eWEEK Labs Walk-through: Windows Server 2008

Windows Server 2008 may be deployed in a new, stripped-down Server Core configuration, which significantly reduces the attack surface of systems hosting certain Windows Server roles.

I installed a couple of my Windows Server 2008 instances using the product’s spruced-up network installation facility, called WDS (Windows Deployment Services). Once I’d installed an appropriate server role, I was able to boot a new system on my network from WDS and kick off a new installation.

Windows Server 2008 ships with an overhauled TCP/IP stack and a new version of its SMB (Server Message Block) file-sharing service, which together can deliver significant performance gains in file sharing scenarios-

One of the most immediately recognizable new features of Windows Server 2008 is the Server Manager, which gathers together pretty much all of the operations you’d want to conduct on your server.

A promising new feature of Windows Server 2008 is its support for hypervisor-based virtualization. The feature, which Microsoft calls Hyper-V, enables administrators to host x86 or x86-64 operating systems on Windows Server 2008, and compares well to VMware’s ESX Server and Citrix’s XenEnterprise virtualization products.

RemoteApp enables administrators to publish individual applications, as opposed to remote desktop sessions. I tested out RemoteApp with the Firefox Web browser, the GIMP image editing application and VMware’s Virtual Infrastructure client. From a Windows XP or Windows Vista client, these applications appeared as if running locally, complete with resizable windows.