Windows Server 2008 - Unix Interoperability

Adam Bomb — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 07:01:00 GMT

I used to bang the interoperability drum a lot – I still don’t think we do a good enough job as a company of telling the story of how well Windows plays nicely with others. Case in point: while perusing the Book of Longhorn looking for something to write about this week, I noticed just one or two brief mentions of Unix and our interoperability.

The good news is we still have a strong Unix integration story in Windows Server 2008. Read on for more details.

Unix Support in Windows Server 2008

Why do Unix Support? There are two main reasons:

· Maximize previous investments – we have interoperability with platform customers have already deployed, and administrators can leverage their existing knowledge and skills.

· Lower costs – few management tools reduces the cost of administration, management and migration

What are we actually offering? Unix support is spread across a few different roles and features in Win2k8:

· Telnet, both a server and client, for command line administration

· Services for NFS allows transfer of files between Windows and Unix machines.

· Subsystem for Unix-based Applications (SUA)allows you to compile and run Unix apps on Windows with minimal changes to the source code. It also provides 300 Unix commands, utilities, and shell scripts.

· Identity Management for Unix (IDMU) – password sync between Windows domains and many Unix flavors, and a Server for NIS that allows AD to act as a master NIS server for NIS domains.

Those all sound familiar – what’s actually new here? Windows Server 2008 is the first time we’re offering x64 versions of these tools – now with x64 SUA you can use it to port x64 or x32 bit Unix apps to x64 Windows. Most scripts should run without changes at all. This is the first time that we’re including all this functionality as part of the OS – it was previously offered via web download or on the supplemental disc in Server 2003 R2.

Get started

Services for Unix on Server 2008 site (worst site ever)

Telnet Operations Guide

Server for NFS on TechNet

SFU Team blog on MSDN

IDMU on TechNet

Entries tagged with unix - TechNet Edge

Windows Server 2008 - Unix Interoperability