There are a myriad of both subtle and fundamental differences in the basic architecture of Windows Server 2008, which could dramatically change not only the way it's used in the enterprise, but also the logical and physical structure of networks where it's the dominant OS.

The abilities to consolidate servers, to manage hardware more effectively, to remotely manage hardware without the graphical traffic, and to radically alter the system security model, could present a more compelling argument for customers to plan their WS2K8 migrations now, than the arguments for moving from Windows 2000 to Server 2003.

Based on the information we gathered last week at WinHEC 2007 in Los Angeles, we decided that rather than list a bunch of mind-jarring new categories and marketing terms that sound like rejected gadgets from the Bat-Cave, we'd select what we believe to be the ten most influential and important new technologies to find their way into WS2K8, with the help of Microsoft software engineers such as Mark Russinovich to explain their relevance. We begin at the end with our #10 entry:

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#10: The self-healing NTFS file system. Ever since the days of DOS, an error in the file system meant that a volume had to be taken offline for it to be remedied. In WS2K8, a new system service works in the background that can detect a file system error, and perform a healing process without anyone taking the server down.

"So if there's a corruption detected someplace in the data structure, an NTFS worker thread is spawned," Russinovich explained, "and that worker thread goes off and performs a localized fix-up of those data structures. The only effect that an application would see is that files would be unavailable for the period of time that it was trying to access, had been corrupted. If it retried later after the corruption was healed, then it would succeed. But the system never has to come down, so there's no reason to have to reboot the system and perform a low-level CHKDSK offline."

#9: Parallel session creation. "Prior to Server 2008, session creation was a serial operation," Russinovich reminded us. "If you've got a Terminal Server system, or you've got a home system where you're logging into more than one user at the same time, those are sessions. And the serialization of the session initialization caused a bottleneck on large Terminal Services systems. So Monday morning, everybody gets to work, they all log onto their Terminal Services system like a few hundred people supported by the system, and they've all got to wait in line to have their session initialized, because of the way session initialization was architected."

The new session model in both Vista and WS2K8 can initiate at least four sessions in parallel, or even more if a server has more than four processors. "If you've got a Vista machine where this architecture change actually was introduced, and you've got multiple Media Center extenders, those media center extenders are going to be able to connect up to the Media Center in parallel," he added. "So if you have a media center at home, and you send all their kids to their rooms and they all turn on their media extenders at the same time, they're going to be streaming media faster from their Vista machines then if you had Media Center on a XP machine."

#8: Clean service shutdown. One of Windows' historical problems concerns its system shutdown procedure. In XP, once shutdown begins, the system starts a 20-second timer. After that time is up, it signals the user whether she wants to terminate the application herself, perhaps prematurely. For Windows Server, that same 20-second timer may be the lifeclock for an application, even one that's busy spooling ever-larger blocks of data to the disk.

In WS2K8, that 20-second countdown has been replaced with a service that will keep applications given the signal all the time they need to shut down, as long as they continually signal back that they're indeed shutting down. Russinovich said developers were skeptical at first about whether this new procedure ceded too much power to applications; but in practice, they decided the cleaner overall shutdowns were worth the trade-offs.

#7: Kernel Transaction Manager. This is a feature which developers can take advantage of, which could greatly reduce, if not eliminate, one of the most frequent causes of System Registry and file system corruption: multiple threads seeking access to the same resource.

In a formal database, a set of instructed changes is stored in memory, in sequence, and then "committed" all at once as a formal transaction. This way, other users aren't given a snapshot of the database in the process of being changed - the changes appear to happen all at once. This feature is finally being utilized in the System Registry of both Vista and Windows Server 2008.

"The Kernel Transaction Manager [intends] to make it very easy to do a lot of error recovery, virtually transparently," Microsoft software engineer Mark Russinovich explained. "The way they've done this is with the [KTM] acting as a transaction manager that transaction clients can plug into. Those transaction clients can be third-party clients that want to initiate transactions on resources that are managed by Transaction Resource Manager - those resource managers can be third-party or built into the system."

#6: SMB2 network file system. Long, long ago, SMB was adopted as the network file system for Windows. While it was an adequate choice at the time, Russinovich believes, "SMB has kind of outlived its life as a scalable, high-performance network file system."

