Part 1 – Windows Server 2008 Core – Installation

Have been quite absent over Christmas and New Years, sorry about that. Renovating at home, a new wallpaper and a lot of repainting. But now it’s actually done so it’s back to business.

Today I (quite proudly) present the first in a series of God knows how many videocasts.

In this one, part 1, I cover the installation of Windows Server 2008 Core. We’re gonna play a lot more with Windows Server 2008 Core during the next months, but this is the beginning.

What’s Server Core you ask? Windows Server 2008 Core is a separate installation option, which installs a minimal version of Windows Server 2008. The GUI is removed and all that’s left is a command prompt.

You can read more about Windows Server 2008 Core here:

http://blogs.technet.com/server_core/ - Server Core Team blog, most (all?) posts by Andrew Mason (Mr. Server Core, sorry Andrew…)

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/servercore.mspx - Information from Microsoft about the Core alternative

The Server Core installation option of Windows Server 2008 has some advantages:

• Reduced maintenance – Because the Server Core installation option installs only what is required to have a manageable server roles supported in Server Core, less maintenance is required than on a full installation of Windows Server 2008.
   
• Reduced attack surface – Because Server Core installations are minimal, there are fewer applications running on the server, which decreases the attack surface.
   
• Reduced management – Because fewer applications and services are installed on a server running the Server Core installation, there is less to manage.
   
• Less disk space required – A Server Core installation requires only about 1.5 GB of disk space to install and approximately 2 GB for operations after the installation. (The pagefile you know…)

Behold, part 1: 800×600, duration approx. 11 minutes, about 20 mb’s in size:

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