Commentary

Dave Methvin
 

Windows Server 2008: Less Is More

IT departments are conservative by nature, and with good reason. Change for change's sake just adds more trouble to the endless supply of troubles that IT departments have to manage. The new Windows Server 2008 has the potential to remove some of that trouble by offering fewer things to break. Certainly there are new features in Windows Server 2008, and those will be useful to many customers. However, I'm even more interested in what they are letting users leave out.

IT departments are conservative by nature, and with good reason. Change for change's sake just adds more trouble to the endless supply of troubles that IT departments have to manage. The new Windows Server 2008 has the potential to remove some of that trouble by offering fewer things to break. Certainly there are new features in Windows Server 2008, and those will be useful to many customers. However, I'm even more interested in what they are letting users leave out.With Windows Server 2008, Microsoft is continuing its push to lock down the server product line by disabling and/or removing features out of the box. If you lived through the horrible exploits and worms that infested Windows Server 2000 due to its "everything on by default" policy, you know how important this is to security. Windows Server 2003 reversed that server-welcomes-all-exploits approach, and 2008 continues the trend.

Perhaps the most extreme sign of this trend is the Server Core installation option, which completely leaves out a graphical interface. The server is managed through the command line, just as you might manage a Linux box. Maintenance tasks can be automated through the new PowerShell, or the older Windows Script Host shell interpreters. The result is a server that takes fewer resources and offers fewer attack surfaces.


More Windows Insights

White Papers

More >>

Reports

More >>

Webcasts

More >>

Even the little signs are good. Remember that Windows 98 was released in August 1998, when the year was more than half over? It looks like Microsoft will ship Windows Server 2008 in the first half its namesake year, almost like a new car model. It's nice to use a product that doesn't sound like last year's news.

The servers I use with Windows Server 2003 are hosted by a managed hosting company, so their staff will need to get up to speed before we'd make a jump. Plus, the best time to switch operating systems is when you need to switch server hardware. We don't plan on needing to refresh the hardware until late this year, or perhaps even 2009. But when the switch does happen, I feel good about installing Server 2008 on the boxes.


Related Reading




Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

InformationWeek encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, InformationWeek moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. InformationWeek further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
T-Shirt Giveaway T-Shirt Giveaway: Each week we're selecting one great comment from our readers. The author of the comment will receive an InformaitonWeek Community t-shirt. So get posting!
Subscribe to RSS

Resource Links