Answer
Introduction
The Windows Nano server is an operating system that can be administered remotely. It is also used during the optimization of the private clouds and organizations would be able optimize their data centers as well [1]. The developer of the server is the Microsoft Corporations organization. The report has been used for the further insights to the Nano server designed by the Microsoft Corporations.
Background information
The origination of the Nano server occurred separately from the option of installation of Windows server 2016. The admin of the system would be able to use some alternatives which such as Server Core and the VMs with their containers. Additionally, the organization had refined and made the streamline for the Nano server for the environments based on the server-container based concepts. In the version released by windows 1709 the server is not available and the installation option is unavailable. The administrator is responsible for the deployment of the server in the form of a container based OS image. The server has to run on a container working on the host OS. These are the Server Core or the full Windows Server which are also known as the Server with the Experience with that of the desktop. The containers in the server provides the system with small, stateless and very fast-sharing and virtualized isolated instances, that is shared by the OS kernel lying under the layer. This because the instances of the container do not have any type of requirement for the full versions of the OS [2]. In addition to this, the computing resources used by them are very minimal. The technology has evolved to a great level and hence, the emergence of the Nano server has come into being. They are helpful in providing the administrator with the container based OS that would help them to avail the full features of the Sever Core and these type of installation made by the administrator gives them the opportunity to have the experience of desktop installation.
Technical Details and Features
The Servers contains OS based containers that provide small stateless, isolated and fast-starting virtualization instances. The OS which is underlying is generally shared by each of the containers. The container instances do not require the full OS partial installation works just fine for the server. In addition to this, bulk amount of servers can be deployed by the administrator. Although the containers share the OS the application operating layer of the OS is different for each of the containers [3]. The application which require a full compatible .NET framework makes use of the Windows Server Core. The Core Fit Nano Server provides the solution to the distinct application layers and integrates the components effectively.
The Latest Releases of the Windows Nano Server with the version of 1709 provides some additional features for the administrators. The server size of Nano is about 80 mb which is much lower than the 400 mb of the earlier releases of the Nano servers. It is also highly optimized for the highly .NET Core applications. The Servers versions have also been updated which provides the Nano Servers to run the Containers which are based on the Windows 10 IoT Core. Advanced RISC machines which the 32 bit and 64 bit architectures are used for the deployment of the Nano Servers. The exclusion of the PowerShell, .NET core and WMI default tools have also been a disadvantage to the administrator as the administrator is required to install the application tools for building the application container. The server upgrades have also been halted and the Windows update-type capacities have been removed from the extended features of the server [4]. The administrator is required to use the Docker to Troubleshoot the container of the Nano Servers. The Windows containers and the hosts that are underlying share the same kernel, and the version of the OS which should be matching with the base image of the container. In the Sever Core version of the Windows in automatically updated the sharing cores of the servers are not rebuilt and in addition to this, the corresponding image version and OS version mismatch can take place. Hence, the degraded or the missing functionality of the server is to be avoided and this mismatch is not supported by the Microsoft container and the OS version.
Advantage and Disadvantages
The main advantages of the Windows Nano Servers are:
- The Nano Servers are very lightweight and container based OS which helps server administrator in several ways.
- The Administrator is able to set up desired state configurations containers setting the scale [5].
- The Internet Information Services which were removed from the Windows Server version of 1709 is supported by the Nano Servers. This enables the server to handle the application containers in developer- or cloud-focused initiatives.
- The Servers are highly optimized and the hence the response time and the maintenance time required by the servers are reduced to a great extent.
The main disadvantages of the Windows Nano Server are Described below:
- The Server does not provide the user with the GUI environment and hence, this is a little inconvenient for the users.
- The common tools used by the Administrator for the purpose of management are not provided in the Server and hence, the Administrator is required to install the Windows PowerShell, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and Windows Remote Management into the system externally.
- The Server also does not function as the active Directory and hence, domain control is unavailable to the Server. The additional features such as group policy, Best Practices Analyzer cmdlets, virtual host bus adapters, network interface card teaming and proxy server access to the internet, as well as popular management tools such as System Center Configuration Manager and System Center Data Protection Manager are also not supported by the server.
Conclusion
For the Conclusion it is to be said the Windows Nano Server is very optimized and the sever provides various type of features for the administrator. However, it has its drawbacks as well such as missing of features from its core services. However, the features can be installed manually and it is to be realized that provision of a variety of features in an optimized package is very difficult. Hence, the deployment of the Sever is very Apt. The background information has been included in the report which is incorporated with the platforms and the advantages and the disadvantages of the Nano Server has also been provided in the report.
References
[1] Hähnel, M., Cui, W. and Peinado, M., July. High-resolution side channels for untrusted operating systems. In 2017 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ATC 17). USENIX Association, Santa Clara, CA (pp. 299-312) , 2017.
[2] Jabeen, Q., Khan, F., Hayat, M.N., Khan, H., Jan, S.R. and Ullah, F., 2016. A Survey: Embedded Systems Supporting By Different Operating Systems. arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.07899.
[3] Kedziora, M., Chow, Y.W. and Susilo, W., July. Defeating plausible deniability of VeraCrypt hidden operating systems. In International Conference on Applications and Techniques in Information Security (pp. 3-13). Springer, Singapore, 2017.
[4] Rossi, F.D., de Oliveira, I.C., De Rose, C.A., Calheiros, R.N. and Buyya, R., April. Non-invasive estimation of cloud applications performance via hypervisor’s operating systems counters. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Networks (ICN) (pp. 177-184) , 2015.
[5] Xu, Y., Cui, W. and Peinado, M., May. Controlled-channel attacks: Deterministic side channels for untrusted operating systems. In Security and Privacy (SP), 2015 IEEE Symposium on (pp. 640-656). IEEE, 2015.
