The client version of Windows isn’t the only one getting overhauled. It’s a little less sexy, but Windows Server 8 is every bit as different from its predecessors as the Windows 8 client. Server Core (Windows Server running without the graphical user interface) is the, uh, core now, and everything is done using PowerShell – either directly, or through the new Metro-style Server Manager which is a layer on top of PowerShell. The buzzword here is cloud – not the big one, but those smaller ones on intranets.
Unlike Windows Client, Windows Server isn’t particularly my forte. So, I’m kind of relying on others who have better understanding of what’s being changed. While I might not be particularly versed in these matters, I do get the three most important themes, though.
First, Windows Server Core has been given more prominence. Up until now, Server Core has been problematic because most Windows server software depended on the graphical user interface, and in order to switch between Server Core and Server GUI, you needed to perform a re-install. This is no longer the case – the graphical user interface is now merely an isntallable package. Yet another benefit of the componentisation of Windows.
There are now three different modes to run Windows Server in: the existing Server Core (no GUI at all) and server-with-everything-in-place, and a new mode that sits somewhere in between, which doesn’t actually launch the entire graphical stack, but only the new Metro Server Manager and MMC.
Second, the new Server Manager itself is different in that it is focused on PowerShell. As Ars’ Peter Bright explains: “[Server 8] centers around PowerShell and Server Manager, the new Metro-style management console. Server Manager provides a convenient GUI, but behind the scenes, PowerShell commands are constructed and executed. The commands can also be copied, edited, and executed directly in PowerShell,” he details, “This should sound familiar to many Windows administrators, as Exchange already uses this style of management, with the GUI being a mere layer over PowerShell.”
The third and final big change is in the field of virtualisation – Server 8 comes with Hyper-V 3, which contains many improvements I honestly don’t always understand in full detail. I can copy/paste whatever Ars has to say on this, but it’s better to just head on over there and read it all in full detail. More information can also be bound on the Windows Server 8 site itself.
The developer preview for Windows Server 8 is available just like the client version, so if you want to play with it feel free to do so – you do have to be an MSDN subscriber, though.
I hope for MS that they got the patent. They sure are the first ones to come up with the idea.
MS-DOS?
MS-DOS Server Edition 1984 R2?
it’s not new even to windows server, you can install a server core since 2008 or r2, I don’t remember, but to be fair I don’t know how many people will want to run a windows server without a gui, it’s just a PITA to configure everything with powershell, also I doubt that third party softwares supports the core mode, in the end you’ll just save a bit of hdd space, not really worth imho
Server core isn’t bad at all, i think the key thing is that it moves the admin tools from the server to the client. For example i have setup a couple of Hyper-V’s 2008R2’s with the Hyper-V core, once installed and ins tally configured these are managed using the hyper-v tools on Windows 7 clients, easy and vastly cuts down on the number of updates and the surface area of attack.
I am a big fan of Server core and think of it as appliance technology, single use type stuff, as stated in the article the main problem with it is it’s lack of support, however I’ve heard that the next SQL Server Denali will support it, just need exchange and we’re all set, that is if the cloud doesn’t over take local server instances first
The problems start, when you need to configure a network card driver like if you want to disable TCP-offloading or something like that.
RAID-controller software might be an other. The manufacturer might have added extra software which needs to run as GUI and expects things to be there and thus won’t work.
And PowerShell in general is really slow, try starting the Exchange Management Shell. Even slower than MMC. It just does not compare to a Unix-shell.
I figured a GUI-less install would need only the minimum config to allow a remote MMC connection through which the real config work would be done. Is it really more than turning on the networking and entering a domain/admin password?
You can connect to the server and use PowerShell to do al the work. You don’t need the MMC.
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lol g1
and stick me a full bash/ksh/csh shell with coreutils.
Why not just, you know, use a *NIX.
PowerShell is the interface to the Server Core and so is, effectively, what people of think of as Windows Server now. Remove it and it’s not going to be Windows Server anymore.
