Server Core is not Core

I was at the Microsoft's Heroes Happen {Here} launch today, where I heard a weird comment during one of the early sessions "(Windows) Core server can only run Native code, not managed code". This had my attention during the rest of the day.

Windows Core Server 2008 is designed as a headless, low footprint server for use in resource intensive roles. I first heard about Server Core at the Exchange 2007 launch last year. Finally a server out of the box optimised for performance and without the overhead of the GUI and the Explorer shell. At the launch, the presenters talked about issues such as installation without a GUI. Solution, use the GUI tools to generate an unattend script, simple. Exchange management tasks would all be done with Powershell. These were exciting times.

I though of other solutions, such as web servers. I once ran a load intensive web site on 5 Mac Mini's (still using OSX), with a few modifications I was able to recover between 200-500mb of RAM which Apache could chew up. A similar setup would be easy to achieve with using Server Core. I would assume that this is how all web hosting farms would operate in a Windows 2008 environment. Especially hosting providers that are automated and end users are required configure their sites via an Admin web site.

Back to that comment... No Managed code.... I asked a few questions regarding this, the response was that the .NET framework is not currently supported on Server Core, they removed too much from the base OS that the Framework was not supported. Without a GUI, the System.Windows namespace would be useless. Removal of a key piece of the Framework would splinter .NET even further (DLR, CLR). With no .NET Framework, you no longer have Powershell or ASP.NET. Key pieces of technology required in the above scenarios. So no headless Exchange 2007 or Web server (running ASP.NET). The Microsoft presenters at the Heroes launch suggested that .NET would make it into 2008 R2 (hey there's going be an 2008 R2!!!)

So what is Server Core 2008 going to be good for? At the launch Microsoft were suggesting Branch Office, Web Server (unless you want to run ASP.NET), Hyper-V host. Of all these roles I think the only one that makes any sense is the Hyper-V host, but Hyper-V is at least 6 months away.

I'm still interested in the potential that Server Core can offer, I don't think that it is currently ready. I intend to do some testing to see what can actually install on Server Core. Java VM? Apache? PHP? PHP on IIS!?. Would be really disappointing if you could run a LAMP stack on Server Core, but not the .NET framework. I'll let you know how my tests go.