blog.jemm.net

To my delight the 32-bit version (x86) of the Windows Server 2008 is finally available at the TechNet Subscriber downloads (and probably for MSDN Subscribers, too)! The 64-bit version has been available for few days already, but I still can’t move to that on every server at work or home.

What’s so great? Well, for one, I can install Team Foundation Server 2008 on the Windows Server 2008. TFS 2008 isn’t supported on the x64 yet, so it needs the x86-version. Once I get more experience with the TFS, I’ll blog thoughts/tips about it.

Finally IIS7 on server

IIS7 must be the greatest web server available. Finally it can be deployed in production and web applications can utilize it fully. It is completely modular and everything you don’t need can be disabled to make it safer and lighter. ASP.NET integration is more efficient out of the box as there are less layers between the web server and the web application.

Server Core is now an option

Windows Server 2008 can be installed without the GUI (“Server Core”) so it is possible to make a web server (among other roles) with minimum hardware requirements and attack surface.

The only downside is that the .NET can’t be installed on it so ASP.NET on the server core won’t work for now. Luckily Microsoft is working on it. By the way, Server Core has only 25% of the full Window Server 2008 installation + add-ons, which tells something about the footprint. It requires about 1-2GB of disk space. The Server Core blog is good place for tips.

While waiting for the ASP.NET-support, even now you can use the server core with the web server role to distribute static content. Say, if you have a site that deals with a lot of images, you could distribute the images (i.e. images.mydomain.com) through these light-weight web servers to share the load more evenly. Also, Server Core could be used for maintaining DNS and Active Directory.

Now I’ll go back staring at the progress bar…