Why Windows 8 server is a game-changer
Windows Server "8" beta is out, and everyone reading this should sit up and take notice. This isn't a boring iteration on a previous server operating system wherein a few tweaks have been achieved and nothing really changes. Server 8 - along with the suite of associated 2012-ish server applications - is nothing short of a …
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Re: Apple in the enterprise
I stand by everything I've said here. I have set up my test labs for Server 8, SC 2012 (especially SCVMM), SQL 2012 and so forth. I am still running them today, running all sorts of tests for future articles.
But comments which state that I have an "unconditional love" for something or other really just defeat your own point. You are not only hyperbolising, but using entirely fallacious extrapolations to label me "a Mac user," state that I am somehow trumpeting "iPads for everyone," or that I, personally am holding up Apple as the be-all-and-end-all of a platform for graphic design.
Let me be entirely blunt here: you are full of shit and you don't have a clue what you are talking about.
If you care so much about BYOD, why Windows-on-the-endpoint is not actually a requirement of enterprise computing anymore or any of the other topics discussed here, then simply stay tuned. I am sure they will all be addressed in future articles. (I have several planned that cover these topics.)
As a side note: I am unsure why your inability to set up a cluster in a Microsoft environment (something for which there are many detailed walkthroughs available) should in some way be projected onto the entirety of the systems administration community. Nor do I understand why your inability to use previous generation software to do so has any relevance whatsoever to the ease of doing so in Server 8. There’s a push-button wizard for setting up private cloud clusters, for $deity’s sake!
I believe you should take some time to investigate the concept “theory of mind.” It is relevant and applicable to your comments.
Call me cynical but...
... haven't we been here before? Embrace, extend and extinguish.
Re: Call me cynical but...
Brings to mind the words of George Santayana:-
Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.
and while we're there:-
Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished to readily.
Bring back TS2 seminars if you wanna push it right
Back when Microsoft was preparing for 2003's eminent release it held numerous TS2 seminars around the country. Essentially free training and pretty cool door prizes. It was thanks to these seminars that I began an empire of 2003 and SBS 2003 deployments.
Do the same with 8.
Paris, an empire.
...and in a short post Microsofts success is explained
Bribe the right people.
Re: ...and in a short post Microsofts success is explained
Offering free training on an upcoming product to technically adept people is win, IMNSHO. Call it bribery, if you desire. I know a number of people doing the same work I do, some longer than me, who didn't have a secure footing to sell or use 2003 to its fullest potential. I, on the other hand, was ready to go as soon as it hit the ground.
It was a great benefit to me, and to Microsoft, to have technically-capable presenters put on these TS2 seminars to show not just the front-line feature sets but also show the really "neat" things they know can be done with the system. Was the same for Windows Mobile and its ActiveSync integration. I can not only work with, but also push and support, a product much better with good training up-front.
And it's not just Microsoft: when I was a shoe-dog in a previous life, Nike, Reebok, Asics, and others often sent training materials which delved into some of the technical aspects of the various shoes. Regional, and I believe store managers, also went to training in which reps from the company made similar presentations.
So, yeah. I'll play with Server 8 and Hyper-V 8 (hoping that the later corrects the 2003 server lock-up issue present in Hyper-V 2008 R2,) but having a live presentation is golden.
Paris, golden, too.
Re: ...and in a short post Microsofts success is explained
Bizarrely...Microsoft Virtual Academy is proving to be actually useful for this role. They had a bunch of really pants tracks, but the newer stuff has proven to be really good. You should really check out the SCVMM 2012 tracks to see what I mean.
You will walk away being able to use the thing.
Re: Microsoft Virtual Academy
Thanks. I'll definitely give it a look-see. I've generally found in the past that webinar-style offerings and on-line videos don't work well for me. Not sure what it is, but being in the same room as another meat-bag seems to impress information better for me. And SCVMM is a huge target for me, right now, so it'll be worth the look.
To belabor the point, a little, the in-person events also give a great opportunity to network with other in-the-trench workers.
Paris, in the trenches.
Re: Microsoft Virtual Academy
It isn't optimal. But it might just be "good enough." I was floored when I actually learned something from one of the MVA tracks. They've come a long way since they started that site.