So SMB2 finally replaces it. With media files having attained astronomical sizes, servers need to be able to deal with them expeditiously. Russinovich noted that in internal tests, SMB2 on media servers delivered thirty to forty times faster file system performance than Windows Server 2003. He repeated the figure to make certain we realized he meant a 4000% boost.

#5: Address Space Load Randomization (ASLR) Perhaps one of the most controversial added features already, especially since its debut in Vista, ASLR makes certain that no two subsequent instances of an operating system load the same system drivers in the same place in memory each time.

Malware, Mark Russinovich described it (as only he can), is essentially a blob of code that refuses to be supported by standard system services. "Because it's isn't actually loaded the way a normal process is, it would never link with the operating system services that it might want to use," he described. "So if it wants to do anything with the OS like drop a file onto your disk, it's got to know where those operating system services live.

"The way that malware authors have worked around this chicken-and-egg kind of situation," he continued, "is, because Windows didn't previously randomize load addresses, that meant that if they wanted to call something in KERNEL32.DLL, KERNEL32.DLL on Service Pack 2 will always load in the same location in memory, on a 32-bit system. Every time the system boots, regardless of whose machine you're looking at. That made it possible for them to just generate tables of where functions were located."

Now, with each system service likely to occupy one of 256 randomly selected locations in memory, offset by plus or minus 16 MB of randomized address space, the odds of malware being able to locate a system service on its own have increased from elementary to astronomical.

#4: Windows Hardware Error Architecture (WHEA). That's right, Microsoft has actually standardized the error - more accurately, the protocol by which applications report to the system what errors they have uncovered. You'd think this would already have been done.

"One of the problems facing error reporting is that there's so many different ways that devices report errors," remarked Russinovich. "There's no standardization across the hardware ecosystem. So that made it very difficult to write an application, up to now, that can aggregate all these different error sources and present them in a unified way. It means a lot of specific code for each of these types of sources, and it makes it very hard for any one application to deliver you a good error diagnostic and management interface."

Now, with hardware-oriented errors all being reported using the same socketed interface, third-party software can conceivably mitigate and manage problems, reopening a viable software market category for management tools.

#3: Windows Server Virtualization. Even pared down a bit, the Viridian project will still provide enterprises with the single most effective tool to date for reducing total cost of ownership...to emerge from Microsoft. Many will argue virtualization is still an open market, thanks to VMware; and for perhaps the next few years, VMware may continue to be the feature leader in this market.

But Viridian's drive to leverage hardware-based virtualization support from both Intel and AMD has helped drive those manufacturers to roll out their hardware support platforms in a way that a third party - even one as influential as VMware - might not have accomplished.

As Microsoft's general manager for virtualization, Mike Neil, explained at WinHEC last week, the primary reason customers flock to virtualization tools today remains server consolidation. "There's this sprawl of servers that customers have, they're dealing with space constraints, power constraints, [plus] the cost of managing a large number of physical machines," Neil remarked. "And they're consolidating by using virtual machines to [provide] typically newer and more capable and more robust systems."

Consolidation helps businesses to reclaim their unused processor capacity - which could be as much as 85% of CPU time for under-utilized servers. Neil cited IDC figures estimating US businesses have already spent hundreds of billions on processor resources they haven't actually used. It's not their fault - it's the design of operating systems up to now. "So obviously, we're trying to drive that utilization further and further," Neil said.

#2: PowerShell. At last. For two years, we've been told it'll be part of Longhorn, then not really part of Longhorn, then a separate free download that'll support Longhorn, then the underpinning for Exchange Server 2007. Now we know it's a part of the shipping operating system: the radically new command line tool that can either supplement or completely replace GUI-based administration.

Last week at WinHEC, Windows Server programming chief Iain McDonald flat out proclaimed, "If I could set the direction of it, I would like to make PowerShell the default shell for Windows. That's my personal bias."

At TechEd 2007 in Orlando in early June, we'll be seeing some new examples of PowerShell in the WS2K8 work environment - hopefully unhindered now that the product is shipping along with the public Beta 3...at least unless someone changes his mind. We hope that phase of PowerShell's history is past it now.

#1: Server Core. Here is where the world could really change for Microsoft going forward: Imagine a cluster of low-overhead, virtualized, GUI-free server OSes running core roles like DHCP and DNS in protected environments, all to themselves, managed by way of a single terminal.

