Wednesday, October 1, 2008

First Look at Windows Server 2008 Server Core - Part I

One of the beatiful feature of Windows 2008 is its ability to deploy as the Server Core machine. This installation of Windows 2008 provides a minimum environment for running specific server roles such as :
  • Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS)
  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS)
  • DHCP Server
  • DNS Server
  • File & Print Services
  • Internet Information Services (IIS)
  • Streaming Media Services
  • Virtualization (Hyper-V)

The Standard edition of Windows Server 2008 is probably the best option for Server Core based deployment because most of the advanced features available in Enterprise & Data Center editions will not be present in Server Core.

In Windows Server 2008, Server Core installation will not have the usual UI for administration purposes. This is pretty much revamped the way MS is looking at fully UI based administration. Some of the basic UI available in Server Core include regedit, notepad, task manager, date time & reginal setting.

Why Server Core ?

The Goods

  • Reduced Surface of Attack - Due to the nature of this installation, it only has the minimum set of programs which decreases the attack surface.
  • Ease of Maintainance - Because less programs are running in this installation, so the need to catch up with the patches and KBs are significant reduced.
  • Less Disk Space Required - The Server Core installation require only 1.5 GB for installation and another 1.5 GB for operations
and The Bads

  • Administration & Management - For those that like a fast and 'real' way of getting the instruction into the servers may not have problem with the CLI. But for a pure Windows Administrators which never have they hands on Unix like administration will find Server Core hard to manage.
  • Upgrade Path - There is no way to upgrade from a Server Core installation to a full installation of Windows Server 2008.
  • Minimum list of features supported - Not all of the Windows 2008 supported features are available in Server Core.
More to come, stay tuned !!!


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