Windows Server 2008 is the fourth release of the

Windows Server Windows Server (formerly Windows NT Server) is a group of operating systems (OS) for servers that Microsoft has been developing since July 27, 1993. The first OS that was released for this platform was Windows NT 3.1 Advanced Server. With the r ...

operating system produced by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

as part of the

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Win ...

family of the operating systems. It was

released to manufacturing A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

on February 4, 2008, and generally to retail on February 27, 2008. Derived from

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

, Windows Server 2008 is the successor of

Windows Server 2003 R2 Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2 ...

and the predecessor to

Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2008 R2 is the fifth version of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft and released as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generall ...

. On January 12, 2016, Microsoft ended support for all Internet Explorer versions older than

Internet Explorer 11 Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) is the eleventh, final, and now deprecated version of the Internet Explorer web browser. It was initially included in the release of Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 on October 17, 2013, and was ...

released in 2013 for

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

. Extended support for Windows Server 2008 ended on January 14, 2020. Extended Security Updates (ESU) updates last until January 10, 2023 (January 9, 2024 for Azure customers). Windows Server 2008 is the final version which supports

IA-32 IA-32 (short for "Intel Architecture, 32-bit", commonly called i386) is the 32-bit version of the x86 instruction set architecture, designed by Intel and first implemented in the 80386 microprocessor in 1985. IA-32 is the first incarnation o ...

-based processors (also known as 32-bit processors). Its successor,

, requires a 64-bit processor in any supported architecture (

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging ...

for x86 and

Itanium Itanium ( ) is a discontinued family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). Launched in June 2001, Intel marketed the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance comput ...

History

Microsoft had released

to mixed reception, and their last Windows Server release, was based on

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

. The operating system's working title was Windows Server Codename "Longhorn", but was later changed to Windows Server 2008 when

chairman

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

announced it during his keynote address at

WinHEC The Windows Hardware Engineering Community (WinHEC) is a series of technical conferences and workshops, where Microsoft elaborates on its hardware plans for Windows devices. The WinHEC from 1992 to 2008, which stood for Windows Hardware Engineerin ...

16 May 2007. Beta 1 was released on July 27, 2005; Beta 2 was announced and released on May 23, 2006, at

2006 and Beta 3 was released publicly on April 25, 2007. Release Candidate 0 was released to the general public on September 24, 2007 and Release Candidate 1 was released to the general public on December 5, 2007. Windows Server 2008 was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and officially launched on 27th of that month.

Features

Windows Server 2008 is built from the same codebase as

and thus it shares much of the same architecture and functionality. Since the codebase is common, Windows Server 2008 inherits most of the

technical Technical may refer to: * Technical (vehicle), an improvised fighting vehicle * Technical analysis, a discipline for forecasting the future direction of prices through the study of past market data * Technical drawing, showing how something is co ...

security" \n\n\nsecurity.txt is a proposed standard for websites' security information that is meant to allow security researchers to easily report security vulnerabilities. The standard prescribes a text file called \"security.txt\" in the well known locat ...

, management and administrative

features new to Windows Vista Compared with previous versions of Microsoft Windows, features new to Windows Vista are very numerous, covering most aspects of the operating system, including Management features new to Windows Vista, additional management features, Security and ...

such as the rewritten

networking stack The protocol stack or network stack is an implementation of a computer networking protocol suite or protocol family. Some of these terms are used interchangeably but strictly speaking, the ''suite'' is the definition of the communication protoco ...

(native

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv ...

, native wireless, speed and security improvements); improved image-based installation, deployment and recovery; improved diagnostics, monitoring, event logging and reporting tools; new security features such as

BitLocker BitLocker is a full volume encryption feature included with Microsoft Windows versions starting with Windows Vista. It is designed to protect data by providing encryption for entire volumes. By default, it uses the AES encryption algorithm i ...

and

address space layout randomization Address space layout randomization (ASLR) is a computer security technique involved in preventing exploitation of memory corruption vulnerabilities. In order to prevent an attacker from reliably jumping to, for example, a particular exploited f ...

