Windows is getting disgusting

[slicendice]

One big problem with applications with strong RDBMS dependancy is that typically programmers don't have great SQL skills, and find the SQL part a chore compared to hacking their Java and C#. Problems are often around query efficiency, getting the balance right between set based and procedural programming, understanding isolation levels, transactional integrity and avoiding application turning.

This is one reason why NoSql* databases have become popular. In some cases you don't need all the locking done for you, like Twitter or Facebook for example, but for financial applications or eCommerce where the results must be repeatable and precise, you'd be nuts to do it with a NoSql solution.

There was a wonderful Embedded FM a year or so ago with a lady of a similar vintage to me discussed how she'd realised the need to have database programmers as a different hire to a Java or C# programmer. Until I'd heard that show I just thought Joe Average programmers were lazy and crap with RDBMSs, but now I realise that for many it's such a fundamentally different thought process and discipline you need to segregate the two areas if you're to avoid nasty surprises.

*NoSql databases are not new, I was programming Pick based databases in the late 80s which have many of the fundamental facets of today's new fangled NoSql solutions.

Yes, this is exactly how it is. And decoupling the DB from the application solves most of the issues. An application should not care where the data comes from and the DB should do most of the stuff regarding the data and the DB management, not the application as it often is.

As if the average employee has any say on the matter. My employer is too cheap to go for the enterprise version so we have Win10 Pro on our Windows boxes. It's not my choice, it's not the choice of the IT guy at my location, but it's what we have. In the real world this sort of thing happens and regardless of my opinion on the matter, it is what it is.

A small company should have no trouble getting Windows Enterprise. Even an old employee of mine, who has a really small 5 person company, has Windows Server and Windows Enterprise. And the price is not that steep to overcome if you purchase the system as a a package. You can get decent deals even through companies that sell you the whole system, including hardware.

[Howardlong]

Regarding the Enterprise version, if you want to avoid force updates, you will have no choice but to host a Windows server running WSUS or SCCM to control and distribute updates, and unless someone can demonstrate otherwise, it won't even install without such a server.

For five desktops, frankly it's simply not worth it. WSUS and SCCM are enterprise tools and have an appropriately matching price tag in terms of software cost and administrative overhead. You probably need to think in terms of >25 desks and a full time IT team with cover to justify it.

[rrinker]

WSUS is free. SCCM - that is expensive. And takes a lot to set up and maintain. WSUS is actually pretty easy to manage - got plenty of clients that don;t have any IT people on staff using it to keep all their systems in sync.

 PICK, eh? I was doing one of the PC versions in the late 80's - Advanced Revelation. There are STILL things that could be done with that that you can't do with SQL databases. And it wasn't slow - that network had genuine IBM PCs as workstations with a Novell 68b file server and their proprietary STP network - 2 pairs of somewhere around #20 in a shielded cable, DB9 connectors on each end. Ran a massive 115Kbps.

[slicendice]

People seem to think that just because Windows Enterprise has the name Enterprise, it means it's expensive and you have to have tens if not even hundreds of computers in order for it to be worth while.

A good business that makes any kind of money selling stuff or services has at least one server, preferably 2 because SQL is recommended to be installed as a separate instance because it eats all available RM for caching, and at least 2 workstations.

Buying Windows Standard Server (gives the right to install 2 servers) and a few Windows Enterprise (usually 4 or 5) licenses, takes you very far. And it's not gonna make your business go bankrupt. Then you have all the tools you need to make a working system.

One has to consult MS for a proper deal. I don't know what the exact minimum would be if you buy it all as a package deal.

No need for System Center, that is meant for managing hundreds and thousands of computers with a few mouse clicks.

[eugenenine]

Used to be you could buy enterprise at 5 licenses.  It started to make sense for me to get an enterprise Office license for my family of 4.  Made more sense though to switch to OpenOffice and not be bothered with licensing.

[james_s]

Enterprise is relatively expensive, and it's a huge pain in the ass to set that all up at home compared to simply running Win7 which also gives me a much nicer UI.

You'll find once you work at a typical job that you have no say in the matter though. You will run what they give you, you will do things the way the IT department wants you to, sometimes it will seem back asswards and decisions that are made will make you roll your eyes. If you start complaining and telling the IT guy that he's an idiot or should do this/that/the other thing, he/she will get annoyed and make your life unpleasant. I've worked at several different places, large, medium and small companies and that is how it was at all of them.

