It took me months to convince my manager that I need a new laptop. Then it took me a few more to convince the IT department of the specification I needed (and to prise it out of their hands) but today I finally got my hands on it. It’s nothing special – I’d like a ThinkPad but, as my employer owns one half of Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, it is a Lifebook S7210 – and it’s not a bad machine either (especially as this one has 4GB of RAM in it). Why do I need that? Because I’m the technology lead for Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V in our Microsoft Practice – and I want to “dogfood” the technology.

The thing is, that Windows Server 2008 is not really a client operating system. Except it can be… Windows Server 2008 has a lot in common with Windows Vista and with a few tweaks, I had got it working just as as I want it. A Windows desktop on steroids really:

1. Step 1 is a notebook PC with hardware assisted virtualisation capabilities, No eXecute (NX)/eXecute Disable (XD) protection, and a 64-bit capable CPU. My Lifebook S7210 has all of those things, so on to step 2…
2. Next, I needed an operating system – Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition would do the trick (after all I only have a single CPU and won’t be clustering laptops!), but the licensing model for Windows Server and virtualisation lends itself to using Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition (64-bit).
3. Windows Server 2008 is not a supported operating system for this hardware but Windows Vista is. Installing x64 drivers for Windows Vista got my graphics and WiFi up and running but I still need to find drivers for some of the other components (like the built in card-reader).
4. Next, installing the server roles that I want to use – Hyper-V for starters. Just make sure that the BIOS support for Intel-VT or AMD-V and NX/XD is enabled first.
5. With the operating system installed, it’s time to get to work turning on some of the client features that are missing from a server operating system (thanks to Vijayshinva Karnure for his original post and subsequent follow-up, as well as this post from Stuart Maxwell):
• Turn off the Internet Explorer enhanced security configuration (ESC) – it’s fine for servers that shouldn’t be browsing the Internet anyway, but for a workstation it just gets in the way (and encourages bad practice by putting lots of sites into the trusted zone).
• Install the Desktop Experience feature – providing many of the Windows Vista capabilities that are not there by default in Windows Server 2008.
• Set the Themes service to start automatically – and start it.
• Ditto for the Windows Audio service.
• Install the Windows Search service (part of the File Services role) – Outlook will use this for indexing e-mail.
• Edit the local security policy to set Display Shutdown Event Tracker to Disabled
• Enable Windows Aero in the appearance settings (may require a reboot, and possibly re-installation of video drivers).
• In Control Panel, System, Advanced System Settings, Performance Options, set the required visual effects – I found that if I let Windows adjust for best appearance, it reverted to the Windows Vista Basic colour scheme but if I selected a custom configuration with all effects selected except Animate Controls and Elements inside Windows, I could keep Aero, complete with Flip 3D.
  
• Also in the advanced system settings, set the processor scheduling to favour programs.
• Enable Superfetch. Starting the Superfetch service will fail until some registry changes are made:
  
  Services
  Windows could not start the Superfetch service on computername.
  Error 197: The operating system is not presently configured to run this application.

  The solution is to create two new registry keys, after which the service should start successfully:
  
  Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

  [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters]
"EnablePrefetcher"=dword:00000003
"EnableSuperfetch"=dword:00000003

• Edit the power settings to allow hard disks to spin down after 20 minutes when running on mains power (and 5 when on battery power).
6. Finally, install browser plug-ins (Flash, Silverlight, etc.) and application software (e.g. Microsoft Office).

I still need to configure our corporate anti-virus solution and VPN software (I may have some problems there as it has a dependency on a firewall product that does not work with Vista SP1 or, I imagine, Windows Server 2008). Why we insist on it with the firewall built into Windows I still don’t know but my VPN connection won’t work without it. I also need to work out if I can get hibernation to work on Windows Server 2008. Once that’s done, I should have a fully functional Windows Workstation 2008, with built-in hypervisor-based virtualisation. Sweet.

In a few hours time, I will be at the UK press launch for Microsoft’s 2008 Global Launch Wave – the launch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008.

This is the biggest launch I’ve been involved in for a while (the last one I took part in was Exchange 4.0 Server in 1996) – although I did attend the Windows Server 2000 launch in London and the Windows XP launch in Sydney.

Although today is the global launch, as far as UK events go, today is a press event – the customer launch is on 19 March at the ICC in Birmingham. I’ll be there, on the Fujitsu stand, so come along and say hello if you get the chance. There will also be a sequence of regional launch events throughout April and May as well as a virtual launch website from 19 March until June.

The various UK user groups are also in the process of putting together two Community Days, hosted by Microsoft at their UK headquarters in Reading (Thames Valley Park). Details are yet to be finalised, so watch this space (or better still, check out the UK User Groups website, where pre-registration is available) and I’m hoping to get the chance to present at least one of the sessions, so if I’ve ever been the awkward one who asked too many questions in one of your presentations, now is the chance to get your own back…

[Coincidentally, this post marks another momentous occasion – it’s post number 1000 on this blog (although the count is not strictly accurate as there are still a few that are in draft state and haven’t actually made it to being published)]

However you look at it, there’s little doubt that creating an operating system release the size of Windows Server 2008 is a huge undertaking.  A few months back, I was privileged to hear Alex Hinrichs, Group Program Manager for Windows Server, speak about the process of building Windows Server.

