WinServer 2008 to offer network admin aids, MS says

The release of Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 is at the end of this month, but for network managers, the more important date may be several months from now when Microsoft finalizes one of the key components of the operating system, the Hyper-V hypervisor, the first virtualization tool that is truly integrated into WinServer.

Until then, administrators will have to toy with a beta version of Hyper-V that ships with the OS.

Bruce Cowper, Microsoft Canada’s security lead, said the company promises the final version of the hypervisor will ship 180 days from the Feb. 28 release of WinServer.

There is a migration path to the final release so users should be able to directly upgrade, he said.

However, Michael Cherry, an industry analyst with Directions on Microsoft, said that the delay will have an impact on sales.

“I think adoption will be slower (than normal) until all the features are available,” he said.

While Cherry sees WS2008 as a “maturing” product built on the stable base of Windows Sever 2003 with incremental improvements, Cowper insists its more than that.

“I certainly see Windows Server 2008 as a major step ahead in terms of security, performance and manageability,” said Cowper.

With all the attention in data centres about the virtues of virtualization, it could be argued that Hyper-V is the most important feature of the new OS.

The technology, called Virtual Server, was first included in Windows Server 2003 R2. Hyper-V, according to Cowper, reduces the size of the virtualization layer and therefore should show performance gains. However, the OS still needs to run in 64-bit mode and with CPUs that support virtualization extensions.

Hyper-V lets multiple operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and others, run in parallel on a single server. Microsoft says new storage features, such as pass-through disk access and dynamic storage addition, will allow virtual machines more access to data, and give external programs and services more access to data stored on VMs.

New management tools and performance counters are said to make the virtualized environment easier to manage and monitor. Among them is a feature called Server Core, which lets administrators create a minimal WinServer 2008 install through a wizard on a server for faster performance. Cowper said this could be an advantage for servers running in remote offices.

Features such as the graphical user interface could be left out (leaving management by the command line, or automated through PowerShell scripts) but with Hyper-V installed should give good performance, said Cowper. Minimizing the operating systems should also increase security, he said.

Network manages not enthralled by virtualization, however, will find lots of interest in WS2008.

The Microsoft Management Console has been expanded and renamed as Server Manager, bringing administration and configuration tools under one roof in a bid to make management easier.