Overview
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 is designed to provide organizations with the most productive platform for virtualizing workloads, powering applications, and protecting networks. It provides a secure, easy-to-manage platform for developing and reliably hosting Web applications and services. From the workgroup to the datacenter, Windows Server 2008 delivers with exciting, valuable new functionality and powerful improvements to the base operating system.

More Control
Windows Server 2008 gives IT Professionals more control over their servers and network infrastructure, allowing them to focus on critical business needs. Enhanced scripting and task automation capabilities, such as Windows Power Shell, help IT Pros automate common IT tasks. Role-based installation and management with Server Manager eases the task of managing and securing multiple server roles in an enterprise. The new Server Manager console provides a single source for managing a server's configuration and managing system information. IT staff can install only the roles and features they need, and wizards automate many of the time-consuming tasks of deploying systems. Enhanced system management tools, such as the Performance and Reliability monitor, provide information about systems and alert IT staff to potential problems before they occur.

Increased Protection
Windows Server 2008 delivers an array of new and improved security technologies, which increases operating system protection to provide a solid foundation for running and building a business. It delivers security innovations, such as Patch Guard, that reduce the attack surface of the kernel, resulting in a more secure, stable server environment. Windows Service Hardening helps keep systems safer by preventing critical server services from being compromised by abnormal activity in the file system, registry, or network. Security is also enhanced in the Windows Server 2008 operating system by means of Network Access Protection (NAP), Read-Only Domain Controller (RODC), Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) enhancements, Windows Service Hardening, a new bi-directional Windows Firewall, and next-generation cryptography support.

Greater Flexibility
Windows Server 2008 is designed to allow administrators to modify their infrastructure to adapt to the changing needs of the business and still remain agile. Flexibility has been enhanced for mobile workers using technologies that allow users to execute programs from any remote location, such as Remote and Terminal Services Gateway. Windows Server 2008 speeds the deployment and maintenance of IT systems with Windows Deployment Services (WDS), and aids in the consolidation of servers with Windows Server virtualization. For organizations that need domain controllers in branch offices, Windows Server 2008 offers a new configuration option: the Read-Only Domain Controller (RODC), which prevents user accounts from being exposed if the Domain Controller is compromised.

Security:
WSv helps increase security for consolidated servers and addresses the challenge of administrator role separation. WSv accomplishes this through the following features.

Strong Isolation
Server virtualization enables workloads with varying resource requirements to coexist on the same host server. WSv offers several features that facilitate effective usage of the host server's physical resources.

Performance
Design advances and integration with virtualization-aware hardware enable WSv to virtualize much more demanding workloads than previous versions, and with greater flexibility in resource assignment.
Many server workloads place heavy demands on server processing and I/O subsystems. Workloads like SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange are traditionally heavy users of memory and disk throughput, and there has been reluctance to virtualize these workloads.

Simplified Management
in the datacenters and remote branch office installations where WSv may be deployed, strong management and automation capabilities are required to fully realize the cost-reducing potential of virtualization. WSv meets this challenge with the following management and automation capabilities.

Extensible modular architecture
in previous versions of IIS, all functionality was built-in by default, and there was no easy way to extend or replace any of that functionality. As stated earlier, in IIS7, the core is divided into more than 40 separate feature modules. The core also includes a new Win32 API for building core server modules. Core server modules are new and more powerful replacements for Internet Server Application Programming Interface (ISAPI) filters and extensions. ISAPI filters and extensions are still supported in IIS7. Because all IIS core server features were developed using the new IIS7 Win32 Module API as discrete feature modules, users can add, remove, or even replace IIS feature modules.

Flexible extensibility model for customization
IIS7 enables developers to extend IIS to provide custom functionality in new, more powerful ways. This is, in part, due to the all-new core server application programming interface (API) set that allows feature modules to be developed in both native code (C/C++) and managed code (languages such as C#, and Visual Basic 2005, that use the .NET Framework). In fact, much of the IIS7 feature set for request and application processing has been implemented using these same APIs. IIS7 also enables extensibility for configuration, scripting, event logging, and administration tool feature-sets, providing software developers with a complete server platform on which to build Web server extensions.

True application xcopy deployment
IIS7 allows IIS configuration settings to be stored in web.config files, which makes it much easier to use xcopy to copy applications across multiple Web servers, and to avoid costly and error-prone replication, manual synchronization, and additional configuration tasks.

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