Search
Sponsors
Creating a core Longhorn server
There is a law of computing that states that the larger the footprint of code that’s running on a server, the better the chance that the code will contain an exploitable security hole. In spite of this law, both operating systems and applications tend to become more bloated with every new release. Longhorn Server puts this law into practice by offering a new minimal installation model called a core server. The core server is secure, but very restrictive. In this article, I will explain what a core server is and show you how to deploy one.Sometime shortly after Windows Server 2003 was released, Microsoft seemed to finally acknowledge this philosophy. They produced several different documents that explained which services can (and often should) be disabled in order to reduce the footprint size of the code that’s executing on the server, thereby making that server more secure.
It seems like that this time Microsoft has learned from their past mistakes though. Longhorn Server will support what is known as a core installation. A core installation is a bare minimal installation that includes only a tiny subset of the code that is normally installed on a Longhorn Server.(more)