If you're a Unix or Linux admin, you might say we wouldn't have to waste time with imagining. But one of Windows' simple but real problems as a server OS over the past decade has been that it's Windows. Why, admins ask, would a server need to deploy 32-bit color drivers and DirectX and ADO and OLE, when they won't be used to run user applications? Why must Windows always bring its windows baggage with it wherever it goes?

Beginning with Windows Server 2008, the baggage is optional. As product manager Ward Ralston told BetaNews in an interview published earlier this week, the development team has already set up Beta 3 to handle eight roles, and the final release may support more.

What's more, with the proper setup, admins can manage remote Server Core installations using a local GUI that presents the data from the GUI-less remote servers. "We have scripts that you can install that enable [TCP] port 3389," Ralston told us, "so you can administer it with Terminal Services. [So] if you're sitting at a full install version and let's say I bring up the DNS, I can connect to a Server Core running DNS, and I can administer it from another machine using the GUI on this one. So you're not just roped into the command line for all administration. We see the majority of IT pros using existing GUIs or using PowerShell that leverages WMI [Windows Management Instrumentation] running on Server Core, to perform administration."

PowerShell can run on Server Core...partially, Iain McDonald told us. It won't be able to access the .NET Framework, because the Framework doesn't run on Server Core at present. In that limited form, it can access WMI functions.

But a later, more "component-ized" version of .NET without the graphics functionality may run within Server Core. This could complete a troika, if you will, resulting in the lightest-weight and most manageable servers Microsoft has ever produced. It may take another five years for enterprises to finally complete the migration, but once they do...this changes everything.

下一頁為中文翻譯版本

Windows Server 2008的變化既有細微的方面，也有根本性的。服務器整合、硬件的高效管理、遠程的硬件無圖形界面操控，徹底改變的系統安全模式，這些都是WS2K8的大賣點。在上周Los Angeles舉行的WinHEC 2007上，通過微軟軟件工程師Mark Russinovich等的協助，我們擬定出了一份WS2K8中最具影響力上的新技術列表。下面我們從第10條開始介紹：

#10：具有自修復功能NTFS文件系統（The self-healing NTFS file system）

在WS2K8中，將會有一個新增的系統服務來在后臺檢測文件系統的錯誤，以及在服務器運行狀態下進行直接修復。如果檢測服務正在修復損壞的磁盤結構，對應用程序來講，受到的影響只是存儲在這些區域上的文件暫時無法訪問，在修復結束后即可重新訪問。系統是永遠不會關閉的，沒有必要重啟來做CHKDSK這樣的操作。

#9：并行會話的創建（Parallel session creation）

在Server 2008之前的操作系統中，會話的創建是串行的方式。也就是說，當多個用戶同時登錄終端系統時會造成系統的瓶頸，造成用戶排隊等待會話的初始化。在Vista及WS2K8中的新會話模塊，至少可以同時初始化4個會話，如果有4塊以上的處理器，還可以增加更多。Vista下的Media Center就是一個很好的例子，如果你在多個不同的房間同時啟動Media Center就會發現，速度要比XP下的Media Center更流暢。

#8：關機服務（Clean service shutdown）

關機已經是Windows的“歷史性問題”了。在XP中，一旦關機開始后系統就會啟動一個20秒的計數器，超時后會詢問用戶是否結束應用程序。在服務器系統中，該計數器是應用程序的生命之鐘。而在WS2K8下，這20秒的倒計時被一個專門的服務所取代了，該服務會向需要關閉的程序不間斷的送達關機信號，直至程序回應自己確實已退出。

#7：內核事務管理器（Kernel Transaction Manager）

這對開發人員們來說是個好消息，就算無法完全排出，也能在最大程度上減少多個線程訪問同一系統資源（注冊表、文件系統等）時的死鎖問題。拿數據庫系統來說，交互指令都會按次序插入內存隊列，并最終一次性的來進行“落實”。這一功能，最終被加入了Vista和Windows Server 2008。內核事務管理器的目的在于從某些錯誤中恢復，這個管理器允許事務客戶端的插入（plug into），事務客戶端通過這樣的方式來使用內核事務管理器所管理的資源。

