Windows Server 2012: The road to RTM

Windows 8 Server (as it was first called) has a Metro (as it was called then) Start screen (top), but IT managers are expected to spend most of their time in the new Server Manager dashboard (bottom).

 

The first glimpse of Microsoft's new server OS — then called Windows 8 Server — came (as with its desktop counterpart) at the BUILD conference in September 2011. Bill Laing, head of Microsoft's Server and Cloud Division, described its focus as "optimising your IT for the cloud". Even in its pre-beta state, it was clear to reviewer Simon Bisson that Windows 8 Server was "an evolution that builds on features introduced in Windows Server 2008, optimising it for private cloud operation and for operation at scale, while retaining the features that small and medium-sized organisations need". The biggest change we noted was the consolidation of UI modes into three options — Windows GUI, UI-less Server Core and Server Manager with Microsoft Management Console snap-ins — with a key enabler being a huge increase in the number of available PowerShell cmdlets. Changes to the (now more standards-based) PowerShell stack provided support for operations on up to thousands of machines, including remote deployments and sites with virtual servers.

A new Metro-like Server Manager made its first appearance in the Developer Preview, providing a tile-based dashboard of information on multiple servers with colour-coded views denoting where action is required. Version 3 of Hyper-V added native PowerShell support for easier automation of virtual machines and ran on systems with up to 160 logical processors and 2TB of memory, with hosted VMs supporting up to 32 virtual processors and 512GB of memory. NUMA support allowed the performance of virtual machines to be optimised, while WHEA support meant that memory errors only take down the affected VM rather than the entire server. A new VHDX format supported virtual hard disks larger than the previous 2TB limit. Builders of private clouds got the ability to create continuously available fibre-channel-based servers with clusters of over 32 nodes and 4,000 VMs, with live migration and failover clustering, and I/O redundancy. On a smaller scale, Hyper-V could handle disaster recovery, with asynchronous replication of VMs to a remote site, and VM migration became easier.

Networking changes, centred around the use of Windows 8 Server as the basis for cloud services, included the introduction of DHCP Guard, which blocks VMs from exposing services to other VMs other virtual networks. Managing virtual networks in Windows 8 Server meant low-level changes in the network stack, and increased reliance on DNS and DHCP, plus new tools for IP address management. On the storage side, Windows 8 Server supported tools for handling thinly provisioned, easily extensible, virtual disks. Two new concepts were introduced: storage pools and storage spaces, the former describing virtual disks and the latter providing tools for managing resiliency and performance. New tools for online disk scanning and repair were provided, plus support for data deduplication. Setting up an Active Directory server became easier in Windows 8 Server, with a new Administrative Center allowing you to view PowerShell commands used on the system. You could also set up a domain controller as a virtual machine, with support for snapshots and copies.

Data access control was improved in Windows 8 Server, with automatic data identification based on metadata and document classification, and centrally defined policies for access using Active Directory and Group Policies. Acknowledging new flexible working patterns, a new Unified Remote Access role bundled the previous Direct Access, VPN and cross-premises connectivity technologies. BranchCache was improved to take advantage of the new data deduplication features. When it comes to web server duties, the new IIS (whose development team had been moved to the Azure group) gained features that help support scalable cloud services. A major change was support for WebSockets, allowing HTML 5 apps to access data over asynchronous connections. Last in a long list of improvements in Windows 8 Server Developer Preview was improved virtual desktop support, including enhanced RemoteFX tools and support for Windows 8 desktop features such as multi-touch.

After our first exposure to Microsoft's new server OS, reviewer Simon Bisson described it as "the next step in the evolution of Windows" where "a new version of the Hyper-V hypervisor makes it clear that you're expected to run Windows 8 Server as a virtual machine, not a standalone server". Overall, we were 'impressed with what we've seen so far".