The
introduction of Windows Server 2008 R2 added new server roles to
Windows as well as enhanced existing roles based on feedback Microsoft
received from organizations on features and function wish lists. Server
roles are no longer installed by default on a Windows Server 2008 R2
server and have to be selected for installation after the initial
installation of the Windows operating system.
Some of the new or improved
server roles in Windows Server 2008 R2 include Internet Information
Services 7.5, SharePoint Services, Rights Management Service, and
Windows virtualization.
Introducing Internet Information Services 7.5
Internet Information Services
7.5 (IIS) is the seventh-generation web server service from Microsoft.
Microsoft completely redesigned IIS 7.0 in Windows Server 2008 rather
than just adding more functions and capabilities to the exact same IIS
infrastructure as they have done for the past several years. The good
part of the new IIS 7.x is that it now provides organizations with the
ability to manage multiple web servers from a single console, rather
than having to install components and configure each web server
individually. This requires organizations to rethink and redesign their
web management tasks from pushing the same content to dozens of servers
individually to a process where information is pushed to a Shared
Configuration store, where common information is posted and shared
across all IIS 7.x servers. Organizations can continue to post
information the old way by pushing information individually to each
server; however, to gain the advantage of the new IIS 7.x services,
redesigning how information gets posted should be changed to meet the
new model.
The advantage of the new
model of content posting is that information is stored, edited, and
managed in a single location. At a designated time, the information in
the single location is posted to each of the servers in the shared
application hosting farm. This is a significant improvement for
organizations managing and administering a lot of IIS web servers. This
ensures that all servers in a farm are using the same content, have been
updated simultaneously, and any changes are ensured to be propagated to
the servers in the farm. Web administrators no longer have to worry
that they forgot a server to update, or to stage
an update at a time when each individual server could be updated in a
fast enough sequence that the experience of all users was going to occur
at around the same time.
Windows SharePoint Services
A significant update
provided as part of the Windows Server 2008 client access license (CAL)
is the ability to load and run Windows SharePoint Services. Now in its
third generation, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is a
document-storage management application that provides organizations with
the capability to better manage, organize, and share documents, as well
as provide teams of users the ability to collaborate on information.
Windows SharePoint Services sets the framework from which the Microsoft
Office SharePoint Services 2007 (MOSS) is built. MOSS leverages the core
functionality of WSS and extends the capability into enterprise
environments. WSS is the basis of document sharing and communications
for organizations in the evolution of file and information
communications.
Windows Rights Management Services
Windows Rights Management
Services (RMS) was available as a downloadable feature pack in Windows
2003 and is now included as an installable server role in Windows Server
2008 R2. Windows Rights Management Services sets the framework for
secured information sharing of data by encrypting content and setting a
policy on the content that protects the file and the information stored
in the file.
Organizations have been shifting
to RMS rather than the old secured file folder primarily because users
who should be saving sensitive information into a file folder frequently
forget to save files in the folder, and thus sensitive information
becomes public information. By encrypting the content of the file
itself, even if a file with sensitive information is stored in the wrong
place, the file cannot be opened, and the information in the file
cannot be accessed without proper security credentials to access the
file.
Additionally, RMS allows the
individual saving the file to set specific attributes regarding what the
person would like to be secured about the file. As an example, a
secured file in RMS can be set to not be edited, meaning that a person
receiving the file can read the file, but he or she cannot select
content in the file, copy the content, or edit the content. This
prevents individuals from taking a secured file, cutting and pasting the
content into a different file, and then saving the new file without
encryption or security.
RMS also provides attributes
to enable the person creating a file to prevent others from printing the
file. The file itself can have an expiration date, so that after a
given period of time, the contents of the file expire and the entire
file is inaccessible.
Windows Server Virtualization
A
new technology that wasn’t quite available at the time Windows Server
2008 shipped in 2008, but has since been released and available on the
original Windows Server 2008 R2 DVD, is Windows server virtualization
known as Hyper-V. Hyper-V provides an organization with the ability to
create guest operating system sessions, like those shown in Figure 1,
on a Windows Server 2008 R2 server to get rid of physical servers, and
instead make the servers available as virtual server sessions.
Instead of purchasing a
new physical server every time a new server system needs to be placed on
the network, a virtual server can be created that has all the same
operations and functions as the physical server itself. Or, for
organizations that are putting in place disaster recovery centers and
server clustering for better server reliability and redundancy,
virtualization allows the addition of these additional servers within
the guest operating system space of a single server system.
Virtualization in Windows
Server 2008 R2 supports 64-bit and 32-bit guest sessions; has a built-in
tool that allows a snapshot of a virtual session so that the session
can be protected or rolled back in the event of a guest image failure or
corruption; and has virtual sessions that can span terabytes of disk
storage and use 16GB, 32GB, or more of memory per guest session. Windows
Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V supports “live migrations,” which allows for a
faster failover and recovery of a virtual guest session across host
servers.
