Introduction

Welcome to Mastering Windows Server 2008 R2! I've got to tell you, I haven't been this excited about a new version of Server since Windows 2000, almost 10 years ago. Why? I guess because it feels...fun. Yeah, that's the word—fun. Here's what I mean.

R2's 10-year-old older brother, Windows Server 2000, was neat because it was such a game-changer, an OS lushly festooned with completely new concepts and tools to get to know. Now, I've seen big operating system upgrades before, like DOS 2.0 in 1982, OS 2.0 in 1992, or Windows 3.0 in 1990, and in every case things seemed to work out the same way: first we get the holy-moley-there's-so-much-new-stuff thrill of discovery and newness, then we sit down and start using the thing, and then we find ourselves shaking our heads saying, "OK, this [fill in the new feature] is cool, but why did they leave this part of it out," or "OK, this is cool, but it, um, doesn't exactly work as advertised."

In every one of those cases, the OS's vendor released the next version, better known as "version 1.1." Sure, they didn't all actually have a ".1" in their version numbers—DOS 2.0's "1.1" was DOS 3.0—but all of the 1.1s shared the same basic trait in that they were the useful upgrade of the game-changers. People ran those better-fitting 1.1s (MS-DOS 3.x, Windows 3.1, and OS/2 2.1 in the three examples I cited) and liked them so much that two of their successors—DOS 4.0 and OS/2 Warp 3—sold nary a copy. In fact, Windows 3.1's successor, Windows 95, sold well because Windows 95 itself was also a paradigm shifter. But even in the case of Windows 95, its popularity was far outpaced by its 1.1, Windows 98, and again, consider how unwell Windows Millennium Edition (Windows 98's putative replacement) sold.

Version 1.1s offer more, however, than bushels of much-needed bug fixes. They tend to sport a handful of completely new features as well, such as DOS 3.x's support for larger drives, Windows 3.1's built-in multimedia capabilities (the birth of the Windows' "bonk!" error sounds, as well as Windows 98's USB support), and now Windows Server 2008 R2's AD Recycle Bin and a host of other things you'll read about in these pages.

Beyond fixes and features, however, it's always seemed to me that the best part of a 1.1 is its "broken-in" feel, a sort of "um, sorry; this was the version that we meant to ship" air to the follow-on OS versions, which brings me back to why I like Server 2008 R2. I'd argue that, in a sense, 2008 R2 is a "1.1" version not merely for Windows Server 2008, but indeed for Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003. Why? Well, it seems like it's the first version of Server built since Windows NT 4.0 Server where the programmers actually got some time to look back at the previous version of Server and add a bit of that "broken-in" feel that I referred to earlier.

I know that sounds odd, but as far as I can see, it's true. Server 2003 didn't get to be a decent 1.1 because Bill Gates realized in January 2002 that Microsoft's software needed a top-to-bottom overhaul to make it more secure, making it a year and half late and causing it to lack quite a number of asked-for features. Heck, Microsoft couldn't even come up with a name for it until the last minute—its moniker was "Windows .NET Server 2003" in all of its betas and release candidates. 2008 was delayed when the embarrassing Blaster worm, which appeared about four months after Windows Server 2003's debut, sort of demonstrated that 2002's security cleanup job wasn't entirely effective, and led to a major reexamination of the kernel in Windows Vista and its companion product, Windows Server 2008. Server 2008's rushed nature is evident any number of places, but three jump to mind:

• Its arguably best new Active Directory feature, flexible password policies (which allow you to vary things like how often passwords have to be changed from person to person and from group to group within an AD domain) can't be accessed without donning AD "deep-diving" gear and working with the cryptic ADSI Edit tool.

• Its vastly improved new FTP server is indeed great, but it's not in the box in Server 2008; you've got to download it separately from a Microsoft site.

• Its enterprise-class server virtualization tool, Hyper-V Server, shipped with Server 2008 only as a beta and wasn't available in a finished version for another five months after 2008 released to the public.

What About Windows 2003 R2? And before you ask, Windows Server 2003 R2 doesn't really count as a version of Server, much less a "1.1," because it was nothing more than Server 2003 SP1 with the new DFSR file replication service added.

So, how'd we get our first not-built-under-the-gun version of Server in nearly 10 years? Well, the main key to understanding this is in noticing that as of as of October 22, 2009, we got—for the first time in quite some time—two versions of Windows Server in less than two years. That hasn't been the case since the days of NT 3.x and NT 4, and we all know whom we can thank for this "bonus" version of Windows Server...Vista. Yup, in the end analysis, it was Vista's horrendous failure in the marketplace that made Microsoft decide to try to essentially "change the conversation" by taking advantage of the fact that two of the biggest objections voiced about Vista—"there are no drivers for Vista" and "Vista runs too slowly on my machine"—became largely insupportable with the passage of time, allowing them to make fairly small changes to Vista, rebrand it as "Windows 7," and release it. We Server folks can just be thankful that someone in Redmond decided, "Heck, as long as we're releasing a minor upgrade of the desktop OS, we may as well let the server guys do the same thing," which led to Windows Server 2008 R2. Without Vista, we might have been waiting until 2013 for new Server stuff to play with.

Oh, and By the Way... Let me clarify that I'm not casting aspersions about Windows 7, because I liked Vista from the very beginning for its largely overlooked under-the-hood security- and reliability-enhancing kernel changes. History may show that Windows 7 will turn out to be one of the most successful 1.1s in operating system history.