The journey to Nano Server

Now going back, let's tell the story from the beginning. Starting with the Windows NT and 3.1 days, after Windows Server came Windows NT and really, what Microsoft did at that time was they took the client and installed everything on it. All the roles and features were in the box. You could just deploy what you wanted and you were up and running. In fact, Mark Russinovich (CTO of Microsoft Azure), claimed that he discovered the registry key that will allow you to convert your client OS into a Server. That approach continues through Windows Server 2003 when they started to separate some of the roles and features.