Windows Server 8: built for the cloud, built for virtualization

Where Windows 8 is an operating system built for the tablet, Windows Server 8 is an operating system built for the cloud. Not the Windows Azure public cloud; rather, it's built for "private clouds": on-premises, virtualized deployments with tens or hundreds of virtual machines.

This kind of large scale administration requires a new approach to system management. That approach centers around PowerShell and Server Manager, the new Metro-style management console. Server Manager provides a convenient GUI, but behind the scenes, PowerShell commands are constructed and executed. The commands can also be copied, edited, and executed directly in PowerShell. This should sound familiar to many Windows administrators, as Exchange already uses this style of management, with the GUI being a mere layer over PowerShell.

The same mechanism is used to administer multiple machines simultaneously; it makes remote PowerShell calls to multiple machines, allowing actions to be performed on them in parallel. To enable this, PowerShell has been expanded with more than 2,000 new commands.

Going hand in hand with this new style of administration is a new approach to the GUI. Windows Server 2008 has Server Core mode, a way of running windows with the GUI removed. This hasn't received much uptake, however—quite a few applications, though server-oriented, just don't work without the GUI for one reason or another. Switching between Server Core and the standard operating system requires reinstallation.

Read more: Ars Technica
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