In the nick of time
Here's hoping they'll keep the interface of Win7, that way I can make use of the new Win8 functionality without having to run 'Metro'. Maybe MS should introduce a Windows Server 8 Lite version, you know, something you'd run on your laptop. Reading the comments about Win8, I believe there might be a burgeoning market opportunity there.
As for PowerShell, it is the one thing MS have done since, well, ever, that is actually any good.
Hmm.....
Well after about 2 decades of broken promises from Microsoft one should be cautious.
There are essentially 2 problems I see here:
1. How many of those new features will be available in the standard version, how many will require 3rd party software?
2. There is a large amount of legacy software out there running on Windows (server). Software which often needs a GUI despite being a server. Software that nobody dares to touch, let alone integrate with Powershell. So you won't exactly get much use out of it. You'll still end up with trying to debug buggy software written in the 1990s by someone who didn't quite understand his programming language nor the operating system he's using. (I admit have been one of those programmers back then)
Re: Hmm.....
When you need to support that kind of legacy software isn't that where HyperV could step in?
It's sounding mature enough to consider and of course, as a bonus, any vulnerabilities or issues with the 'buggy software written in the 1990s' are kept under control in a virtual machine rather than messing up the nice clean host server.
Re: Hmm.....
Well but why use a Windows host then? It can just as well run on a Linux host, which people already do for years. So no change here.
Re: Hmm.....
The advantage here is that the OS itself can be better managed from the command line/PS which will please a lot of admins.
Applications are a completely different ballgame, they are the responsability of the developer, not Microsoft..
Re: Hmm.....
The beauty of Unix, and why command lines are so useful on Unix is that most programs work with text which you can easily process at your command line. If it wasn't for the integration of nearly all programs into the command line it would be virtually useless.
Besides you could control many aspects of a Windows system for years on the command line. For example the whole "networking" stack was accessible via the "net" command. You could even start and stop services that way. So again, maybe some improvements, but nothing "game changing".
@Christian
Its simple really.. If the applications support the current administrative models (WMI, RPC) then they can be controlled using PowerShell (to a certain extend anyway).
Most applications I came across already supported RPC calls thus allowed remote administration out of the box anyway. An example of that could be hMailServer. I have an "admin section" installed on my local Win7 client and can use that to remotely connect to both servers (through RPC).
So there's nothing really new there. As to no GUI; it doesn't matter. In my example above I'm already using the gui part on my client (and the server part without a GUI).
Re: @Christian
You're lucky then, so far much of what I've seen didn't provide such interfaces. If you are lucky the server installs as a system service.
Finally...
Microsoft gets a clue about server OSs: " everything in Server 8 can be manipulated via APIs and PowerShell scriptlets. GUIs are simply ease-of-use layers that offer a visual method of scriptlet control."
What are the chances of MS dropping the name "Windows" from "Windows Server 8" altogether? Otherwise it'll be the world's most inappropriately-named OS...
Re: Finally...
Personally, I hope they do. The thing isn't named yet, and Server doesn't deserve to be shackled with references to the abomination that is Windows 8. How can a company produce two products with such completely different cultures? Server is about giving you the tools to do what you want, how you want as easily as is possible.
Windows 8 is about telling you to change how you do everything, because MS knows best, and it’s all for your own good. I can’t believe these two operating systems are made by the same company. Boggles the mind.
Here's hoping Microsoft obtains clue, and simply calls it "MIcrosoft Server."
No bloody A, B, C or D.
Re: Finally...
Keep in mind that everything is optional and that CLI usage isn't mandatory. So people can basically decide for themselves what they want to use, the old remote desktop will still be available for those that want it.
Of course; with Server 8 that also means having to deal with Metro which I'm sure will scare a lot of people away. It seems MS is convinced that those people will then resort to using the CLI but quite frankly I'm not convinced. Not upgrading to this particular server version is also a liable option.
You don't have to miss out on PowerShell either; this is even available for MS Server 2003.
Server team should do the desktop OS too.
I read a lot before about how the server team was doing a better job than the desktop team, especially when it came to security. It'd be a great thing to see them build the desktop product as well, it would save me running the server OS and getting the "This won't work on a server OS" error message.
Re: Server team should do the desktop OS too.
I and others have been making that argument for years.