[slicendice]

Enterprise is relatively expensive, and it's a huge pain in the ass to set that all up at home compared to simply running Win7 which also gives me a much nicer UI.

You'll find once you work at a typical job that you have no say in the matter though. You will run what they give you, you will do things the way the IT department wants you to, sometimes it will seem back asswards and decisions that are made will make you roll your eyes. If you start complaining and telling the IT guy that he's an idiot or should do this/that/the other thing, he/she will get annoyed and make your life unpleasant. I've worked at several different places, large, medium and small companies and they that is how it was at all of them.

Yes, enterprise cost a bit more than a Pro license, and you had to make a 3-5 year contract with MS or a vendor. Setting the thing up is not that difficult, but finding and getting the deal can be.

MS has changed their licensing model and from here on you can subscribe for Windows 10 Enterprise E3 for $7 a month (which is not much) and $15 for E5 (contains Windows Defender Advanced Services) which has , and the minimum licenses is 1. So they are making it easier and a lot cheaper.

You are absolutely correct, the average employee usually has no saying in what software the company should use nor how it should be used. As an example, the previous company I worked for, we used Excel for manually entering data logs every 5-10 minutes. That is a totally insane way of using Excel, and often ended up in data corruptions. A much better way would have been to code a simple native program that connects to the main DB, and problem would have been solved. Would have worked much faster too. Other departments used Access for their tasks. And the system as a whole was a complete mess. No one had any saying to this.

[Howardlong]

You can control SQL Server's min/max memory from SSMS. This controls its buffer cache.

It's a mistake to fall into the trap of underestimating the cost of designing and maintaining Windows based infrastructure, if you think it's just the software sticker price you're wrong, you need skills either internal or external to set it up properly and maintain it. Giving it to someone as a hobby task is almost certainly not the way to do it. For a small business you're almost certainly better off going to a cloud based solution nowadays. Some years ago SBS (small business server) was a reasonable solution but even that required someone reasonably skilled to properly configure and maintain it.

Expecting Sandra or Jim from Accounts to set up and properly maintain a Windows (or any other) infrastructure as an occasional sideline is not just going to cut it, especially when something breaks. Get someone who knows what they're doing to do it for you and set up a support contract with the right SLAs. Or go cloud.

[suicidaleggroll]

Or go cloud.

Or go to Linux, which in my experience is significantly easier to setup and maintain in a server position than Windows Enterprise, not to mention it's free.

[rrinker]

 The one product they did right was Home Server. It really is effectively maintenance free. I use it because after all day at work doing this I no longer want to come home and maintain my own systems. I NEVER log in to this thing, it just keeps chugging away. There is no mouse or keyboard or display connected to it. The original version was sold as a turnkey system with hardware from HP and a couple of others, but the HP server was severely underpowered and suffered from the bane of every consumer grade NAS as well - limited drive bays. I just built my own but aside from PC assembly it's not required any real attention. Adding a user or a new computer is even easier than Small Business Server. There's no mail server, no SQL server, no Sharepoint like SBS, so much less to manage. And it was cheap.
 And then they discontinued it! I would much rather a Server 2016 based Home Server than 2016 Essentials.

[rrinker]

Or go cloud.

Or go to Linux, which in my experience is significantly easier to setup and maintain in a server position than Windows Enterprise, not to mention it's free.

For a small business with no real computer person? Please. Someone who, if you're lucky, can know how to add a user or reset a password and still might need help with that is not going to be able to manage a Linux system.

[CraigHB]

That's the thing about Linux, it's typically more involved to set things up.  You really have to be well versed in computer systems to use it.  That's not something the guy from accounting could take on.  I could run Linux myself, I've set up systems before, but it always seems more involved.  Though after what it took to get Win7 running the way I want there's not so much of a difference anymore.

[rdl]

Windows Home Server was pretty good. It's too bad they discontinued it. I ran it on an HP Microserver Gen 7 for years. Still have it actually, but it's only turned on occasionally to make tertiary backups of a FreeNAS machine.

The only thing bad about it was the the buggy, bloated "client" software (which wasn't really needed but was pushed as a "feature"). It required something like 6 or 7 additional services to be running on the client machine, which wrote log files non-stop, and had a bad habit of reporting errors with no information as to what the problem was.

[suicidaleggroll]

That's the thing about Linux, it's typically more involved to set things up.  You really have to be well versed in computer systems to use it.

