Windows 2008 Server as a Workstation

Introduction

I recently set myself the goal of creating a Server 2008-based laptop that I could use either as a normal business
laptop or as a server platform for testing out Hyper-V. Several questions loomed.

     •   Would Server 2008 x64 support most of my (Dell Latitude D830) laptop hardware? and Would Dell’s 64-
          bit Vista drivers work fine with Server 2008?

     •   Could the machine be made responsive enough to act as a viable workstation, even though the OS was
          designed for a server?

     •   Could the machine act as a reasonable facsimile of a Vista box for teaching and demo purposes?

     •   Would the system run my various day-to-day applications with acceptable speed and reliability?

In this white paper, I’ll go through some of the hoops I had to jump through and come up with some answers
to the above questions - answers that may be useful for those of you who are interested in walking down the
same path with your laptop (or desktop). Overall, the experiment has been a success, with one big caveat for
laptop users who install the Hyper-V role.

Issue #1: Hardware and Drivers 

The first big question was this: Were there going to be driver problems? One of the distinguishing characteristics
of 64-bit Server 2008 editions is that the universe of hardware drivers is limited to signed drivers. (You can boot
x64 Server 2008 with unsigned drivers via a “safe mode” option at boot time, but who wants to go through that routine every single startup?) So, I dutifully made a list of the machine’s drivers and hardware model numbers from Device Manager in the system’s original Windows XP operating system.
The good  news  here was that after a vanilla install of Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, most of the Latitude’s
drivers were up and running. There were only two that the installer didn’t recognize: the wireless driver and the sound driver. My theory was that the Vista x64 drivers that Dell publishes on its website should work, due to Vista and Server 2008 having essentially the same kernel and architecture. However, after a few years in this business, you get leery of making too many assumptions.


I was glad to find that the sound driver (which I’d downloaded beforehand using the XP incarnation of the
laptop) seemed to install just fine, and it actually worked, too, at least after I went to the Services console (see Figure 1) and set the two sound-related services to start automatically (“Windows Audio” and “Windows Audio Endpoint Builder”). One down, one to go. The wireless driver installed, but it immediately failed with a fatal error (APPCRASH) that repeated about, oh, once every second. The light bulb moment was that Server 2008 doesn’t activate the wireless service by default: you have to install “Wireless LAN Service” as a “feature” in Server Manager. After that, and a reboot, the wire- less adapter was happy, and there was no yellow in Device Manager (which in Server 2008 appears in the Server Manager console under the Diagnostics category).

The answer to question 1, at least in my case, was a qualifed “yes.” Issue #2: Viability as a Workstation Servers from Microsoft have all kinds of settings that make sense for servers but that may not make sense for workstations, so the next question to answer was: Could this Server 2008 operating system be optimized so that it would be fast enough for day-to-day workstation use? There were a few settings that needed attention here, but the frst and most important was the default al- location of CPU horsepower to background services and processes rather than foreground ones. In the System control panel, click the “Advanced system settings” link in the task pane at left; in the “Performance” area, click


the Settings button; click the “Advanced” tab of the Performance Options dialog box. There’s a setting named “Adjust for best performance of:” which you need to change from “Background services” to “Programs” (see Figure 2). The next setting that needed attention was the IE Enhanced Security Confguration, which the Server 2008 prod- uct defaults to, but which makes browsing the Web reasonably painful by setting the default Internet zone se- curity level to “high.” It’s easy enough to turn that off in Server Manager. At the Server Summary screen, which you see when Server Manager frst starts, scroll down to the Security Information area and click the link labeled “Confgure IE ESC.” Deselect the enhanced security mode for both administrators and non-administrators (see Figure 3), and IE7 is now functional for a workstation user.

While on the subject of Internet Explorer, it’s interesting to note that the Start menu entry for IE actually points to the 32-bit version of the program. The 64-bit version of IE presents occasional-to-frequent compatibility is- sues that, apparently, Microsoft was aware enough of to make it a non-default choice. Then there was the “shutdown event tracker,” a useful feature for servers (which are rarely shut down) but an annoyance for workstation use, for which, until someone invents a tiny nuclear laptop power source, shut- downs occur very frequently. No problem here, just fre up the good old Group Policy editor (run GPEDIT.MSC) and navigate to Computer Confguration, Administrative Templates, System, and disable the Display Shutdown Event Tracker policy (see Figure 4). Now you can shut your system down without the OS demanding to know the reason. When it comes to power options, the news is not good for Hyper-V users. As soon as you install the Hyper-V role you lose the ability to make your computer sleep or hibernate. That may not a big issue for everyone, I suppose, but for laptops it’s a defnite drawback – and even for towers or rack systems, not all servers are necessarily required to be awake 24/7.


