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Microsoft Announces Nano Server

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Re: Microsoft Announces Nano Server

#81

Post by MichaelGG »

My real concern is that figuring out so many things without the GUI is currently a real PITA. Like trying to make IIS act as a reverse proxy. It's a huge pain, and most of the docs are telling you to click various things. Compared to setting up nginx, ouch. Compounding things is the fact that MS took a cover-our-ass policy to installing things, so even after installing IIS, you've gotta go explicitly install "dynamic" compression as an extra. Then to really make it work, there's a file buried in system32 you've gotta edit, because you can't configure those settings by default at a site level. Overall, it's just way more complicated.

I know they're working on it, and PS is a great shell overall, even if it is missing a lot of simple tools by default.

But MS is way late to the party. OpenVZ was in heavy use what, a decade ago? And MS did nothing to respond, really. But hey, maybe they'll pull it off. I don't have a fundamental objection to Windows.

Re: Microsoft Announces Nano Server

#82

Post by munchhausen »

nimish wrote: post #70
emn13 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not too confident powershell is really good enough to compete with the ancient unix shell. I've tried using it to automate windows machines, but it's certainly not a smooth experience. Part of that is the lack of a history of automation - basic things to do with processes and I/O are kind of schizophrenic. All of the basics are clearly unix inspired (standard streams, processes, redirection - this is all unix-lik…

PowerShell is far more usable than sh or even bash as a scripting language. It's more like perl or python were integrated into a nice little command processor, since you can use all the .net libs (though not without some irritating effort). The problem is the cmd host is garbage, the utilities aren't burned into people's brains like the unix ones are, and they have weird Windows specific issues, like not being able t…

A scripting language that can not fork off a subprocess does not sound particularly usable to me. Certainly not more usable than bash, which I find eminently usable.

bash gets a bad rap, because there's a ton of horrible shell scripts floating around. For some reason, when people write in bash, they decide that since it's not a "real" programming language, they don't need to take it seriously. They will UPPERCASE all variables (so ugly, and stems from lack of understanding - you're supposed to uppercase environment variables only), fail to make use of functions, fail to make use of variable scoping, invariably choose the worst available comparison tools ("["), fail to make use of appropriate utilities (which is particularly egregious, considering the fact that the utilities (coreutils, moreutils, etc.) are the API of shell programming).

This is rather unfortunate. Well written bash is efficient, and, dare I say it, can be elegant. Of course, there are nicer shells around - zsh comes to mind - but bash is fine.

For the sake of political correctness, I shouldn't say this, but I will say it regardless - Windows Powershell does not come close to the feature set or expressiveness that bash+the Linux userland can have in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing.

Re: Microsoft Announces Nano Server

#83

Post by MichaelGG »

cies wrote: post #56
kefka wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine. Then this release (and frankly, any MS product) is not for you. But some enterprises use MS software, and this is a much needed option. ObVote: I downvoted your complaint imaginary internet points has no bearing on the discussion at hand.

> Then this release (and frankly, any MS product) is not for you. I've certainly re-considered dotNet after it got open sourced recently! It (finally) seemed like a reasonable proposition -- as I explain in my post BTW. But indeed, Windows, and especially Windows-closed-source-on-a-server, is not my cup of tea. And I don't understand how it could be anyone's tea. > But some enterprises use MS software Sure, and this…

Microsoft is super friendly to startups. I can't say details, but they've given us a ton of support. BizSpark Plus ($5K a month free Azure for a year) is great. They've also got marketing help available.

While Azure is overpriced compared to Google Cloud (and maybe compared to AWS - dunno cause AWS pricing is convoluted), having them comp it is really nice. Azure is also a lot more full service than Google's stuff, if you need more than IaaS.

Re: Microsoft Announces Nano Server

#84

Post by trentnelson »

girvo wrote: post #80
trentnelson wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows doesn't support hotpatching, Linux does, it really is as simple as that. Linux has more people working on it than the Windows kernel does, and is just a more advanced kernel in general at this point. Actually, hotpatching is easier on Linux because it has a technically inferior virtual memory subsystem to Windows. The Windows kernel is technically superior in numerous areas: virtual memory, thread synchroni…

Where's the best place to get details on the internals of the Windows kernel regarding things like that?

Honestly, the best set of docs I read were the design documents (about 30 .doc files) released as part of the Windows Research Kernel, which, uh, you may be able to find if you do some creative googling ;-)

From those I was able to appreciate a lot of the why between the object model, I/O request packets (IRPs), handles, asynchronous procedure calls (APCs), memory section objects... basically all the individual concepts that have no equivalent in UNIX.

....and once you understand those primitives, you can start to appreciate the layered driver model, new thread pool stuff in Vista+, registered I/O in Windows 8+, etc.