Have you tried a modern Windows Enterprise?  Just a couple of pages ago slicendice claimed that to be a decent Windows sysadmin you need no less than FIVE (5) certifications.  Agree with that number or not, that's the rough level of knowledge (education or experience) needed to properly run a Windows Enterprise environment.  How is that any better than Linux?

I am very well versed in computer systems, and it still took me literally days and multiple phone calls and emails to multiple Microsoft Authorized Partners to figure out the licensing requirements to set up ONE computer that TWO people could RDP into and run Office and one other piece of software.  Over a thousand dollars in labor spent just to figure out the licensing requirements for a trivially simple application, and that's not even counting the additional $2k+ required on the actual licenses themselves.  After a few of these systems you would easily have paid enough in research and licensing to cover the cost of figuring out Linux, and from then on it's free...Windows will keep charging you, again and again, every machine you set up, every service you try to add to it.  And it's STILL a POS with spyware embedded into the core of the OS, requiring days of labor to clean up all of the crap and get it running how it should have come from the factory.

[suicidaleggroll]

Or go cloud.

Or go to Linux, which in my experience is significantly easier to setup and maintain in a server position than Windows Enterprise, not to mention it's free.

For a small business with no real computer person? Please. Someone who, if you're lucky, can know how to add a user or reset a password and still might need help with that is not going to be able to manage a Linux system.

They're not going to be able to navigate the Windows Enterprise licensing structure either, or figure out all of the arbitrary rules MS has put in place requiring multiple machines to run different services because MS doesn't want them running on the same computer.

[Howardlong]

Microsoft's horrendously complex licensing is an industry joke, and they keep changing it and adding bits on. It's like doing a tax return. Maybe Sandra and Jim from accounts would be able to figure this bit out!

[rrinker]

 They're not really arbitrary rules as to what plays together on the same server. Some of the stuff really does not play well together, Small Business Server with it all loaded onto a single server is actually a good example of why it's not recommended to run some of that stuff together. Horrendously slow shutdown and boot times as the various servers get into a race condition on what needs to stop first and what has to wait. Startup being equally messed up as each service grabs a huge chunk of resources before settling down which just delays the next service from starting in an avalanche effect. Eventually it all comes up and is running, but wow.

 As for the WHS client - it's not that huge, it never did anything to any of my machines, and the crazy thing is it still works even with Windows 10. The notifications I get fro it all say something useful (except the you can't truly permanently disable "Windows Firewall is turned off" one). Usually stuff like "server has installed updates" or "<computer on my network> has critical updates to install"

 vs Linux in the small business environment - plenty of non-computer people pick up enough to keep their system going via the SBS console or Essentials Dashboard. No, they don't set the system up, someone like us does that for them. But maintain a Linux system? Not likely.

[slicendice]

LOL, with Linux administering you have all the same issues as with Windows, and most stuff you have to manage through the BASH or using a web interface. Either you know how to manage a cluster of computers or you don't, does not matter if it is Windows, Linux or Mac, same problem still.

Yes MS licensing is a nightmare, there are so many alternatives and combinations, and the full detailed information can be quite difficult to get your hands on.

Has anybody tried Windows Server 2016 Essentials? It is really really easy to use via the Essentials dashboard. The traditional Server Manager Dashboard is available too though, if one want be in more control.

Either way...Windows is getting really good, there is so much stuff going on behind the scenes that most users won't even notice. And I am not talking about some telemetry data or MS spying on you. MS spying on you is total BS, they respect your privacy. There is a lot of really good change in the core of Windows, including multiple added layers of security that are completely missing in Windows 7 because these features are not built into the core/kernel. ...and more security features are coming with each new edition upgrade because the Windows 10 core allows to do this, where older Windows don't.

[rrinker]

 Licensing is easy, if you are big enough to afford it or a qualifying non-profit - just go virtual and buy Server Enterprise for each host. Then you can spin up as many virtual guest servers as you want/need. Otherwise I don't think even the people at Microsoft really understand it - based on the quotes we get.
 It doesn't help that they keep changing it, mostly in response to there now being server CPUs with 18 or more cores.

[Howardlong]

They would do themselves a huge favour just to (a) disable compulsory updates until there is positive user intervention to download or install them and (b) stop hijacking your settings on installing those updates.

I found ads coming up in the Skype window during a call the other day during a long call helping someone fix his embedded bootloader. They don't give a shit about user experience.