Surely Microsoft could have fgured out a way to address this issue, such as simply warning the user if he or she tries to put the host to sleep when there are virtual machines running. Would that have been so hard? We’re all supposed to be trying to use less energy, right? One demerit for Server 2008 and Hyper-V. Another workstation-viability point to address is that of Offine Files (the new name of “Offine Files and Fold- ers”). On my previous Vista laptop, I made a few folders on my offce network “available offine” so that they’d be cached on the laptop, and I could synchronize folders before and after a trip. Server 2008 didn’t show me the usual “Always Available Offine” context menu option for a network share, so I found it in the Services console and activated it, prompting an error that “The system could not fnd the fle specifed.” I enabled Offine Files in the Offine Files control panel, which is probably what I should have done in the frst place. After a restart, Of- fine Files seemed to work just as it does in Vista – I did some synchronizing just to be sure (yes, the Sync Center is present in the GUI), and didn’t notice any problems.

Issue #3: Can Server 2008 Look Like Vista?
Because I often teach classes about Vista in which Vista runs in a virtual machine, where you can’t see the AERO interface, I like to use my laptop to demo certain Vista AERO features, such as live thumbnails, Flip3D, and so forth. So it was relevant to ask whether Server 2008 could put forward a reasonable facsimile of the Vista GUI.
The frst thing you must do is to install the Windows Desktop Experience, which the Server Manager console categorizes as a “feature” (see Figure 5). The descriptive text for the feature warns you that although installing it will put the binaries in the right place, you have to manually turn on the features, which seems sort of silly. Why would anyone install this software unless they wanted to turn it on? However, I followed the directions, got the binaries installed, rebooted (is it just me, or do you have to reboot Server 2008 a lot more than Server 2003?), and then went to the Display control panel (oops, I mean “Personal- ize,” which is a good example of Microsoft renaming something badly and for no good reason).

Alas, no Vista theme seemed to be present. A visit to the Services control panel and changing the startup type for the Themes service fxed that. Then another visit to the Personalize control panel and wallah, there was the AERO theme. Transparent window borders: check. Live thumbnails: check. Flip 3d: check. Sidebar seemed to be missing in action, but I could live with that; besides, there’s probably some tweaky way to get it running, if I ever get desperate. The Mobility Center seemed gone, as well, but again, it’s something I never use, so I didn’t sweat it. Application compatibility looks very good indeed. Just about all the apps that I need to run, whether available in a 64-bit version or in a 32-bit version, seem to work just fne. This includes Offce 2007, Open Offce (which is one of those products that if it were only maybe 5% better, I would be tempted to make my daily workhorse), and even a smattering of third-party apps written for earlier versions of Windows (I’m talking about programs like Agent Ransack and UnLocker, both of which, by the way, are highly recommended).

Issue #4: Speed and Reliability
Overall I’d rate the issue of speed and reliability as a conditional win for Server 2008 compared with Vista. I haven’t done any formal benchmarking, but even running the AERO interface, Server 2008 feels faster than Vista on the same hardware. It doesn’t seem plagued by the same bizarre delays that Vista encounters when doing things like copying large fles or enumerating a network share. Yes, installing roles via Server Manager is slower than one might like, especially considering the frequent re- quired reboots; but that’s not a daily task. The daily tasks, by and large, feel crisp and responsive. Overall reliability seems good so far, but with asterisks. Server 2008 has defnitely done some strange, and potentially dangerous, things. For example, when I connected a perfectly good (and data-flled) USB fash drive, Server 2008 tells me I need to format it before I could use it, and do I want to format it now (NOOO!). There’s a potential nightmare scenario – recommend that a user format a perfectly fne data storage volume! I haven’t seen that behavior from a Vista machine, although I can’t rule it out.

The operating system also had a terrible time getting the RTM version of Hyper-V role installed, doing some signifcant damage to my NTFS fle system in the process. You should defnitely back up your system before in- stalling Hyper-V; it doesn’t install as smoothly as most of the other Server 2008 roles, plus it took about half an hour, including the required reboots. In fairness, I should note that when I performed a “sidegrade” (an upgrade to the same version of the OS in order to repair the fle corruption), several weeks later, Hyper-V installed that time with no complaints. My fnal asterisk is that the Hyper-V role seems to slow down the base operating system a smidgen. I recently removed the Hyper-V role for a few days and I noticed that the OS felt a little faster to me. It certainly booted and shut down faster. Again, I haven’t formally benchmarked the change, but it was noticeable.

Conclusion
Server 2008 isn’t just for servers. It’s a solid workstation product that makes for a nice demo machine and coin- cidentally gives you a platform (on the 64-bit version) for running Hyper-V. If you want to run Hyper-V, though, you give up the ability to hibernate your machine or put it into sleep mode, which as a road warrior I’ve found to be a signifcant limitation. Hyper-V also slightly slows down your startup and shutdown sequences. As is so often the case with Microsoft operating systems, you can never quite get exactly what you want. How- ever, I’m glad that I now have a mobile system that I can use to demo both Vista (at least, 95% of it) and Server 2008.