(ASLR); the improved

Windows Firewall Windows Firewall (officially called Microsoft Defender Firewall in Windows 10 version 2004 and later) is a firewall component of Microsoft Windows. It was first included in Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1. Before the release of Windows ...

with secure default configuration;

.NET Framework 3.0 Microsoft started development on the .NET Framework in the late 1990s originally under the name of Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS). By late 2001 the first beta versions of .NET 1.0 were released. The first version of .NET Framework was ...

technologies, specifically

Windows Communication Foundation The Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), previously known as Indigo, is a free and open-source runtime and a set of APIs in the .NET Framework for building connected, service-oriented applications. .NET Core 1.0, released 2016, did not sup ...

Microsoft Message Queuing Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) is a message queue implementation developed by Microsoft and deployed in its Windows Server operating systems since Windows NT 4 and Windows 95. Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 also includes this component. In a ...

and

Windows Workflow Foundation Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is a Microsoft technology that provides an API, an in-process workflow engine, and a rehostable designer to implement long-running processes as workflows within .NET applications. The latest version of WF was r ...

; and the core kernel, memory and file system improvements. Processors and memory devices are modeled as

Plug and Play In computing, a plug and play (PnP) device or computer bus is one with a specification that facilitates the recognition of a hardware component in a system without the need for physical device configuration or user intervention in resolving resou ...

devices to allow

hot-plugging Hot swapping is the replacement or addition of components to a Computer, computer system without stopping, shutdown (computing), shutting down, or Reboot, rebooting the system; hot plugging describes the addition of components only. Components ...

of these devices. This allows the system resources to be partitioned dynamically using dynamic hardware partitioning - each partition has its own memory, processor and I/O host bridge devices independent of other partitions.

Server Core

Windows Server 2008 includes a variation of installation called

Server Core Server Core is a minimalistic Microsoft Windows Server installation option, debuted in Windows Server 2008. Server Core provides a server environment with functionality scaled back to core server features, and because of limited features, it has ...

. Server Core is a significantly scaled-back installation where no

Windows Explorer File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface for accessing the file ...

shell is installed. It also lacks

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems ( ...

, and many other non-essential features. All configuration and maintenance is done entirely through command-line interface windows, or by connecting to the machine remotely using

Microsoft Management Console Microsoft Management Console (MMC) is a component of Microsoft Windows that provides system administrators and advanced users an interface for configuring and monitoring the system. It was first introduced in 1998 with the Option Pack for Window ...

(MMC).

Notepad A notebook (also known as a notepad, writing pad, drawing pad, or legal pad) is a book or stack of paper pages that are often ruled and used for purposes such as note-taking, journaling or other writing, drawing, or scrapbooking. History ...

and some Control Panel applets, such as Regional Settings, are available. A Server Core installation can be configured for several basic roles, including the

domain controller A domain controller (DC) is a server computer that responds to security authentication requests within a computer network domain. It is a network server that is responsible for allowing host access to domain resources. It authenticates users, sto ...

(

Active Directory Domain Services Active Directory (AD) is a directory service developed by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. It is included in most Windows Server operating systems as a set of Process (computing), processes and Windows service, services. Initially, Active D ...

), Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (formerly known as Active Directory Application Mode), DNS Server,

DHCP server The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network management protocol used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks for automatically assigning IP addresses and other communication parameters to devices connected to the network using a cli ...

, file server,

print server In computer networking, a print server, or printer server, is a type of server that connects printers to client computers over a network. It accepts print jobs from the computers and sends the jobs to the appropriate printers, queuing the jobs loc ...

, Windows Media Server,

Internet Information Services Internet Information Services (IIS-pronounced 2S, formerly Internet Information Server) is an extensible web server software created by Microsoft for use with the Windows NT family. IIS supports HTTP, HTTP/2, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SMTP and NN ...