[Howardlong]

Licensing is easy, if you are big enough to afford it or a qualifying non-profit - just go virtual and buy Server Enterprise for each host. Then you can spin up as many virtual guest servers as you want/need. Otherwise I don't think even the people at Microsoft really understand it - based on the quotes we get.
 It doesn't help that they keep changing it, mostly in response to there now being server CPUs with 18 or more cores.

Just the SQL Server 2016 licensing pdf is 32 pages long with more options than an Office 2016 Ribbon. They _have_ to simplify and target a single page.

I totally agree that by far most Microsoft employees don't understand it either, because they don't need to. That is part of the problem.

Interestingly they recently relaxed the SQL Server Standard licensing by enabling a whole bunch of features that were previously on Enterprise on 2016 SP1, and if the grapevine is true their KPIs on SQL Server revenue were plummeting since they massively hiked Enterprise costs and everyone downgraded to Standard.

[suicidaleggroll]

They're not really arbitrary rules as to what plays together on the same server. Some of the stuff really does not play well together, Small Business Server with it all loaded onto a single server is actually a good example of why it's not recommended to run some of that stuff together. Horrendously slow shutdown and boot times as the various servers get into a race condition on what needs to stop first and what has to wait. Startup being equally messed up as each service grabs a huge chunk of resources before settling down which just delays the next service from starting in an avalanche effect. Eventually it all comes up and is running, but wow.

Then that's a SUPER shitty design, not surprising though.

LOL, with Linux administering you have all the same issues as with Windows, and most stuff you have to manage through the BASH or using a web interface. Either you know how to manage a cluster of computers or you don't, does not matter if it is Windows, Linux or Mac, same problem still.

Except MS tacks on truckloads of extra crap you have to deal with, such as those already mentioned.  Services not playing nice with each other, requiring extra VMs or extra machines to actually get the job done, a licensing nightmare that keeps changing and they don't even understand, etc.

Either way...Windows is getting really good, there is so much stuff going on behind the scenes that most users won't even notice. And I am not talking about some telemetry data or MS spying on you. MS spying on you is total BS, they respect your privacy.

Oh come on...put the koolaid down, this is ridiculous.  If MS gave two craps about respecting privacy they wouldn't revert your privacy settings on every update back to sharing everything.  If they cared about privacy, these options, such as recording everything you say, everything you type, and everything you do and reporting it back to MS, would be OPT-IN, not OPT-OUT, and certainly not re-opt-out after every system update.

[DimitriP]

There is a lot of really good change in the core of Windows, including multiple added layers of security that are completely missing in Windows 7 because these features are not built into the core/kernel. ...and more security features are coming with each new edition upgrade because the Windows 10 core allows to do this, where older Windows don't.

E N O U G H !!!

[slicendice]

All you negatives only see the surface, dig deep into Windows and you'll see what is improved.

Having to virtualize or setting up stuff on additional hardware is a good thing, adds an extra layer of security to the whole system because each process is sand boxed and totally separated from each other. You should do the same on Linux too. Plus virtualizing allows the whole system to use its full potential because usually a service only use a few percent of resources.

Buy Skype for business, if ads annoy you. The money for maintaining servers has to come from somewhere. There does not exist "something for nothing", meaning someone has to pay.

If services don't play good together, then the problem is how it is setup.

How do you think the speech recognition engine can learn new accents if the data isn't processed somewhere? What about battery life on a laptop, if everything is processed and analyzed and optimized locally? Same for search keywords you type in. The words and the relationship between returned results and what the user was actually looking for, has to be processed somewhere in order for the service being able to serve you better. What about data storage? Sending the data away helps save storage space and how could any company be able to improve anything if they have no data to work with?

What about millions of different device configurations? How can anything be improved if the one who can make a difference has no data to work with? The information must come from somewhere or a company would not even know what kind of hardware you are using.

Many just expect stuff to work on their computer without even thinking how it was gotten working in the first place. Not helping the developer by not sending some data, will end up in a half baked product and the only one suffering is YOU, the customer.

[Marco]

The design and implementation of security on Windows is improving massively. Shame it's happening at the same exact time they are transforming into a datamining company which wants to sell its users to advertisers.

Google does that better, Apple does security well enough and at this point offers more freedom than Microsoft (on the software side). Microsoft is rapidly losing its raison d'etre.