Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM was made available for download by Action Pack and TechNet Plus subscribers in late August. I wanted to install a copy on a computer on my home network in order to study its new features. I am particularly interested in the improvements made to the Hyper-V role and the Active Directory Role. Microsoft has included a Recycle Bin for Active Directory objects that allows an administrator to restore deleted objects, such as user accounts, using PowerShell. Server 2008 R2 also includes many enhancements to Terminal Services, IIS, WDS, Backup, Security etc.
In the past I have run Server 2008 32 bit as a guest virtual machine on either Virtual Server 2005 or Virtual PC 2007. The problem is that there is no 32 bit version of R2, not even an evaluation version. 64 bit hardware is a requirement and device drivers must be digitally signed in order to run on R2. The driver issue is a tougher problem than it first appears. There is no option –as there is on previous versions of Windows- in system properties that permits unsigned drivers be installed on R2. Drivers are rigorously checked by the operating system and are rejected if the signatures are missing.
The only computer that I own that could possibly run Server 2008 R2 is an HP Pavilion a6750y that I use as media server on my home network. It came with a 2.3GHz AMD Phenom X4 (quad-core) 9650 processor and 8 GB of RAM. It is capable of hardware-assisted virtualization and data execution prevention, both requirements for Hyper-V. The computer is not listed on Microsoft’s Windows Server Catalog as being certified to run Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 (only 98 Servers are at this point in time.) I would not run R2 on a production server that hadn’t been tested and listed in the catalog but it sure would be nice to be able to play with it at home.
I did a clean install of Server and Windows Setup found drivers for everything except for the sound and the Radeon 3200 HD display adapters which are integrated into the motherboard. HP has a 64 Bit Vista driver which I downloaded, but Server rejected it. HP lists no Server drivers on its website and it looked like I would have to get used to 640X480 video and no sound. Eventually I found ATI Catalyst drivers for sound and video on the AMD website which were just released for Windows 7. I downloaded and installed them and they work perfectly. This proves that at least in some cases Windows 7 drivers can be substituted for Server 2008 drivers. This makes sense because Windows 7 and Server share the same code base.
The Hyper-V Role installed successfully and I was able to build a Windows 7 64 bit guest virtual machine. Performance is excellent with the quad-core processor. Besides Hyper-V I have built an Active Directory Forest and I plan to test the new versions of IIS and Terminal Services. Stay tuned.
-Mark Menges
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