7 web server and

Hyper-V Microsoft Hyper-V, codenamed Viridian, and briefly known before its release as Windows Server Virtualization, is a native hypervisor; it can create virtual machines on x86-64 systems running Windows. Starting with Windows 8, Hyper-V superseded W ...

virtual server roles. Server Core can also be used to create a

cluster may refer to: Science and technology Astronomy * Cluster (spacecraft), constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft * Asteroid cluster, a small asteroid family * Cluster II (spacecraft), a European Space Agency mission to study t ...

with

high availability High availability (HA) is a characteristic of a system which aims to ensure an agreed level of operational performance, usually uptime, for a higher than normal period. Modernization has resulted in an increased reliance on these systems. F ...

using failover clustering or network load balancing. Andrew Mason, a program manager on the Windows Server team, noted that a primary motivation for producing a Server Core variant of Windows Server 2008 was to reduce the

attack surface The attack surface of a software environment is the sum of the different points (for " attack vectors") where an unauthorized user (the "attacker") can try to enter data to or extract data from an environment. Keeping the attack surface as small a ...

of the operating system, and that about 70% of the security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows from the prior five years would not have affected Server Core.

Active Directory

The Active Directory domain functionality that was retained from Windows Server 2003 was renamed to Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS). * Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) enables enterprises to share credentials with trusted partners and customers, allowing a consultant to use their company user name and password to log in on a client's network. * Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS), (formerly Active Directory Application Mode, or ADAM) * Active Directory Certificate Services (ADCS) allow administrators to manage user accounts and the

digital certificates Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals **Digital camera, which captures and stores digital i ...

that allow them to access certain services and systems. ''Identity Integration Feature Pack'' is included as ''Active Directory Metadirectory Services''. *

Active Directory Rights Management Services Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS, known as Rights Management Services or RMS before Windows Server 2008) is a server software for information rights management shipped with Windows Server. It uses encryption and a form of selectiv ...

(ADRMS) * Read-only domain controllers (RODCs), intended for use in branch office or other scenarios where a domain controller may reside in a low physical security environment. The RODC holds a non-writeable copy of Active Directory, and redirects all write attempts to a full domain controller. It replicates all accounts except sensitive ones. In RODC mode, credentials are not cached by default. Also, local administrators can be designated to log on to the machine to perform maintenance tasks without requiring administrative rights on the entire domain. * Restartable Active Directory allows ADDS to be stopped and restarted from the Management Console or the command-line without rebooting the domain controller. This reduces downtime for offline operations and reduces overall DC servicing requirements with ''Server Core''. ADDS is implemented as a ''Domain Controller Service'' in Windows Server 2008. * All of the

Group Policy Group Policy is a feature of the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems (including Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server 2003+) that controls the working environment of user accounts and computer accounts. G ...

improvements Improvement is the process of a thing moving from one state to a state considered to be better, usually through some action intended to bring about that better state. The concept of improvement is important to governments and businesses, as well a ...

from Windows Vista are included. Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) is built-in. The Group Policy objects are indexed for search and can be commented on. * Policy-based networking with

Network Access Protection Network Access Protection (NAP) is a Microsoft technology for controlling network access of a computer, based on its health. With NAP, system administrators of an organization can define policies for system health requirements. Examples of system h ...

, improved branch management and enhanced end user collaboration. Policies can be created to ensure greater

quality of service Quality of service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network, or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitat ...

for certain applications or services that require prioritization of network bandwidth between client and server. * Granular password settings within a single domain - ability to implement different password policies for administrative accounts on a "group" and "user" basis, instead of a single set of password settings to the whole domain.

Failover Clustering

Windows Server 2008 offers high availability to services and applications through Failover Clustering. Most server features and roles can be kept running with little to no downtime. In Windows Server 2008, the way clusters are qualified changed significantly with the introduction of the cluster validation wizard. The cluster validation wizard is a feature that is integrated into failover clustering in Windows Server 2008. With the cluster validation wizard, an administrator can run a set of focused tests on a collection of servers that are intended to use as nodes in a cluster. This cluster validation process tests the underlying hardware and software directly, and individually, to obtain an accurate assessment of how well failover clustering can be supported on a given configuration. This feature is only available in Enterprise and Datacenter editions of Windows Server.

