Chapter 1: Introduction

Overview

Well, you’ve made it past the table of contents and have arrived at the Introduction, so I guess I better start introducing this book to you and explaining what it’s about. This is the first book about Microsoft Windows Server 2008 published by Microsoft Press, and let me be straight with you right from the beginning. What? A book about Windows Server 2008 is being published when the product is only in Beta 3? Won’t it have inaccuracies? (Sure.) Aren’t features still subject to change? (Yup.) Doesn’t that make this a “throwaway” book? (Not on your life, you’ll see.) And why would Microsoft Press publish a book about a product that’s not even finished yet?

The short answer to that final question is that Microsoft Press has always done this sort of thing. Remember Introducing Windows Vista by William Stanek? Or Introducing Microsoft Windows Server 2003 by Jerry Honeycutt? Or Introducing Microsoft .NET by David S. Platt? See? I told you. Why does Microsoft Press do this? To get you excited about what’s coming down the product pipeline from Microsoft. To help you become familiar with new products while they’re still in the development stage. And, of course, to get you ready to buy other books from them once the final version of the product is released. After all, you know what it’s like. You have a business and have to make money-so do they.

But isn’t a book that’s based on a pre-release version (in this case, close to Beta 3) going to be full of inaccuracies and not reflect the final feature lineup in the RTM version of the product? Well, not really, for several reasons. First, I’ve had the pleasure (sometimes the intense pleasure) of interacting daily with dozens of individuals on the Windows Server 2008 product team at Microsoft during the course of writing this book. And they’ve been generous (sometimes too generous) in supplying me with insights, specifications, pre-release documentation, and answers to my many, many questions-the answers to some of which I was actually able to understand (sometimes). It’s been quite an experience interacting with the product team like this; they’re proud of the features they’re developing and they have good reason to be. And all this interaction with the product group should mean that a lot of technical errors and inaccuracies will have been avoided for many descriptions of features in this book.

In addition, the product team has generously given their time (occasionally after repeated, badgering e-mails on my part) to review my chapters in draft and to make comments and suggestions (sometimes a lot of suggestions). This, too, should result in a lot of technical gaffs being weeded out. To understand what it means for these individuals to have given their time like this to poring over my chapter drafts, you’ve got to understand something about the stress of developing a product like Windows Server 2008 and getting it out the door as bug-free as possible and into customers’ hands while working under heavy time constraints. After all, the market won’t stand still if a product like Windows Server 2008 is delayed. There are competitors-we won’t mention their names here, but they’re out there and you know about them.

Another reason this book has a high degree of technical accuracy (especially for a pre-release title) is because a lot of it is actually written by the product team themselves! You’ll find scattered throughout most of the chapters almost a hundred sidebars (95 at last count) whose titles are prefixed “From the Experts.” These sidebars are a unique feature of this book (and especially for a pre-release book), and they provide valuable “under the hood” insights concerning how different Windows Server 2008 features work, recommendations and best practices for deploying and configuring features, and tips on troubleshooting features. These sidebars range from a couple of paragraphs to several pages in length, and most of them were written by members of the Windows Server 2008 product team at Microsoft. A few were written by members of other teams at Microsoft, while a couple were contributed by contractors and vendors who work closely with Microsoft. And more than anything else, the depth of expertise provided by these sidebars makes this book a “keeper” instead of a “throwaway,” as most pre-release books usually are.

I’ll get you a list of all the names of these sidebar writers in a minute to acknowledge them, but maybe I better show you what a sidebar actually looks like if you’ve never seen one before (or if you’ve seen them in other titles but didn’t know what they were called). Here’s an example of a sidebar:

From the Experts: Important Disclaimer!

The contents of this book are based on a pre-release version of Windows Server 2008 and are subject to change. The new features and enhancements described in the chapters that follow might get pulled at the last minute, modified (especially the GUI), tweaked, twisted, altered, adjusted, amended-press Shift+F7 in Microsoft Office Word for more. Nothing written here is written in stone, and the product group (and myself) have tried not to promise anything or describe features that might not make it into RTM. So while we’ve made our best effort to ensure this book is a technically accurate description of Windows Server 2008 at the Beta 3 milestone (and hopefully well beyond), we disclaim and deny and renounce and repudiate and whatever (Shift+F7 again) any and all responsibility for anything in this book that is no longer accurate once the final release of Windows Server 2008 occurs. Thanks for understanding.

-Mitch Tulloch with the Windows Server Team at Microsoft

That’s what a sidebar looks like. Sure hope you’ve read it!

And having a disclaimer like that shouldn’t be a problem, right? For example, if the UI changes for some feature between now and RTM, that shouldn’t decrease the technical value of this book much, should it? After all, you’re IT pros, so you’re pretty smart and can figure out a UI, right? And if a feature has to be dropped at the last minute or changed to make it meet some emerging standard, interoperate better with products from other vendors, or simply to ensure the highest possible stability of the final product, you’ll understand, won’t you? I mean, you’re IT pros, so you know all about how the software development processworks, right?

Thanks for cutting us some slack on this. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed by what you find between these covers. And whatever flaws or errors or gaps you do happen to find, feel free to fill them in yourself with extra reading and hands-on experimenting with the product. You have the power-you’re IT pros. You rock. You rule.