Windows server 2003

[el_vago32 0]

Some of these things maybe have been posted already, but now is my turn, hehe. Recently (the last saturday) I went to a conference about the official release of Windows server 2003, and my opinion about this OS is , OMFG, I guess this is too good to be true man, all the new options: Online seerver management- WTF, i can turn off, restart configure, change most configurations available of the server true the internet, i can connect true an hyper terminal window while a BSOD or the booting process...hot plug PCI and RAM???, this one crossed the line, RAM????, i can unplug a memory modeule while the server is running and the same for pci cards??....

OK, I need some info to get the things clear here, i don't want to be wrong about this all things so any infromation about wrong concepts please don't hesitate and let me know.

 

P.S.: I don't know much about this OS (I just knew that it was going to be named "Windows server 2003" instead of "Windows .net server 2003" ;( ) there are a lot of more things they showed us, there were a lot of people there, about 350 or 400 people, a whole day there (from 9 am to 6 pm), food (HEHE ), and free cd's of RC2 with their respectives licenses, cool man...and the best of all: windows server has the same price than win2K sever...what's the next step??

[DS3Circuit 0]

Welcome to the world of "bleeding" edge technology .... I will give my thoughts on 2003 once I get the RTM going.

 

G'luck to all those who are migrating, though from what I have seen ADMT looks GREAT !!

[DosFreak 2]

Hot Plug PCI is very old tech so I don't know why it was at the conference you went to. I've been hoping forever that it would trickle down to the cheap end of the market but I guess it's seen as not needed.

[el_vago32 0]

Quote:

Hot Plug PCI is very old tech so I don't know why it was at the conference you went to. I've been hoping forever that it would trickle down to the cheap end of the market but I guess it's seen as not needed.

Really??, i didn't know about any OS which support that feature!!, sorry for my ignorance, but is that I tried to do something like unplug a sound card under win2k running and it crashed very ugly, so I suposse that still it is WindowsXp..would 'u tell me which OS actually supports this feature?...and maybe yes, it's an old technology, but you know how M$ is, they wanna fill up our eyes with pretty things, though old!!

[DosFreak 2]

http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/bus/pci/hotplugpci.asp

 

+

 

Compaq and other companies have supported it for years with NT4 and various vers of Unix/Linux.

 

Stick "hot plug PCI" in google for a run down.

[KhaineBOT 0]

I'm looking forward to see what extra security features Windws 2003 Server has, its a pity they didn't release a Workstation version as well, because it looks alot more like windows 2000 then XP (I like 2K more

[AndyFair 0]

Hot-plugging is dependent on the motherboard used, as well as the OS. If you try to hot-swap PCI cards or RAM in a standard motherboard, all you'll end up with is a fried motherboard (and likely fried RAM as well!)

 

All the OS part of hot-swapping does is recognise the fact that something has changed with the hardware and modify itself accordingly - same as what is supposed to happen with USB/FireWire.

 

I'd imagine that you could only do hot-addition of RAM (or hot-swap of a faulty module that the OS knows about and is actively avoiding using - after alerting the SysAdmin of course!), because unplugging a RAM module while it's in use would crash the OS pretty quickly Unless, of course, you have an "unplug memory" option somewhere, like Win2k has for PCMCIA cards?

 

If Microsoft is introducing hot-plug into 2k3, then perhaps we may start to see lower end motherboard containing the feature - did they say whether it would be across all versions, or just the top-end (datacentre) versions?

 

Rgds

AndyF

[adamvjackson 0]

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winserver2003_editions.asp

 

Looks like only the Enterprise Server edition supports hot adding of RAM.

[jdulmage 0]

After having this installed for close to 2 weeks now, and using the workstation convertion to make it audio-video capable just like XP. I've found this OS to be highly faster and highly stable compared to both XP and 2k.

 

So for those of you who are skeptical, don't be. This is a great OS once you mod it to run games.

 

Some of you say "why use a server OS to run games", well, because in critical benchmarking, games actually run faster on this OS and this OS has better stability and speed. Any gamer would want that.

[BladeRunner 0]

Speed, stability or not - I really cannot think of anybody who will be able to justify the price tag of this OS for a desktop.

