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I plan to upgrade my home/development server during the weekend from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008. Meanwhile I decided to install WS2008 on Virtual PC for future needs and to see how it looks and works.

I used the free Virtual PC 2007 for running the virtual machines on my work laptop. Here are the specs of the host, to put things in perspective:

First I installed Windows Server 2008 Standard and the setup was very simple: just language choices and which hard disk to install and that’s it!

After the setup is complete, you need to provide (a secure) password for the admin. After logging in, you can choose which server roles and features you need. This keeps the operating system in minimum and attack surface very small.

I was also surprised, how fast the setup was and the Windows Server 2008 booted really fast, even in the virtual machine.

Here is a screen shot quite soon after the install, with no added features or roles. Windows Server 2008 run smoothly with only about 1GB of dedicated memory and half of it was still free.

Next I wanted to install the Windows Server 2008 Core to practice and test what it could be used for. Maybe I could use it for running AD and DNS at home in a Virtual Server? Maybe to see how IIS7 could be used and extended in limited scenarios.

Anyway, here is a screen shot after installing the core on another virtual machine and login:

No GUI, just cmd.exe for user interface. It can be remote managed with MMC etc, but I’ll try and blog about it later. I dedicated about 600MB memory for the core and again WS2008 used about half. I’ll keep on testing, but I’m already convinced it is ready for production use.