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Just started to learn about what PowerShell can do, and in my opinion it’s much easier to work with than any UNIX shell. Pretty much because it uses objects instead of streams, and also because every command seems to be consistent.
That must be a matter of perspective or personal opinion.
When I use Unix it works exactly like I expect it to and all the commands seem consistent. Except for “dd”.
When I use Powershell it seems every command has its own “special” way of doing things. You pipe input to this one, but this other one wants an object stored in a variable and passed as a parameter. Etc.
Sorry dude, but PowerShell is completely a mess when compared to UNIX powerful utilities.
Edited 2011-09-16 17:42 UTC
Have you ever read the unix haters handbook?
http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf
Edited 2011-09-17 03:52 UTC
Sorry again dude, but you wouldn’t change my stand with such crap.
*NIX owns the server market, and there’s a big reason behind it: stable/scalable/powerful.
So your point is that PowerShell is done right and UNIX utilities aren’t. Nice Try.
It was a bit of a joke. The book is like 20 years old.
But usually what someone calls perfect another person calls it crap.
Most of the jobs in my area of my country are ASP.NET, so Windows Server and IIS are the most used kit.
Personally I find Unix to be confusing. Weird command line switches that differ from program to program. Odd command names “awk, sed” etc. To make a file I “touch” it?
Edited 2011-09-17 12:28 UTC
Or does it seem like in the past few months, the majority of Thom’s articles refer to Ars as his source. All his research, all his news about OS’s comes from Ars. If I wanted to know what Ars thinks, I’d read Ars. Do the work Thom, your site is called OSnews. learn about the OS. AnandTech, yeah, Anand learned about tech and reports on it. You’ve become an editorial blog in the past year more so than a vehicle for OSnews. Or is it just me?
We can do that too.
When we have their budget. When I don’t have a full-time job running my company in order to, you know, not starve.
I will refer to another article when I don’t have the expertise, or when they have people actually using said products or when they are on the show floor with far better insight. Or, when I simply don’t have the time.
OSNews isn’t a huge operation like Arstechnica. I look at OSNews as an aggregator of news from other sources, and a place to discuss said aggregated news – that’s enough for the site to live up to the “OSNews” name. I don’t expect original research or original reportage here.
– optional GUI DE
– GUI front end apps for cli/shell back ends
– customizable modular design
Is Microsoft finally putting out a *nix distribution?
Powershell and the headless config have been around since Windows Server 2008. The problem is that a lot of Enterprise software (I can think of a few pieces from IBM) assume a GUI of some kind. Enterprise servers also are riddled with legacy programs, so the headless configuration hasn’t gained much traction in Windows shops.
That would do it. I can see how any app without an MMC snapin would break.
Actually they had a UNIX before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix
But yes, Windows Server Core goes against much of the marketing MS used against UNIX in the 90’s. At least they’ve learned their lessons.
Edited 2011-09-15 14:16 UTC
Well, they’ve learned some of there leasons at least:
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2011/Sep/134
They are getting there though.
True, I guess. I understand the calls of people calling windows 8 lipstick on a pig.
From that, I gather they mean that a lot of Microsoft’s mistakes were not in the GUI, but in the lower levels similar to the ones that email/blog post is talking about.
But some credit should be given to Microsoft, as this could ( depending upon how metro and its api’s are represented) present them a chance to eventually get rid of the nasty stuff that’s still there.
Although, if you look up my comments on other blogs from when they introduced dot Net, I said pretty much the same things.
I recon they just couldn’t marry a server to Metro, but didn’t want to compromise Metro by continuing support for the old GUI. Easiest is to just drop the GUI idea entirely.
Edited 2011-09-15 17:17 UTC
From your comment it seems as if you don’t understand that windows 8 includes the good olde fashioned desktop interface of windows 7. The old GUI is still supported for the client operating system. I think the server doesn’t have a gui, because its a freaking server. Servers under serious load are better off not devoting resources to a GUI.