Books... my recommendation... Windows Internals is the best place to start: http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Internals-Part-Developer-Refer...

Oh, and basically any article Russinovich has written, check out the list on the articles section on his wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Russinovich

(E.g. http://windowsitpro.com/systems-management/nt-vsunix-one-sub...)

Also... my interest in all of this stuff has grown exponentially since I started seeing real world results from PyParallel: https://speakerdeck.com/trent/pyparallel-pycon-2015-language...

Re: Microsoft Announces Nano Server

#85

Post by nbevans »

trentnelson wrote: post #71
Someone1234 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 2008 R2 development system we have needs to be rebooted every two weeks, on average, due to Windows Updates that require a reboot. Uhh they literally don't release updates that often, so you'll have to explain that one to us... > Updates come in almost every day for CentOS and I only need to reboot once ever couple of months for new kernels. Windows doesn't support hotpatching, Linux does, it really is as simpl…

> Windows doesn't support hotpatching, Linux does, it really is as simple as that. Linux has more people working on it than the Windows kernel does, and is just a more advanced kernel in general at this point. Actually, hotpatching is easier on Linux because it has a technically inferior virtual memory subsystem to Windows. The Windows kernel is technically superior in numerous areas: virtual memory, thread synchroni…

I'm glad somebody pointed that out. It's infuriating listening to people who've only ever worked with Linux to a low level when they preach about how it is the most modern kernel bar none. The facts are really quite different. Dave Cutler, of Windows NT fame, is no slouch. He is every bit as good as Linus. Just without the petty attitude problems his far more popular rival exhibits.

Re: Microsoft Announces Nano Server

#86

Post by antod »

UK-AL wrote: post #20
akoeplinger wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PowerShell web access might be a good alternative: http://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2012/11/05/window...

You don't need this. You just need Enter-PSSession [ipaddress], which allows you to interact with it like ssh. You need to enable powershell remoting first though.

If only that was cross platform like SSH is.

Re: Microsoft Announces Nano Server

#87

Post by nbevans »

girvo wrote: post #80
trentnelson wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows doesn't support hotpatching, Linux does, it really is as simple as that. Linux has more people working on it than the Windows kernel does, and is just a more advanced kernel in general at this point. Actually, hotpatching is easier on Linux because it has a technically inferior virtual memory subsystem to Windows. The Windows kernel is technically superior in numerous areas: virtual memory, thread synchroni…

Where's the best place to get details on the internals of the Windows kernel regarding things like that?

@trentnelson Don't forget I/O Completion Ports (IOCP) :)

Re: Microsoft Announces Nano Server

#88

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

munchhausen wrote: post #82
nimish wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PowerShell is far more usable than sh or even bash as a scripting language. It's more like perl or python were integrated into a nice little command processor, since you can use all the .net libs (though not without some irritating effort). The problem is the cmd host is garbage, the utilities aren't burned into people's brains like the unix ones are, and they have weird Windows specific issues, like not being able t…

A scripting language that can not fork off a subprocess does not sound particularly usable to me. Certainly not more usable than bash, which I find eminently usable. bash gets a bad rap, because there's a ton of horrible shell scripts floating around. For some reason, when people write in bash, they decide that since it's not a "real" programming language, they don't need to take it seriously. They will UPPERCASE all…

> A scripting language that can not fork off a subprocess does not sound particularly usable to me.

See Powershell's Start-Job[0] Get-Job[1] Remove-Job[2].

> Windows Powershell does not come close to the feature set or expressiveness that bash+the Linux userland can have in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing.

Well nobody can argue that Powershell doesn't have just under fifty years of back-catalogue. That's obviously a massive advantage and head start, as is the expertise that comes along with it.

As to the "expressiveness," I'd need to know more specifically what you're referring to to address that point.

[0] https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh849698.aspx

[1] https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh849693.aspx

[2] https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh849742.aspx

Re: Microsoft Announces Nano Server

#89

Post by trentnelson »

nbevans wrote: post #87
girvo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the best place to get details on the internals of the Windows kernel regarding things like that?

@trentnelson Don't forget I/O Completion Ports (IOCP) :)

Good grief how did I not even mention them! They are literally my favorite thing ever. I've got like, 30 slides on them here: https://speakerdeck.com/trent/pyparallel-how-we-removed-the-...

;-)

Re: Microsoft Announces Nano Server

#90

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

MichaelGG wrote: post #81

My real concern is that figuring out so many things without the GUI is currently a real PITA. Like trying to make IIS act as a reverse proxy. It's a huge pain, and most of the docs are telling you to click various things. Compared to setting up nginx, ouch. Compounding things is the fact that MS took a cover-our-ass policy to installing things, so even after installing IIS, you've gotta go explicitly install "dynamic…

Windows has always been super-visual. For many tasks there isn't even a CLI way to do it short of editing the registry.
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