Core Enhancements OS

• The operating system is now entirely made up of several components.
• The latest hot have been improved, a feature that enables updates not related to the kernel to be applied without requiring a restart.
• Starting from devices compatible EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) on 64-bit is now supported.
• The dynamic hardware partitioning is supported.
• Adding hot processor and memory is now supported when the hardware is compatible. The same goes for hot replacement of processors and memory modules on any compatible hardware.

Improvements in Active Directory

A new mode of Active Directory called “Read-Only Domain Controller (RODC) is intended for use in locations where the domain controllers can be housed in local low-security access. The RODC contains a non-editable copy of the Active Directory, and redirects all attempts to write to a full domain controller, it also replicates all accounts except for sensitive accounts.

RODC mode credentials are not cached by default. Moreover, only the domain controller hosting the PDC emulator role requires Windows Server 2008, local administrators can log on to the RODC to perform maintenance operations without requiring administrator privileges domain. The Active Directory can be restarted, it can stop and restart ADDS from the Management Console (MMC), or the command line without having to restart the domain controller.

This reduces downtime due to maintenance operations and reduces pre-requisite of the role of domain controller with Server Core. ADDS is implemented as a Service Domain Controller in Windows Server 2008.

Improvements related to security policies

All improvements related to security policies provided by Windows Vista are also present in Windows Server 2008. The console management strategies (GPMC) is now integrated by default in the system. GPOs (Group Policy Objects) are indexed to enable search functionality and can also be discussed.

Security policies backbone is include Network Access Protection Network Access Protection (NAP), improved branch management and enhanced collaboration between users. Strategies can be created to provide a better quality of service for certain applications or services that require prioritization of use of bandwidth between clients and servers.

The management of passwords within a single domain is now granular (possibility accounts for administrators to implement strategies password affecting different groups or single users), whereas previously the political Password was unique for the area.

Improvements related to disk management and storage of files

It is now possible to resize hard disk partitions without having to stop the server, including system partitions (Note: This only applies to simple volume and cluster (spanned volumes). The aggregate volume (striped volume) can not be extended or truncated). The Shadow Copy feature now works at the block level which allows it to perform backups on optical media, network shares and the Windows Recovery Environment (Windows Recovery Environment).

Improvements were also made to DFS (Distributed File System) replication of the SYSVOL folder is based on DFS-R, members of a replication can be replicated folders with read-only. The DFS namespace is an area now supports more than 5 000 applications including the target folder in the namespace. Several improvements have been made to the system failover cluster (cluster of high availability). The role of Internet Storage Naming Server (iSNS) allows recording, removing and querying centralized iSCSI drives.

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