Some days ago, Microsoft announced Windows Server 2008 Foundation, a new version of Windows Server 2008 for small organizations. The announcement reads as if it is already available, but so far, it is not even available on MSDN or Technet. In this post, I will discuss the main features of Windows Server 2008 Foundation and share my opinion about Microsoft’s licensing policy.

• Windows Server 2008 Foundation is available through Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) only. As I understand it, this means you won’t be able to buy the operating system alone. You can only get it pre-installed, along with server hardware.
• Windows Server 2008 Foundation supports only up to 15 users. It doesn’t require client access licenses (CALs), and you can’t buy additional licenses if you have more than 15 users in your organization. However, you need Terminal Server CALs or Rights Management CALs if you intend to use these server roles.
• There are upgrade paths to higher-end versions of Windows Sever. Microsoft didn’t say yet if you have to then re-install the Windows Server 2008.
• Paul Thurrott says the price range will be between $150 and $200 for the software, and together with the server, you probably won’t pay more than $1000 for a Windows Server 2008 Foundation machine.
• Windows Server 2008 Foundation supports Active Directory, but you can only install a single domain controller.
• Windows Server 2008 Foundation will support all major server roles except Hyper-V.
• You can run it only on single processor machines. The CPU can have multiple cores, though.

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Microsoft published a couple of new step-by-step guides for Windows Server 2008. At least it seems so if you take the publishing date on the download page seriously (3/18/2008). However, many of them were already published in 2007 when Server 2008 was still in beta. This wouldn’t be a problem if the contents of the papers are still valid. This seems not always to be the case, though.

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Windows Server 2008 RTM has been out out for some days now. I suppose only the adventurous are running it already in a productive environment. Even if you’re not planning to deploy Windows Server 2008 in the near future, I recommend having a look at its new features now. Who knows, maybe there are one or two features that might convince you to install Microsoft’s latest server OS earlier than planned.

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I am somewhat surprised that Windows Server 2008 RTM came out before Vista SP1. You might have read my rant against “Windows Vista SP1 RTM”, yesterday. In my view, Vista SP1 wasn’t “released” yet. I read on several sites that Server 2008 is avaiable for MSDN and Technet subscribers. I just logged on with our account, but I only found the release candidate on MSDN and on Microsoft’s sites for Volume Licensing customers it didn’t show up at all.

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Some days ago, I discussed a couple of features that only come into play if Vista and Server 2008 work together. Today, I stumbled across another Microsoft page listing several of these features. Unfortunately, it also contains features that are available as extensions for Windows XP. However, some of them seem to be Vista/2008 only features.

First of all, I should note that I was quite surprised how difficult it is to find out what these “better-together features” really are. Microsoft’s marketing texts give hints, but they also do their best to disguise the real benefits of Vista+Server 2008. Journalists tend to just copy Microsoft, often without really understanding what it is all about.

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The adoption of Windows Vista in corporate environments is probably not as fast as Microsoft had hoped for. The question is, can Windows Server 2008 accelerate Vista adoption after it’s released? This certainly depends on the features that can only be used if you deploy Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista together. In this post, I examine all these features I am aware of.

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Some days ago, I mentioned that there are rumors that Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1 might come out on January 16^th. Well, as it turned out now, those were nothing other than rumors, even though they were spread by usually well-informed sources. InfoWeek reports that the original time schedule is still valid. That is, Windows Server 2008 will probably be released at the end of February.

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Another year of blogging on 4sysops passed by. It was a good year. The number of page views doubled and so did the number of subscribers. So I say thank you to my loyal readers, especially to those who didn’t agree with me often. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you might be interested to know which articles have been read most often.

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Windows Weekly has a nice webcast about Windows Server 2008. Paul Thurrott interviews Ward Ralston, group technical product manager for Windows Server 2008. The whole interview is about 50 minutes and gives a good overview for those who didn’t have time yet to deal with Microsoft’s new server OS. You can listen to it while playing with your Xmas presents. Merry Christmas to all Christians and a Merry Tuesday to the rest of the world!

You can download Windows Server 2008 RC1 now. Its most interesting new feature is the Group Policy Preferences. Microsoft integrated PolicyMaker in Windows 2008, a tool from DesktopStandard. They acquired this company in 2006. I had a quick look at it today and I must say it is an absolute killer feature.

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The apc magazine has a good article explaining Windows Essential Business Server (EBS) a.k.a. Centro. In a way, this is the big brother of Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 (SBS). SBS targets small businesses that have up to 75 clients and EBS is for organizations that have 25 to 250 computers. In this post, I summarized the apc article.

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There seems to be a new version of Windows Server 2008. Desmond reports that in the Windows Server 2008 Nov CTP, the license agreement mentions “RC1″. I suppose that means that Windows 2008 is now feature complete. I just checked the official download site. It still offers RC0. So only the privileged testers have access to the latest version. But, I guess, it won’t take too long until RC1 will be available to the public. I think that Microsoft gets on well with Windows 2008. I am playing with it since Beta 2, and all in all it makes a much more stable impression to me than Vista at this development stage.

Microsoft offers an update that allows you to manage WSUS 3.0 SP1 with Server Manager. I think this is the first non-Windows Server 2008 product that can be integrated in Server Manager. It seems that Microsoft is indeed copying the concept of Linux management tools such as SuSE’s yast.

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Microsoft detailed Windows Server 2008 prices. Compared to Windows Server 2003, they increased by 1% only. If you take inflation into account, then one has to admit that Windows Server got cheaper. This is interesting if you relate it to the price raise of Windows Vista.

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Microsoft offers a new tool that goes by the promising name Works With Tool for Windows Server 2008 (WWT). It allows you to test applications in order to see if they work properly under Windows Server 2008. Neil Hutson, a Microsoft evangelist, claims that you can “perform automated tests” with this free utility. I just played a little with the beta version today.

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