	10 GB	40 GB or higher Note: Computers with more than 16GB of RAM will require more disk space for paging, hibernation, and dump files
Drives	DVD-ROM	DVD-ROM or better
Devices	Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution monitor, keyboard and mouse	Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution monitor, keyboard and mouse

Windows Server 2008

Contents

History