Disk management and file storage

* The ability to resize hard disk partitions without stopping the server, even the system partition. This applies only to simple and spanned volumes, not to striped volumes. *

Shadow Copy Shadow Copy (also known as Volume Snapshot Service, Volume Shadow Copy Service or VSS) is a technology included in Microsoft Windows that can create backup copies or snapshots of computer files or volumes, even when they are in use. It is imple ...

based block-level backup which supports optical media, network shares and

Windows Recovery Environment Windows Preinstallation Environment (also known as Windows PE and WinPE) is a lightweight version of Windows used for the deployment of PCs, workstations, and servers, or troubleshooting an operating system while it is offline. It is intended t ...

. * DFS enhancements - SYSVOL on DFS-R, Read-only Folder Replication Member. There is also support for domain-based DFS namespaces that exceed the previous size recommendation of 5,000 folders with targets in a namespace. * Several improvements to Failover Clustering ( high-availability clusters). * Internet Storage Naming Server (

iSNS In computing, the proposed Internet Storage Name Service (iSNS) protocol allows automated discovery, management and configuration of iSCSI and Fibre Channel devices (using iFCP gateways) on a TCP/IP network. Features iSNS provides management s ...

) enables central registration, deregistration and queries for

iSCSI Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI ( ) is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP ...

hard drives. * Self-healing NTFS: In Windows versions prior to Windows Vista, if the operating system detected corruption in the file system of an

NTFS New Technology File System (NTFS) is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft. Starting with Windows NT 3.1, it is the default file system of the Windows NT family. It superseded File Allocation Table (FAT) as the preferred fil ...

volume, it marked the volume "dirty"; to correct errors on the volume, it had to be taken offline. With self-healing NTFS, an NTFS worker thread is spawned in the background which performs a localized fix-up of damaged data structures, with only the corrupted files/folders remaining unavailable without locking out the entire volume and needing the server to be taken down. S.M.A.R.T. detection techniques were added to help determine when a hard disk may fail.

Hyper-V

Hyper-V is

hypervisor A hypervisor (also known as a virtual machine monitor, VMM, or virtualizer) is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called ...

-based

virtualization In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, stor ...

software, forming a core part of Microsoft's virtualization strategy. It virtualizes servers on an operating system's

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learn ...

layer. It can be thought of as partitioning a single physical server into multiple small computational partitions. Hyper-V includes the ability to act as a Xen virtualization hypervisor host allowing Xen-enabled guest operating systems to run virtualized. A beta version of Hyper-V shipped with certain

editions of Windows Server 2008, prior to Microsoft's release of the final version of Hyper-V on 26 June 2008 as a free download. Also, a standalone variant of Hyper-V exists; this variant supports only x86-64 architecture. While the IA-32 editions of Windows Server 2008 cannot run or install Hyper-V, they can run the MMC snap-in for managing Hyper-V.

Windows System Resource Manager

Windows System Resource Manager (WSRM) is integrated into Windows Server 2008. It provides resource management and can be used to control the amount of resources a

process A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic. Things called a process include: Business and management *Business process, activities that produce a specific se ...

or a user can use based on business priorities. ''Process Matching Criteria'', which is defined by the name, type or owner of the process, enforces restrictions on the resource usage by a process that matches the criteria. CPU time, bandwidth that it can use, number of processors it can be run on, and allocated to a process can be restricted. Restrictions can be set to be imposed only on certain dates as well.

Server Manager

Server Manager is a new roles-based management tool for Windows Server 2008. It is a combination of Manage Your Server and Security Configuration Wizard from Windows Server 2003. Server Manager is an improvement of the ''Configure my server'' dialog that launches by default on Windows Server 2003 machines. However, rather than serve only as a starting point to configuring new roles, ''Server Manager'' gathers together all of the operations users would want to conduct on the server, such as, getting a remote deployment method set up, adding more server roles etc., and provides a consolidated, portal-like view about the status of each role.