What few people realise is that the kernel core is identical between server and workstation and has been for many years. Whilst Vista got hammered, Server 2008 with the same kernel ran appreciably faster and was far more stable. Indeed, I ran Server 2008 with the desktop add-on instead of vista and was quite happy.
There are only two differences that happen when the kernel core is delivered to the two teams. A series of registry tweaks to optimise the performance profile for either sever or workstation. The second thing that happens is each team puts its "apps" on top of the kernel. The apps in the server are typically services that require strict standards compatibility and are only allowed in the build if they have passed rigorous testing.
On the other hand it seems that the workstation team can chuck in any bloated, crap app that is the current "cool" flavour of the month. The result is that the workstation runs slow and crashes. You really wouldn't believe that it's the same kernel.
There is another factor, though. When people install a server they usually do so on better quality hardware. Expecting a workstation build to run as well on a $500 PC compared to a $10000 server machine is not realistic, but people do blame the o/s rather than their pockets.
Hardly as exciting as you make it IMO
And the reason for that is that all those cool features (IMO they really are) which will directly affect us sysadmin's aren't exactly new.
Why I'm not that much impressed here? Well; don't take this the wrong way: I think PowerShell by itself is an /awesome/ development when it comes to Windows systems administration. Its very flexible, very versatile and best of all: because its build on .NET it also allows you to fully utilize whatever .NET provides you with. Add support for WMI objects to the mixture and I think it becomes obvious why PowerShell can be very exciting for systems administrators.
But the underlying foundation, even with PowerShell 3.0 (better put: Windows Remote Management 3.0) is still based on .NET and WMI. The main differences in this new version are mainly aimed at supporting File and Storage and virtualisation ("fallback") services. Not that surprising given that this server version has overhauled that section.
So not really exciting. Its nice that we now have a NET TCP/IP Cmdlet "Get-NetIPAddress" but honestly; there's nothing new here which can't already be done:
Get-WmiObject Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration -Filter "IPEnabled = True"
This gets me the settings of all network devices which have been setup with TCP/IP support /and/ have an IP address assigned (this only gives you a selection of info; if you want it all (or filter it yourself) pipe it into "Format-List").
Sure, having a single Cmdlet can be easy, but do you honestly think us sysadmin's haven't made our own functions for this stuff by now ?
As such I don't think this is as exciting as its being presented here. Truth be told; I'll take Server 2008 over this one any time; Metro is too intrusive and time consuming.
very active participants within the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA),
In my experience that means "working very hard to block any open standards that might threaten their proprietary interfaces"
Server - Ha!
Why should there be a difference between "server" and "workstation" (desktop, phone whatever)? Sometimes I want my computer to be a server and sometimes a desktop and usually both. Why should we have to bother with the arbitrary difference?
The answer is nearly as old as IT - it's a marketing thing. You pay more for a server OS than you do a workstation OS.
I don't exactly run the "usual" stuff on my systems - (Gentoo) Linux everywhere but I do get to decide what constitutes each system.
Some are "servers" eg my rather popular mail n web proxies which have no GUI at all apart from a few web apps or my home MythTV backend (with added PBX n fileserver goodness and no GUI apart from web apps).
My laptop has Squid and Dans Guardian on it - handy for hotel WiFi or tethered surfing. Oh and it has Samba for those times when I have to shuffle multi GB ISOs to my customer systems and Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL and a lot more for demos, playing and other stuff.
Is it a "server"??
Who gives a shit - I've got wobbly windows! and your OS looks crap - and so will Windows 8 "server"
Cheers
Jon
Re: Server - Ha!
I forgot to mention that this horrifically inexpensive thing has a rather good NFS implementation and it speaks CIFS*.
Oh and is Kerberized (http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Kerberos_Windows_Interoperability) to the point that I can deal with nearly all MS offerings and a lot more - mmmm Single Sign On.
* This article speaks of SMB (from memory - I can't be arsed to hit the back button) v 2.2. Now IIRC SMB == CIFS, ie CIFS is a marketing change of name for Server Messaging Block - a good thing too, possibly, CIFS ?= Common Internet File System. I *think* Samba supports the latest protocols. I also seem to recall that Samba is nowadays the de facto reference implementation for CIFS (MS use it for testing *their* efforts)
Sorry for the ramble ...