[AndyFair 0]

Alec

 

From the link that adamvjackson posted above and from Microsoft's own web-page, it looks as though only hot-ADD memory is supported, not hot swap (I guess hot swap would be too complicated and would defeat the whole point if you had to put the server into a suspended mode to swap RAM)

 

Quote:

Hot Add Memory

 

Hot Add Memory allows ranges of memory to be added to a computer and made available to the operating system and applications as part of the normal memory pool. This does not require re-booting the computer and involves no downtime. This feature only operates on servers that have hardware support for adding memory while the server is operating. Most existing servers do not have such hardware support and can be damaged if memory is installed while the power is on. It is recommended that you consult your server operator's manual for more information

 

Looks like we'll have to wait a while for a truly hot-pluggable system...

 

Rgds

AndyF

[el_vago32 0]

Quote:

After having this installed for close to 2 weeks now, and using the workstation convertion to make it audio-video capable just like XP. I've found this OS to be highly faster and highly stable compared to both XP and 2k.

So for those of you who are skeptical, don't be. This is a great OS once you mod it to run games.

Some of you say "why use a server OS to run games", well, because in critical benchmarking, games actually run faster on this OS and this OS has better stability and speed. Any gamer would want that.

Cool!, i never saw it that way, play games into this OS! :x , so man i'll try with this evaluation copy I got here and see what happens, but first i'd like to know if there are some compatibilities issues present.

[AndyFair 0]

The reason I think hot swap RAM would be complicated is all due to the OS mechanics. I'd see it happening something like this:

• you'd have to "inform" the OS which bank you'd be swapping out

the OS would have to know what memory addresses are served by that particular bank

OS would then swap the contents somewhere else (another memory bank or hard drive)

OS would mark addresses served by the memory bank as "out of bounds"

you would then swap the RAM (being careful to swap exactly the bank that you told the OS you would!!)

OS would "unblock" the new addresses and start using them as usual[/list:u]

I think that the only way you could have true hotswap RAM (i.e. just open the case and swap memory without having to tell the OS) is if you had some kind of mirrored memory RAID-1 setup (RAM-RAID? Hey, that sounds good, maybe I should copyright it before someone else has the idea ) so that losing a section of memory wouldn't result in the loss of programs/data.

 

In terms of hardware modifications needed, who knows (I'm not an electronics whizz!) - maybe it's just as easy as having a shorter voltage pin so that is the last connection to be made (I think that's the layout of SATA connectors, which is why they're hot-swappable)?

 

These complications are probably why we're only at the hot-add stage, not the hot-swap stage - but the "thought exercise" above shows that it's not impossible, just a pain to implement. But with the prices of memory going through the floor (who'd have thought 10 years ago that half a gigabyte of RAM would cost less than $100?!), maybe we're getting to time when we may see RAM-RAID setups (going back to the original definition of RAID, where the I stood for "inexpensive", not "independent")? All food for thought!

 

Wow, I haven't thought this hard since University, and that's more than just a couple of years ago 8)

 

Rgds

AndyF

 

PS - Finally, APK, I've made a post that's almost as long as one of yours!

[felix 0]

The mechanics of hot-swapping ram wouldn't be that hard.

 

In hot swap PCI you have some redundant pins that are shorter than the rest and act as indicator pins. When you pull a card, these pins disconnect first and say to the system "hey, this card is being pulled, you best stop it".

 

When the card is put back, the process is reversed.

 

I imagine that RAM would be the same, though I reckon you'd need a SATA drive to be able to page out the contents of the RAM stick real quick.

[AndyFair 0]

Quote:

...Especially for a student like yourself, good practice man!

No longer a student, haven't done any major studying since I finished my Masters degree over 10 years ago.

But I still like to keep my hand in, keep learning new things.
My latest thing is 3D - my MSc was in Computer Modelling, we did a lot of programming work in 3D, but this was a few years before 3D accelerators and Direct3D (even before Windows went mainstream). I'm trying to get back into 3D, re-learning all the matrix stuff, I want to do it properly before I get into the Direct3D stuff. It's scary how much stuff I've forgotten (never had to use matrix calculations in the database stuff I do at work!), but equally scary is the stuff that's still familiar to me!

Rgds
AndyF