First of all, any major project needs strong leadership and the Windows Server Division management team includes a huge volume of collective experience from guys like Bob Muglia, Bill Laing and Iain McDonald.

Then, there’s the consistent vision – at the heart of the Windows Server 2008 product there have been a few major themes:

• Roles (customers don’t think "my Windows server"; they think "my domain controllers", "my web servers", etc.).
• Only install what the system needs.
• Make it secure, reliable, manageable… and fast.
• Quality should be determined by real world deployments (i.e. only ship when know the product is ready).

It’s also worth remembering that Windows Server 2003 has been an excellent operating system release.  So, as they began to plan for the next release, Microsoft took a look at what worked well when developing Windows Server 2003:

• Deployments are key to quality (internal deployments – "dogfooding", early adoption customers).
• Include a long customer feedback cycle.
• Install fewer components and services by default.
• Lock down the feature set early (good ideas are all very well, but it requires discipline to say "no, we’ll add that later") and focus on quality during the last year of development rather than adding new things.
• Protect the daily build (the daily version of Windows Server needs to be solid).
• Focus on the basics (reliability, security, performance).

Even though the feature set was locked down some time ago, Microsoft did respond to customer feedback on the early builds of Windows Server codenamed Longhorn – that’s how we got features like IIS as a role in server core, Windows PowerShell as a feature, more granular group policy objects and read-only domain controllers.

The important point is that in the final year, major changes were limited.  Customer requests were still the primary driver but there were no more changes for people who thought "it would be really cool if…" and changes were only implemented to unblock customer deployments.

For me (as I’m not a software engineer), the fascinating part of Alex’s presentation was the daily process.

Program Managers are responsible for delivering on a single component of the operating system, with each virtual build lab (VBL) being made up of a number of feature build labs (FBL) – for example:

• Core (platform, kernel, setup, etc.).
• Networking (TCPIP stack, DHCP, RRAS, etc.).
• Server roles (IIS, AD, etc.).
• Security (logon, licensing, etc.).
• Client (shell, Internet Explorer, etc.).
• File (including backup, storage server, etc.) .

The daily ship-room (engineering) meeting examines test results to see which product groups are ready to bring in code to the build based on:

• Distributed responsibility:
• FBLs need to get code ready in order to move up through the build process via the VBLs.
• Around 10,000 people have contributed code to Windows Server at some point in process (about 1000 developers are working on it every day)
• Daily tests (checks and balances) including:
• Build verification tests (BVTs) – examining whether the operating system will complete set up, can it upgrade, can it share files, etc. for a few thousand simple tests on all versions (32/64-bit, Itanium, etc.).
• Feature verification tests (FVTs) – tests at feature/role level, e.g. AD, IIS, etc.
• Stress – what does it take to break the system, using over 1000 machines running stress tests every day until something breaks, then attaching to a debugger to see what broke it.
• Reliability – how long can the system run – for every server role.
• Bugs and bug bar (what bugs are there to fix… and when by).

Hinrichs explained that the componentisation effort used for Windows Server 2008 has certainly helped to make the process easier.  It has taken many years but dependencies have been broken as senior, strong, architects have run Windows code has through architectural layer tools to ensure that architectural policy is adhered too.

Using a component-based model helps to identify conflicts before they hit the main build.  For example, if the Shell and Internet Explorer teams are working on same binary the code is checked in at the client layer and the developers can work together to resolve a conflict before the code is incorporated into the main tree.

Before code is accepted, there are a number of quality gates to be negotiated, consisting of a battery of tests to run at check-in stages, for example:

• Static code analysis (buffer overflows, other security problems, managed code problems, etc.).
• Architectural layer (check for implied dependencies and relate back to roles – a developer may think that they are working in their own universe but this is not necessarily so).
• Code coverage (automated tests all over the world constantly testing the system to hit as many code paths as possible, aiming for automation to cover as many as possible but realistically 70-75% automated with the rest tested manually).
• Policy check tools (looking for globalisation or localisation issues, political issues, etc.).

On a normal day in the Windows Server Division:

• FBL developers run checks and once the code is ready it is pushed to a VBL team for building.
• The VBL team pulls down the main build and merges it with new code from the FBLs, looking for conflicts/problems.  Once everything is ready, code from all teams is brought together into the main build.
• Because there are checks and balances at all levels (and reverse integration), things tend to be pretty clean at the main build level.
• It’s not just about pushing code up – it is pulled down as well so that all teams pick up changes from each other.

I’m pleased to see Windows Server 2008 ship before its official release date.  For some time now Microsoft would only commit to "shipping during the first quarter of 2008" but were adamant that quality was the primary goal and that the product would only ship when it was ready.  Based on my experiences, it seems remarkably solid and I have no reservations about pushing my organisation as hard as I can to deploy Windows Server 2008 for our customers.  And I’ll wrap this post up with one final comment – Kevin Lane, the lead for the technology adoption program (TAP) customers has been on call 24×7 to ensure that major issues affecting customers are resolved quickly.  In the last 6 months he has only had one call that’s been important enough to disturb his sleep…