Improvements in Server Roles in Windows Server 2008 R2

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, 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.

Source of Information : Sams - Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed