Important Features of Windows Server 2008

Before making any analysis of Windows Server 2008, it should be noted that this operating system was created to remedy most of the shortcomings of Windows Vista, above all as concerns security. But it was built on the same base code as Vista. Some of the most notable differences or improvements of Windows Server 2008 come from the fact that it “includes a variation of installation called Server Core. Server Core is a significantly scaled-back installation where no Windows Explorer shell is installed. All configuration and maintenance is done entirely through command line interface windows, or by connecting to the machine remotely using Microsoft Management Console.”
The main reason Server Core was used was to address security concerns Windows Vista and other previous operating systems were plagued by. To achieve this, the server was skimmed of some of the unnecessary features such as “.NET Framework, Internet Explorer, Windows PowerShell or many other features not related to core server features. A Server Core machine can be configured for several basic roles.”
Another noteworthy feature of Windows Server 2008 is Failover Clustering that provides that “most server features and roles can be kept running with little to no downtime. In Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, the way clusters are qualified changed significantly with the introduction of the cluster validation wizard… The cluster validation wizard is a feature that is integrated into failover clustering in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. With the cluster validation wizard, an administrator can run a set of focused tests on a collection of servers that are intended to use as nodes in a cluster. This cluster validation process tests the underlying hardware and software directly, and individually, to obtain an accurate assessment of how