Re: Server - Ha!
SMB != CIFS!
Why you should never again utter "CIFS": http://t.co/ZgTej3NU
Re: Server - Ha!
Sorry, you're absolutely correct - why should I refer to that nonsense as I have for the last n {n:n?=15} years, when a far better nomenclature existed - silly me.
Server Message Block is clearly a better name than Common Internet File System any day.
I'm sure that I'll mend my ways for using Samba for the last 15+ years and getting my pronunciation and/or abbreviations wrong.
Cheers
Jon
Thanks, Linus
My thoughts in reading all this were simply that someone must have put a petard under the seats of Microsoft's management. Radical improvements to their server offering? Why would they do such a thing? Oh, yeah, they've noticed that they are losing market share in servers because its one area where FOSS offerings really can offer exactly the same functionality for most customers. Another such area is web browser, where we saw MS doing sweet FA for several years after IE6, until Firefox came along and started hoovering up market share. MS suddenly discovered a need to create a more standards compliant browser and (a couple of revisions later) have pretty much managed it.
But why the Metro interface
As good as the server is, or may be, I'm still aghast at the way Microsoft have forced the use of Metro on the server. Why ?
How many servers are going to be run on a touchpad ? Server management is typically done by power users who use rapid keyboard shortcuts and mouse clicks. They also tend to have multiple apps open side by side to compare and swap information. Metro makes this virtually impossible.
Yes, PowerShell has been around for a long time now and can be very useful and powerful. But when it comes to administering servers I still need my multiple management apps open.
Metro on the server is a big big fail as far as I'm concerned.
Re: But why the Metro interface
Why you ask?
Obviously it is so you can enjoy of an enormous clock in the login screen, and never miss the time... ever!
Re: But why the Metro interface
Your arguments against Metro apply to the desktop, too, and it is being pushed there regardless. I think Microsoft just feel they have to push their phone UI everywhere. They want the same market share in phones as they have in the desktop space.
Let's hope they get what they wish for. :)
On the other hand, if they've made a genuine effort to mitigate this by making the Powershell UI a complete solution, you might (in this coming version) be able to do without your multiple management apps.
Really?
"Windows Server 8's equally radical approach is to provide us with the ability to do whatever we want to do in as open and standards-compliant a manner as is possible."
Sorry but FreeBSD has long been providing the ability to do what you want in a much more open manner than Microsoft will ever allow. It's used by those in know and professionals for a reason - it checks the boxes that matter for a server OS, namely security, stability and all-round robustness.
Microwho?
Are those guys still going? Wow. It's like 1998 all over again.
Pig, Lipstick and Parachute
So MS has hired a cosmetics expert to "smarten up" their pig called Windows. Now it surely is the prettiest pig in town. Also, they dropped the pig down the Grand Canyon with a parachute attached. That makes A Pretty Pig Which Can Fly !
Less metaphorically, it is interesting that MS can read ElReg, where I have blasted them in the past for not having proper commandline support. They got rid of the CTO who called Google the "commandline of the internet" in an attempt to ridicule them, of course. That was the idiot who foisted Lotus Notes on innocent little kids and office drones.
I am currently porting a C++ Windows app on win7/64bit and it is slow like a snail as compared to the 32bit version. After some profiling and looking at MS code I know why this is the case, but I will not go into the specifics here, like I did with my analysis of the benefits of the CLI as opposed to a GUI. Do your homework yourself !
Suffice to say that just using standard techniques from algorithms and data structures would boost performance of that particular windows library code from O(N) to O(1). Knowing this kind of mistakes from debugging explains why Google simply steamrolls them with things like Chrome. All they need to do is to apply well-known techniques in a thorough manner instead of being lazy retards who just aim to "meet deadlines" and "be feature-complete".
But I am sure there is a sufficient supply of PHBs out there to sell this contraption in serious numbers for in-serious application scenarios like serving files for 20 or less users.
Here's a nickel boy, get yourself a CentOS CD.
A day late a penny short. It's great that they care now, but we are in the post of era. Cloud is where it's at, and they are at the bottom of the barrel in that landscape.
Windows server 8 - broken before launch.
I've lost track of how many features of a modern OS I'd have to lose to use this nonsense.
