I started a thread on the Minasi forum today wondering if people would think I was crazy or not.
I like Windows Server 2008. 2003 was excellent and 2008 has jumped way ahead. It’s stable, modular and easy to use, e.g. clustering is a dream. One of the things that got loads of PR was Server Core. I was determined to deploy it in the Hyper-V cluster I’m deploying now.
I set up a pilot build to work out the kinks of the hardware and the OS configuration. I’ve been having a few hardware issues and troubleshooting them on Core is impossible. Pure, 100% impossible. I can do certain amounts using remote GUI’s but it’s not the same.
We use HP hardware that’s monitored using OpsMgr 2007 with the HP management packs. You soon discover the SIM agents have V8.0 issues. I tend to disable the remote management and the performance SIM agents because I don’t need them. Unfortunately, the GUI for configuring them is not available in Core and I don’t know of a command line option. HP haven’t publicly documented one that either their search nor Google can find.
We know that getting Broadcom NIC’s working with VLAN trunks requires an advanced configuration of the NIC. Apparently there’s a script we can write to get this working on GUI. Great – more crap I have to learn. If I was a single function administrator then maybe I could invest several weeks getting to grips with that.
I made a simple mistake when configuring a virtual switch in Hyper-V on the parent OS NIC (I wanted to be able to get VM’s onto the management network for initial build configuration). My parent OS on that server went offline. I got onto ILO to log on locally on that box. However, what the hell is the command to undo what I did? I could probably find powershell to run it …. but powershell isn’t available on Core!
So the long and short of it is that I decided that Core is not ready for me yet. MS needs to come up with operational docs for all the roles and features on Core – locally on the machine itself and not via the network/WMI. And the OEM’s need to catch up too.
I kicked off a thread on the Minasi forum to see what people thought. I expected to get slammed because Core has been a popular idea. I was shocked (and relieved) to see people had the same experiences as me.
The link to the forum thread Aidan talked about: http://tinyurl.com/5v83zk.
You know, since writing this post, a lot of people have been saying this is evidence not to use Hyper-V. Sorry, but it’s not. I’ve decided Core is not for me because 3rd parties aren’t ready for it. If it wasn’t for hardware management, I would be using Core for our Hyper-V hosts.
Instead, I decided to use Full installtions of Windows Server 2008 for Hyper-V. No, that’s not what MS recommends. They want you to use Core but MCS don’t give a fiddlers about hardware ownership because it’s outside their scope and they’ll walk out the door once the installation is done. Me? I have to live with the system and manage it.
So, Hyper-V is good and it runs sweetly on a full installation of Windows Server 2008. There’s not much savings that I could see in using Core in a high spec machine.
– Aidan (the author of this blog and post)