Protocol and cryptography

* Support for 128- and 256-bit AES encryption for the Kerberos authentication protocol. * New

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...

(CNG) API which supports

elliptic curve cryptography Elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) is an approach to public-key cryptography based on the algebraic structure of elliptic curves over finite fields. ECC allows smaller keys compared to non-EC cryptography (based on plain Galois fields) to provide ...

and improved certificate management. *

Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP) is a form of virtual private network (VPN) tunnel that provides a mechanism to transport PPP traffic through an SSL/TLS channel. SSL/TLS provides transport-level security with key negotiation, encryption ...

, a new Microsoft

proprietary {{Short pages monitor (IA-32 and x86-64) *

Windows HPC Server 2008 Windows HPC Server 2008, released by Microsoft on 22 September 2008, is the successor product to Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003. Like WCCS, Windows HPC Server 2008 is designed for high-end applications that require high performance computing ...

(codenamed "Socrates"; replacing

Windows Compute Cluster Server Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2 ...

) * Windows Storage Server 2008 (codenamed "Magni"; IA-32 and x86-64) *

Windows Small Business Server Windows Server Essentials (formerly Small Business Server or SBS) is an integrated server suite from Microsoft for businesses with no more than 25 users or 50 devices. It includes Windows Server, Exchange Server, Windows SharePoint Services, and ...

2008 (codenamed "Cougar"; x86-64) for small businesses *

Windows Essential Business Server 2008 Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (code named ''Centro'') was Microsoft's server offering for mid-size businesses (up to a maximum of 300 Users and/or Devices). It was released to manufacturing on 15 September 2008 and was officially launche ...

(codenamed "Centro"; x86-64) for medium-sized businesses - this edition was discontinued in 2010. The Microsoft Imagine program, known as DreamSpark at the time, used to provide verified students with the 32-bit variant of Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition, but the version has since then been removed. However, they still provide the R2 release. The Server Core feature is available in the Web, Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter editions. Windows Server 2008 Foundation Released on May 21, 2009.

Updates

Windows Server 2008 shares most of its updates with

due to being based on that operating system's codebase. A workaround was found that allowed the installation of updates for Windows Server 2008 on Windows Vista, adding three years of security updates to that operating system (Support for Windows Vista ended on April 11, 2017, while support for Windows Server 2008 ended on January 14, 2020).

Service Pack 2

Due to the operating system being based on the same codebase as Windows Vista and being released on the same day as the initial release of Windows Vista

Service Pack 1 In computing, a service pack comprises a collection of updates, fixes, or enhancements to a software program delivered in the form of a single installable package. Companies often release a service pack when the number of individual patches to a ...

, the RTM release of Windows Server 2008 already includes the updates and fixes of Service Pack 1. Service Pack 2 was initially announced on October 24, 2008 and released on May 26, 2009. Service Pack 2 added new features, such as Windows Search 4.0, support for Bluetooth 2.1, the ability to write to

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...

discs, and simpler Wi-Fi configuration. Windows Server 2008 specifically received the final release of

1.0, improved backwards compatibility with Terminal Server license keys and an approximate 10% reduction in power usage with this service pack. Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 share the same service pack update binary because the codebases of the two operating systems are unified - Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 are the first Microsoft client and server operating systems to share the same codebase since the release of

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was officiall ...

. The predecessors to Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008,

and

Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2 ...

, had unique codebases that used their own updates and service packs.

Platform Update

On October 27, 2009, Microsoft released the Platform Update for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista. It backports several APIs and libraries introduced in

and

to Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista, including the Ribbon API, DirectX 11, the XPS library, the Windows Automation API and the Portable Device Platform. A supplemental update was released in 2011 to provide improvements and bug fixes.