It's not even released and yet it's still behind.
The last effort called itself 2008, after that was 2008 (R2) and going back was 2003 et al. Shit marketing.
Why on earth would anyone get excited by this?
Cheers
Jon
So, let me get this straight...
On the one hand, we have an operating system with over 20-ish years of history and development behind it, that consists, essentially, of a kernel derived initially from MINIX, onto which a ton of services, tools and applications have been piled on. These were cherry-picked from the likes of BSD and its peers over a period of 10-20 years, without much effort put into making them play nice with each other.
None of these applications are particularly consistent in how they interact with the user and his preferred shell. One tool will return a simple value, or a string. Another may return text file in its own peculiar format. Another will return a text file in yet another format. So I need to write glue code that parses these files and processes them before handing them to a third tool for further crunching. On top of that, these tools and applications are rarely consistent. Some might prefer one escape character system; another might just require everything be in quotes. A third might accept regular expressions, while another does not. Some might support Unicode at the CLI level, others might not. Or the CLI itself might not do so properly. So I have to jump through a bunch more hoops to get it to recognise, say, an IDN-compliant domain name.
But, hey! That's what scriptable shells are for, right? Who cares if it takes me more time and effort to get things done?
*
On the other hand, I have a server that provides me with tools, services and applications that all work seamlessly together, with a single, standardised textual user interface.
No need for extensive glue code: you just point one tool at another and they already know how to communicate properly. PowerShell supports Unicode too, so no worries there regarding localisation. (Note to UNIX fans: not everybody speaks US English. Nor should they have to.)
Nor do I need to keep a stack of reference docs to remind me which peculiar formatting quirk or command-line parameter sequence each tool requires. Learn one and you've learned them all. All these tools just work together, as if they'd been crafted by the same mind, instead of by a thousand different minds over a period of 20-odd years—in some cases, while clearly either drunk, or stoned out of their minds.
*
Microsoft has done an Apple on their server by aiming for a consistent user* experience. Seriously: this is exactly how I'd have expected Apple to design OS X Server, if they hadn't already bought in a BSD-derived OS as their starting point. It's absolutely spot on. I wish I'd had this when I was administering a college network ten years or so back.
Incidentally, .NET is an industry standard. Last time I checked, the Common Language Infrastructure was a full-on ISO standard. You can claim some tinfoil hat shenanigans if you like, but I'm afraid that doesn't change the fact that it really, truly, is an honest-to-god ISO standard. Deal with it.
* (By which I mean the server administrator, not end users at the far end of the chain.)
Deluded Lemmings
On the one hand we have an entire family of interoperable operating systems that have been doing the heavy living for business and the Internet for decades. They have a time tested design and a stable common interface. They don't need to indulge in so much "game changing" because they got it right the first time (or at least close enough).
The "clone of minix" is just one example. Trying to belittle it won't erase the rest.
"server" and "game changer" kind of have no business together. If you don't understand this then you really have no clue about any of this.
About as straight as a non-EU-standard-conforming cucumber
If you mean 'linux', er, no, it bloody well wasn't 'derived from minix'. Minix is a microkernel, linux never was. There's actually a fair bit of interesting academic bickering between ast and linus about it. Well-known, if you catch my drift.
Agree with the shoddy interfacing linux system tools tend to deliver, with a couple footnotes. Gets worse with the stuff done to "embedded" versions (busybox comes to mind). The people writing those things clearly didn't really understand how to make a tool generate output useful for other tools. Or humans, for that matter. A well-regulated unix (*BSD for one^Wa few) has very little of that problem. utf-8 itself was designed to pass right through non-utf8-aware tools, so shouldn't be a problem. What is a problem is incessant utf8-ising like, oh, certain manpage collections that then get dumped on your terminal verbatim even if it isn't configured for utf8. (And some of that actually gets worse when using provided-for-the-purpose GUIs.) Certain linux distributions have that much worse than others. Generally the ones with the spiffiest graphical installer. How coincidental. Bit of a pity most people that've even seen outside windows only saw 'linux', often only one with exactly such a spiffy installer. There's much better to be had, which is one of the industry's best-kept public secrets. On such a well-regulated system, scripting is not a chore.
