Advanced and Unique Features of Windows Server 2008

A very advanced security feature which can compete with any popular independent security software is new with Windows Server 2008 - the built-in firewall. It’s a police force for your system’s safety.

Microsoft means it when they call it an “advanced Windows firewall.” The amount of control we have over this firewall really has impressed me. What’s in the advanced firewall? Let’s find out:

1. Bi-Directional Filters

With the advanced firewall, it is now possible to set filters not only for inbound but for outbound traffic, too. For example, a network administrator may want to configure the new Windows Firewall with some set of rules that will block all traffic sent to specific ports/IPs and similarly block all incoming traffic from specified ports/IP.

2. Automatic Configurations

The advanced firewall has the ability to automatically configure rules for new roles that are added to the server, provided these are Microsoft applications. If you wish to run any non-Microsoft application on your server that needs inbound network connectivity, it will need to have rules created for it manually.

3. Firewall and Profiles

There is a domain profile, private profile, and public profile for the firewall. These different profiles allow you to group inbound and outbound rules and then apply this group to your computer (it could be your laptop or other PC). You can choose any combination of inbound & outbound rules and group them together to easily apply on any computer.

With such a groundbreaking firewall, in terms of its policies and rules configuration, it is evident that Microsoft has created WFAS while keeping the features of Microsoft’s ISA Server in mind. The firewall has more default rules than those in earlier versions along with other modern functionalities, indicating that it is surely an advanced firewall as claimed by Microsoft.

Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 is far better than in earlier versions of Windows Server. There are more advanced features added to fulfill our needs better, and they are easier to use:

TS Web Access

Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 now comes with a feature called TS WA (Terminal Services Web Access), which allows businesses to supply users with a web-based interface to give access to applications published in a terminal server’s purlieu. The TSWA interface can be accessed in any browser that is connected to the internet.

RemoteApp

With Terminal Services RemoteApp, organizations can provide users an interface from which they can access Windows based applications from any location. It also gives the ability to identify the main executable for common applications. From RemoteApps, applications can easily be published to a web-page using TS Web Access. This feature benefits users since they only need to go to their Web Access web page to get applications, and they will look as though they are running in local system.

New IIS 7.0 comes with exciting and advanced features that have long been awaited. We have always wished that we could easily copy a web site’s configuration to another server like copying a single file. Now, we can with XML-based configuration as all IIS7 configuration settings are stored in XML. Not only does this allow you to simply copy existing configurations but also you can edit configurations through complete manipulation of the XML – this is great, especially for XML lovers!

Another feature that allows you to remotely administrate other servers from IIS7 is a slap-up. Now, Remote Administration can be done from within the IIS7 console, and there are no worries about security because IIS manager uses “https” protocol to connect to other IIS servers. It is a secure protocol so there are no worries of data theft.

What else? Now you can also see what is happening with web pages. IIS7.0 benefits us a lot but what about failures and monitoring? Yet another feature from IIS7 gives you thorough real-time information on running processes. It is possible to see what app pools are currently running, what requests and pages are being executed, and so on. Now all this information can be viewed from either the GUI console or from the command line tool. In case of any failure, logs can be viewed to find out the cause of the problem, when it happened, what triggered it, and more.