Windows Server 2008

Using Windows Server 2008 as a desktop OS

Hi folks, as you know I have been trying out various OS’ as of late on my laptop to see how things work. I used to use Windows XP Professional for the longest time on my laptop but finally got bored of it and wanted a change.

The next thing I tried was Suse Linux but unfortunately it couldn’t do everything I wanted it to do due to the large amount of Microsoft centric programs I needed to run in my daily work. So what I did was dual booted Suse Linux and Vista and that seemed to suffice for quite some time. The downside of this was that Vista wasn’t that much better at running my Windows world apps either. That’s pretty sad in my opinion.

You see I need 64 bit in a Windows world so I can use more memory because I’m an avid user of VMware workstation. When you’re using lots of virtual machines on your laptop you need more RAM. There really is no way around it. Of course using VMware workstation under Vista isn’t the best case scenario. Basically my laptop would become way too sluggish. Not surprising, I really didn’t expect anything less.

So then I switched to Windows 7, and as you saw in my blog, I couldn’t really get too far due to the issues I had. But for what I was able to run I was impressed with it. Frankly, I can’t wait until Windows 7 comes out, I’m looking forward to it and I hope Microsoft gets it right this time.

So what did I do next? I wiped my hard drives clean and I installed my copy of Windows Server 2008 on my laptop. Talk about a huge difference! All my hardware worked perfectly and my laptop performed way better than Windows Vista! Who would have thought that a server OS would make a great desktop OS!?!? Anyways, I disabled all the unneeded features and services and I turned on the “desktop user experience” that is included with Windows Server 2008 to “Vistaify” the OS.

I have to say I have been pretty happy with this, and I think this is what I’m going to stick too as my OS until Windows 7 comes out. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

-RP

My Experience with Windows 7

Hi folks, so I tried out the recent beta of Windows 7 on my laptop having been absolutely fed up with my Vista 64 bit installation. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. My computer ran really slick as compared to the Vista OS. It looks like they ‘ve come a long way to making this OS better.

I didn’t experience any of the constant headaches that I was having with Vista. Things actually seemed to be running smoothly. I currently use Windows Server 2008 64 bit with the desktop experience enabled on my laptop and it runs great. I found that the Windows 7 installation ran quite similarly to Windows Server 2008 if not a little quicker.

I do have some gripes however. I got some really strange errors that seemed to be related to the .NET Framework when trying to install Microsoft Office 2007. I tried using the released .NET sdk and framework for Windows 7 that Microsoft released but it wouldn’t install. Also Windows updates worked for a while and then they completely bombed out. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the Windows updates part of Windows 7 working again. I can forgive these things for the time being because they are still in beta.

I have now wiped Windows 7 from my system and am using Windows Server 2008 as my laptop OS. I will try Windows 7 again on my laptop when the next release comes out.

-RP

VMWare’s ESXi vs Hyper-V, the details on what free really means

I was speaking to a co-worker today and he pointed me towards Mike’s blog at http://mikedatl.typepad.com/mikedvirtualization/2008/07/esx-35i-for-fre.html. After reading through it, it was obvious he had made some really great points.

 Microsoft has offered Hyper-V for free essentially with Windows 2008 but it doesn’t include the cost of Windows 2008 itself. ESXi on the other hand is a bare metal Hyper-visor which requires no OS for it’s installation and requires no purchase of Hyper-V.

 Also, in my humble opinion, once you grow out of the SMB market and start moving up, the features of VMWare trounce what Microsoft has to offer with Hyper-V. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Microsoft will continue to develop their offering and play catch up, but VMWare is there right now at what I find a very reasonable price.

 -RP

Windows 2008 and Itanium Feature Support

I recently tried to implement Windows 2008 on an HP Integrity server and wanted to share a bit about my experiences. One of the things that Microsoft says is they support Windows 2008 on an Itanium box.

 I was able to install Windows 2008 in Full installation mode on the Itanium box. The first thing I noticed is that there were only 2 roles available to me. I suppose I could install some Itanium based apps on the server and it would be good for that, but I couldn’t really use the box to do much else.

The other thing I noticed is that the much touted Windows 2008 Core mode installation is not supported on Itanium systems. As well there is no Hyper-V support on Itanium either. So realistically speaking, if you want to use a 64 bit system for Hyper-V you can’t use ia64, you are limited to x64.

So essentially unless you need to run something specific to Integrity servers you should  stick with x64.

 -RP

VMWare Tools in Windows Server 2008 Core

Hi folks, if you have ever used VMWare before, then you will be familiar with the VMWare Tools. This is a set of tools you can install into a guest os in VMWare to allow better functionality with your virtual machine. However this is a graphical install and it isn’t exactly clear how to run VMWare Tools if you have installed Windows Server 2008 in Core mode in your virtual environment.

Just recently I ran into this problem while running some testing and was able to do it by choosing to install VMWare tools first and then changing drive letters to the d:. Then I ran the setup.exe file to start the VMWare Tools installer.

This started the VMWare Tools gui. However this throws a DLL error on the screen. Just go to task manager during the install and kill the rundll process. Then click past any errors and the install should finish without a hitch. I used the “typical” install mode.

Then reboot the virtual machine and when the server comes back up you should have a working guest os with Windows Server 2008 Core and VMWare Tools installed!

-RP