And otherwise? Install your fave programming language and script in that. perl, python, ruby, java if you must. You have so many options it's not funny any longer. It's also quite easy to set the locale to something sensible (generally 'C' and certainly NOT 'en_US' since collation is pants there) to make tools behave predictably for the tools reading their output, and put it back for the back-end that talks to humans. Personally I still go with 'C' locale --named that way for a reason, too-- for just about everything despite not being a native speaker of English at all--if I need better support for displaying the other languages I speak I tend to en_GB.ISO8859-1. But then that's just how I grew up with the thing, and error messages in a different language would require more thinking, not less.
And that horribly gratuitously overloaded acronym a honest iso standard? Knowing that is about as useful as that other iso standard by the same company. Alright, a hair more useful, as the other has zero conforming implementations. This one might have one, tied to a specific platform, the other option is usually behind a release and somehow never fully 100% compatible. Gee, whodathot. It certainly makes sense for redmond to push it as they've planned to do for years and years. For the rest of us, especially those in heterogenous environments, maybe not quite as much.
On a related tangent: It really is quite amazing how their dealings with getting their stuff into 'onest iso standards managed to diminish the iso standardisation process in the process. It became a required tickbox item in their 'war against the competition', so they ruthlessly went and threw resources (getting their 'most valued partners' to sign up and vote, or else!) at the problem until they Ticked That Box, Booyah! Those quite transparently astroturfers then didn't show up for subsequent votes for other standards, giving rise to quorum problems. Maybe not the best argument to show how shiny happy and nicely washed their faces are to the world.
Re: So, let me get this straight... OK, I'll help you
"On the one hand, we have an operating system with over 20-ish years of history and development behind it, that consists, essentially, of a kernel derived initially from MINIX, onto which a ton of services, tools and applications have been piled on. These were cherry-picked from the likes of BSD and its peers over a period of 10-20 years, without much effort put into making them play nice with each other."
Here's your missing detail. GNU/Linux scales. All the way down (wristwatch and probably the coming nanocomputers) and all the way up (bare IBM mainframe big iron? Sure, if you really want to, but it would make so much more sense to run tens of thousands of zLinux virtual instances under the original and still industrial-strength virtualiztion OS, now badged z/VM, because z/VM is superior to KVM). Microsoft operating systems don't scale.
I do feel a need to point out Linus used the POSIX standard to develop his kernel and the differences between kernel 1.0 and 3.0 are what you would expect after two decades of serious development. 'nix rules the networks by virtue of merit, plain and simple.
not true
Derived from Minix, you say? How certain are you?
As far as
>>None of these applications are particularly consistent in how they interact with the user and his preferred shell. One tool will return a simple value, or a string. Another may return text file in its own peculiar format. Another will return a text file in yet another format. So I need to write glue code that parses these files and processes them before handing them to a third tool for further crunching. On top of that, these tools and applications are rarely consistent.<<
It's all baloney. Not "peculiarly consistent" ? Why would they almost all the time they work so flawlessly in pipes?
After all this surreal stanza how one would believe in "I have a server that provides me with tools, services and applications that all work seamlessly together, with a single, standardised textual user interface..."?
As ever before M$ begot another freak, it calls to its loyal trolls to make it fly. Pardon me, not really interested.
Windows is slowly turning into a bad clone of Unix.
Slowly but surely, Windows is turning into a bad clone of Unix. Given enough time it will start to resemble the awful proprietary non-unix minicomputer operating systems of the 1980's. Imagine that: decades after killing off Novell, Microsoft finally figured out that it's not really a great idea to have an operating system with a GUI that can't be turned off!
Since we see that Microsoft is building a poor imitation of unix, why not just get ahead of them and use a true state-of-the-art unix such as Linux?
Game changer indeed
When Bob Muglia walked the plank you had to know something new and interesting was on the way from Server & Tools. It's even more amazing than I had hoped for.
Microsoft's incredibly popular, remarkably fluid, socially savvy phone interface. With integrated Facebook, Skype and Twitter. On your enterprise domain controller.
Why didn't I think of that?
Another example...
Of /why/ PowerShell is honestly a /power/ shell environment when it comes to Windows administration. However, this is also another example as to why this new server (I'm focusing on the Windows Remote Management 3.0 part obviously) isn't hardly as game changing as the author makes it.
