Over the past month, I have been traveling around the country presenting the "Windows Server 2008 Chalk & Talk" sessions for the Microsoft Australia Readiness team. Of all the topics that I presented during the session, my talk on Windows Server 2008 Core Server was one of the hot topics judging by the number of questions the audience asked.

The Server Core installation option provides a lightweight option with a much reduced foot print. The disk footprint for a server core install for example is around 1Gb while running with 512Mb is just fine. To achieve this light weight status, Server Core has been stripped down to the bare minimum with the most obvious reduction, the removal of the GUI. Benefits of the Server Core installation option include reducing patching requirement, reduced attack surface and reduced hardware requirements to name a few.

Now, onto the title of this blog post!

The roles that you could add to a Server Core installation have been limited to the following;

• Active Directory
• Active Directory Lightweight Services
• DHCP
• DNS
• File
• Print
• Virtualization
• Streaming Media Services
• and now Internet Information Server 7.0   >>NEW<<

Bob Muglia made the announcement at TechEd in the US last week so I'm a bit slow spreading the news :)  You can read more in an interview with Bill Laing (GM - Windows Server Div) on the Microsoft PressPass site. Take a few minutes to also read about the limitations IIS7 has on Server Core on Bill Stapyl's blog.