#6：SMB2 網絡文件系統（SMB2 network file system）

SMB在很久很久以前就成為了Windows自帶的網絡文件系統。隨著現在的多媒體文件體積日漸巨增，對服務器的要求也相應的增加了。在微軟的內部測試中SMB2的速度比Windows Server 2003中的網絡文件系統要快3到4倍。

#5：地址空間的隨機加載（Address Space Load Randomization；ASLR）

ASLR或許是Vista中最具爭議的一項功能，它直接導致了同一操作系統在每次啟動時加載系統驅動的（內存）位置都會不同。微軟的解釋是，這項功能不會影響普通的系統服務，所以不必擔心應用程序無法鏈接到需要使用的服務。惡意軟件的作者經常利用早期Windows版本在固定內存地址加載文件的缺陷，也就是說他們能夠知道在32位的XP SP2下，哪里裝載著KERNEL32.DLL，并隨意的進行訪問。因為，不管任何機器在任何時候啟動，這個DLL都在同一個地方呆著。而現在，系統會在啟動時從256個隨機位置中選取一個，并附加16M空間的（正或負）偏移，惡意軟件能找到這些位置的機會可以說是相當的渺茫。

#4：Windows 硬件錯誤體系（Windows Hardware Error Architecture；WHEA）

沒錯，微軟的確在將Windows錯誤進行標準化，確切的理解可以是，應用程序向系統報告錯誤的一種協議。在過去，設備報告其錯誤的方式相當的繁雜，沒有既定的標準。直至今日，要編寫一個按照統一模式來整理和顯示各種錯誤的程序也是極其困難的，因為不同的錯誤源有不同的錯誤代碼。現在，所有硬件產生的錯誤都有了統一的報告接口，這對第三方廠商來說絕對是一個好消息。

#3：虛擬服務器（Windows Server Virtualization）

就算是已經被削減了功能，Viridian依然是一個高效和減少成本的好東西。感謝VMware，虛擬機到目前為止依然是一個開放的市場。或許今后幾年，VMware還會繼續領跑。Viridian的到了Intel和AMD的支持，這使得Viridian具備了VMware這樣第三方產品所不具備的硬件支撐平臺。虛擬機不僅能更全面的發揮客戶服務器的能力，還可以節省空間、能源、成本等等，此外，虛擬機對整合系統的兼容性、健壯性增強也有不言而喻的好處。現在的情況是，多數服務器85%的CPU時間都是被浪費掉了的。把這些不計其數的處理器資源利用起來，可謂是意義重大。

#2：全新的命令行工具（PowerShell）

過去的兩年，我們得到的消息是：PowerShell將會是Longhorn的組件，但并非真正意義上的組件，而是一個可以免費下載并支持Longhorn的工具。現在我們已經明確的了解到，PowerShell這個全新的命令行工具，將會作為對圖形管理界面的一個補充而隨系統一起發布。在上周的WinHEC上，來自微軟的Windows Server程序主管Iain McDonald甚至這么來評價PowerShell，”如果我有權決定的話，我更傾向于把PowerShell作為Windows的默認界面“。

#1：核心服務器（Server Core）

想像一下吧，微軟的服務器未來：低開銷的集群、虛擬化、無GUI界面的DHCP或是DNS服務器，這些全部由一個終端來進行控制。如果你是Unix或者Linux的管理員，你或許會覺得不屑一顧。然而，這個問題卻是過去10年間Windows作為服務器的一大硬傷。一臺不必運行任何應用程序的服務器需要32位顯示色么？需要DirectX、ADO和OLE么？為何Windows非要給自己加上不必要的負擔？時至今日，在Windows Server 2008中，這樣的負擔終于成為了可選項目。微軟的專家稱，Beta 3版的Server 2008已經可以擔當8種不同的角色，而最終版本還會更多。在適當的配置下，管理員可以通過本地的GUI界面來管理遠程Server Core服務器的安裝，并且使用3389（TCP）端口開甚至通過DNS來進行對Server Core的各種管理。在加入”組件化“的.NET支持后（目前Server Core不支持.NET框架），我們將看到PowerShell、WMI（Windows Management Instrumentation）、.NET Framework這三駕馬車的協同作戰，微軟有史以來操控性最強的服務器系統即將呈現在我們的眼前。