The fun thing is is that PowerShell is full Object Oriented commandline environment (OOCLI ?). You don't deal with mere text or collections; you're dealing with objects which can all have their own unique properties, functions and methods. To make this even more interesting; it also fully supports the Windows Component Object Model (COM).
I'd say its pretty much common practice to check for software updates on a computer (be it server or client) every now and then, and when you have a few of those it can be tedious if you need to logon to all of them individually...
That is where PowerShell & COM can come in:
$WUSession = New-Object -ComObject "Microsoft.Update.Session"
$updates = $WUSession.CreateUpdateSearcher().Search("IsInstalled=0 And Type='Software'").Updates
Now "$updates" contains all the update descriptions. To get a good overview (and also if an update has already been downloaded and/or installed yet) simply process the collection of objects:
$updates | Format-List -Property Title, isDownloaded, isInstalled
Now that is what I call power at your fingertips. This beats having to logon to remote computers using remote desktop only to see if there are updates available! Imagine running this with one command across all your servers or clients... Oh wait, you can ;-)
SO, back to the article.. There is a lot of new stuff for PowerShell, sure. But what about software updates ?
No, there isn't any. Yes, it supports 'Windows Server Update Services' (Wsus) but that is /not/ the same. That is an infrastructure which can run on your server to distribute updates towards your clients. Ideal in an enterprise environment, but what about small to mid-size Windows networks which may even have chosen to perform maintenance on the clients manually ?
So more precisely... Its nice that they added Cmdlets for something as trivial as requesting information about your tcp/ip settings, but why haven't they added native support to allow people to check up more easily on Windows updates ?
It took me quite some time to 'hack' that COM class (Microsoft.Update.Session) by searching & studying MSDN but getting information about my network adapters took me no longer than 5 minutes (that starts with "Get-WMIObject -List *network*" for example).
SO pardon me for not being all that impressed yet with the current updates to PowerShell.
inventing a square wheel?
The PS' syntax looks ugly to me so far. One can wonder why hasn't there been a single OO shell yet?
It might be because it would be ugly, overcomplicated stuff? BTW, to check if there are any updates available with aptitude I do: "sudo aptitude update" with && sudo aptitude safe-upgrade"
I read how Microsoft explains its way to reinvent a square wheel by saying that it suits Windows environment the most. Well, get outside this env. and try parsing some html, yes, it is text. So what you're gonna do without sed, awk, grep, perl and such?
Hence, call me when M$ gets to finally reinvent a more circular wheel.
just so long as we can install windows 8 and change a reg key to turn it into server 8, everything will be fine.
Windows Server 8
One thing that article author did not mention is that most of the "Standards based" changes to Windows Server 8 were due to fact that Microsoft does not own these add-on feature technologies and therefore must conform to copyright use on "Open source" functionality added or they could not implement all of the features it wished due to restrictions placed on their software use.
The "Wow" he expressed about the file system is sorely over stated as Microsoft burrowed "what it could" from Oracle ZFS file system, whereas Operating Systems like Solaris and FreeBSD use the full power and flexibility of ZFS.
How second rate is therefore it's grandiose Windows 8 file system.
Almost every thing referenced by author is standard fare for UNIX/Linux for many years. He need to get a life.
Re: Windows Server 8
It's the Opera syndrome.
In browsers, Opera has everything first but implements it in a bag-of-shit way that you have to be brainwashed into a cult-like state to accept.
*nix server administration works much the same way.
Luckily, for browsers, we have Firefox but MS have now actually made IE9 usable, standards-compliant and fast.
Server 8 is IE9 server. All the cool toys from *nix packaged in a way that doesn't make non-cultists want to vomit.
Re: Windows Server 8
It is obvious that this commenter and several others are totally ignorant about modern *nix administration, as there are excellent tools sets available for that purpose that are easy to use, unless one has only the "brain dead" mentality of most Microsoft Windows Server admins, who generally only understand software admin developed to the lowest common denominator for intelligent beings.
All these feeble attempts to distract others from facts that Linux and Unix Operating Systems - the better known and quality releases - have always been more flexible, scalable (PC base to Super computer), secure -need we say more, and significantly better ROI than any iteration of Windows server -even when it is Free.
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