Windows Server 2008: More Open Than You Think

Open source development principles can be seen in a number of the features of Microsoft Windows Server 2008. From the modular architecture evident in IIS 7.0 to standards-based communication and feedback-driven development, Windows Server 2008 reaches out to more languages and more standards than ever before.

By Michael Pastore

Thinking of Microsoft and the open source community as bitter rivals makes for more interesting reading and lively discussion. But in recent years, a number of the traits that make open source software and development successful are starting to appear in Microsoft products. That doesn't mean all is fair in software and hardware, but it does mean that developers and system administrators accustomed to working with one platform or another will find their skills can be applied to both.

Early in 2008, Sam Ramji, the senior director of platform strategy at Microsoft, blogged about the open source traits that would be a part of Windows Server 2008. As part of a goal to make Windows Server programming-language agnostic, one of the most visible open source traits in Windows Server 2008 is improved support for the PHP programming language.

PHP is an open source, server-side, HTML-embedded scripting language that's widely used to create dynamic Web pages. It's the third most popular development language used today, and many PHP developers were already developing on the Windows Server platform to begin with.

Microsoft worked for almost two years with the PHP experts at Zend to create performance improvements for PHP applications running on the Windows Server platform. As part of the cooperation, Microsoft developed an IIS component called FastCGI that serves as the interface between Windows Server and PHP. Before Microsoft and Zen worked together, Zen developed its own FastCGI component for Windows Server, and will continue to do so for the Apache server.

In order to support additional improvements for PHP on the Windows Server platform going forward, Zend created a Windows testing lab with a cluster of Windows Server boxes and a testing framework.

Open Beyond PHP

Improved PHP support is not the only Windows Server 2008 improvement that will look familiar to fans of open source software. What Ramji called "built-for-purpose" systems, i.e., the ability to build a system for a specific purpose and nothing else, are evident in the Server Core function of Windows Server. Using a wizard-driven system Server Core can be used to create servers dedicated to tasks like DNS, DHCP, file, and Web serving. Server Core also helps improve security by removing extra functions that will not be needed from the server.

System administrators who work with open source software often do a lot of programming to make the software work efficiently with their infrastructure. This function is recognized in Windows Server 2008 with the PowerShell-driven architecture that gives systems administrators the ability to write scripts and explore the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI).

The adherence to standards has been a hallmark of open source software development because standards help a single application grow into a family and ecosystem of related products and code. Windows Server 2008 features such as CardSpace and the Web services stack are based on standards so they can more easily interact with other software and hardware.

Modular architecture is a common trait among many open source software projects because of the decentralized way in which many of the applications are developed. Within Windows Server 2008, IIS 7.0 has a far more modular architecture than its predecessor, IIS 6. This results in greater flexibility and the ability to customize the server for your environment. IIS 7.0 has more than 40 modules you can choose to install.

Without community-driven development, many of the open source applications that IT professionals use every day wouldn't exist. Windows Server 2008, as well as several other Microsoft products, took advantage of the vast Microsoft community of developers and IT professionals with RDPs, betas, and alpha and beta installations at customers. Although developers aren't directly involved in the code as they could be on an open source project, Ramji credits feedback from developers for improvements to the read only domain controller (RODC) and BitLocker features that are now a part of Windows Server 2008.

No one is going to confuse Microsoft with an open source operation, but it's clear that many of the best practices that have contributed to the success of open source applications are gaining traction at Microsoft. In an IT environment that's more likely to contain software and applications from any number of vendors, as well as custom code, it's vital that Microsoft create applications and products that help the company play nice with others.

Michael Pastore is the Executive Editor, Special Projects at Internet.com.