Integrating a large number of modules such as IIS7 What else can the Server2008 kernel do?

Microsoft recently announced that IIS7 will be integrated into the Server Core installation of the Windows Server 2008 operating system. Server Core is an important development in Microsoft server products, including a large number of roles, such as: servers, media services, Active Directory, DNS (Domain Name Server), DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol), and IIS7 network services that will be added. All of this will run in a lightweight, low-capacity mode—since installing a Server Core requires about 1GB of disk space and 2GB due to post-install. This means that although it is a Windows server, it is actually like running a special server role - taking up less disk, less memory, more security, less manual management, and so on. It also has a number of optional features for you to add to Server Core, such as subsystems for Unix applications, disk encryption bit locks, failover clusters, and more. Of course, Windows Server 2008 can still be used as a full-featured, general-purpose server operating system.

In the past few years, the author has built and run a lot of network server groups, so it can be said that it has the ability to put forward some small ideas. It has been found that role-based servers are structurally advantageous. In the past, Apache was used on Linux/BSDs to build custom services. Of course, you can still do this today. But what the author thinks can be exciting is that the release of IIS7 into Windows Server 2008 Server Core fully demonstrates the power of Windows Server 2008 – from a very modular, network server that takes up very little space, to the fullest Full-featured server

In addition, you may know that Microsoft has been working with Zend to make PHP work well on Windows Server. With the support of the new FastCGI (now integrated into IIS7), PHP can run very successfully on Server Core. So if you need a PHP web service that takes up minimal system resources, then you will be able to do this on Windows Server 2008. And it can be managed, maintained, updated, certified, and more like other Windows servers.

All of this gives developers and system administrators more choices. You can expect that we will develop in depth and add more specialized services and support for other technologies (such as .NET, etc.). For more information, check out Bill Staple's blog, which is working on IIS. You can download the latest Windows Server 2008 beta.