Paul Stovell says…

About a week ago I installed Windows Server 2008 on my laptop. That’s right; not on a VM, but on bare metal

The installation was fairly seamless. I downloaded the ISO from MSDN, burnt it, rebooted, popped it in and installed it. I expected a lot of things not to work - especially since I have a Tablet PC - but so far most of the important things "just work".

Why run Windows Server 2008 on my development machine? Here’s my reasoning:

• To match production. I’ll be deploying to 2008 soon, so I’m more likely to discover issues early.
• To familiarize myself. I ran Server 2003 for about a year before Vista, and it gave me lots of time to experience the differences between XP and 2003. When you build software, it pays to already be familiar with 2003 specific tools.
• To experience new features. Being able to use Windows Activation Services is a big plus for me.

While you could do all this on a virtual machine, my experience has been that VM’s tend to stay very "clean", because you use each one for a specific purpose. How will you discover that when feature A is installed after feature B and you have version Z of third party component Y, your application breaks?

Here’s some notes I’d share with fellow developers who want to run Windows Server 2008 on their laptops:

• Most of the Fujitsu Vista drivers work on 2008. Just go to their website and download them. They didn’t have drivers for 2003 so I don’t expect 2008 drivers any time soon, but fortunately most of the Vista ones work.
• You need to activate the Wireless feature. The installation recognized my wireless card, installed the right driver and activated it automatically. However, I was unable to detect any networks. It was only later as I was browsing the "feature" list (kind of like Add/Remove Windows Features) that I found the Wireless LAN Service. Just install that feature and away you go. 
• My pen works! Tablet PC functionality is installed on Windows Server 2008, and I can draw things in OneNote. However, I haven’t been able to get the Tablet PC Input Panel working, and OneNote doesn’t automatically switch between pen and mouse like it used to under Vista. It’s good enough for me though.
• The Snipping Tool isn’t installed. I’m so used to this tool, and I was close to rolling back to Vista because of it.
• VS 2008 and SQL Server 2005 work. I installed SQL Server first, then VS 2008 later. Ayende seems to have gone the other way around and encountered problems. My rule is, VS2008 came after SQL 2005, so it’s probably the safer to install it second.
• UAC is on, but not for administrators. So when you login as an administrator, you don’t get bugged, but for normal user accounts you do. Of course, you can turn it off too.
• Themes, Aero and Glass work. You just have to install the "Desktop Experience" feature and then start the Themes service.
• The Windows Live installer is a steaming heap of crap. The Windows Live installers (for Windows Live Messenger or Windows Live Writer) refuse to run on Windows Server 2008. I can think of no reason why. You can download the standalone MSI’s though from here: Windows Live Writer, Windows Live Messenger. They also work for Windows Server 2003 and XP 64bit.

Server Manager

One thing I love is the new Server Manager component, and specifically, Roles. We had these in Windows Server 2003, but they’ve gotten a little more advanced. My favorite feature, though, is the role viewer:

For each feature, you get an area that shows:

Any events in the Event Viewer related to that role:

The Windows Services used by the role, and their status:

The other services used by the role and whether they are installed:

Having a single place for this information makes it easy to troubleshoot issues related to the role. What I’m dying to find out, though, is how we can add our own Roles to the list. MMC has been extended to support .NET development, so we can create our own snapins easily, but I’m not sure if they can appear as roles. Does anyone know?

I figure if we’re going to train IT guys in administering IIS via this interface, they should be able to use it to administer our own LOB applications.

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