Internet Explorer 9

Windows Server 2008 shipped with

Internet Explorer 7 Windows Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) (codenamed Rincon) is a web browser for Windows. It was released by Microsoft on October 18, 2006, as the seventh version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Internet Explorer 6. Internet Explorer 7 is pa ...

, the same version that shipped with Windows Vista. The last supported version of Internet Explorer for Windows Server 2008 is Internet Explorer 9, released in 2011. Internet Explorer 9 was continually updated with cumulative monthly update rollups until support for Internet Explorer 9 on Windows Server 2008 ended on January 14, 2020. Extended Security Updates (ESU) last for the operating system and IE9 until January 10, 2023 (January 9, 2024 for Azure customers), marking the end of an era of older versions of

than

IE11 Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) is the eleventh, final, and now deprecated version of the Internet Explorer web browser. It was initially included in the release of Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 on October 17, 2013, and was ...

.NET Framework

The latest supported version of the

.NET Framework The .NET Framework (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until bein ...

officially is version 4.6, released on October 15, 2015.

TLS 1.1 and 1.2 support

In July 2017, Microsoft released an update to add TLS 1.1 and 1.2 support to Windows Server 2008, however it is disabled by default after installing the update.

SHA-2 signing support

Starting in March 2019, Microsoft began transitioning to exclusively signing Windows updates with the

SHA-2 SHA-2 (Secure Hash Algorithm 2) is a set of cryptographic hash functions designed by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and first published in 2001. They are built using the Merkle–Damgård construction, from a one-way compression ...

algorithm. As a result of this Microsoft released several updates throughout 2019 to add SHA-2 signing support to Windows Server 2008.

Monthly update rollups

In June 2018, Microsoft announced that they would be moving Windows Server 2008 to a monthly update model beginning with updates released in September 2018 - two years after Microsoft switched the rest of their supported operating systems to that model. With the new update model, instead of updates being released as they became available, only two update packages were released on the second Tuesday of every month until Windows Server 2008 reached its end of life - one package containing security and quality updates, and a smaller package that contained only the security updates. Users could choose which package they wanted to install each month. Later in the month, another package would be released which was a preview of the next month's security and quality update rollup. Installing the preview rollup package released for Windows Server 2008 on March 19, 2019, or any later released rollup package, will update the operating system kernel's build number from version 6.0.6002 to 6.0.6003. This change was made so Microsoft could continue to service the operating system while avoiding “version-related issues”. The last free security update rollup packages were released on January 14, 2020.

Extended Security Updates

Windows Server 2008/R2 are eligible for the paid Extended Security Updates (ESU) program (free for Azure Virtual Desktop users). This program allows volume license customers to purchase, in yearly installments, security updates for the operating system until at most 3 years after end of extended support, for 4 years for Azure customers, lasting until January 10, 2023 (January 9, 2024 for Azure customers). The licenses are paid for on a per-machine basis. If a user purchases an Extended Security Updates license in a later year of the program, they must pay for any previous years of Extended Security Updates as well. Extended Security Updates are released only as they become available.

Windows Server 2008 R2

A second release of Windows Server 2008 based on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, was

on July 22, 2009 and became generally available on October 22, 2009. New features added in Windows Server 2008 R2 include new virtualization features, new Active Directory features, Internet Information Services 7.5 and support for up to 256 logical processors. It is the first server operating system by Microsoft to exclusively support 64-bit processors, a move which would be followed by the consumer-oriented

Windows 11 Windows 11 is the latest major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released in October 2021. It is a free upgrade to its predecessor, Windows 10 (2015), and is available for any Windows 10 devices that meet the new Windows 11 ...

in 2021. A service pack for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, formally designed Service Pack 1, was released in February 2011.

System requirements

System requirements for Windows Server 2008 are as follows:

Scalability

Windows Server 2008 supports the following maximum hardware specifications:

Notes

References

External links

Windows Server Performance Team Blog
{{Authority control 2008 software IA-32 operating systems X86-64 operating systems