Longhorn Server Beta Goes Public

For the first time, the general public will be able to get their hands on Longhorn Server, as Microsoft released the first publicly available beta on Thursday. The company says Longhorn is still on track for a late 2007 release.

Beta 3 is now available free of charge from the Microsoft Web site. The Redmond company claims the latest build is ready for general testing publicly, and invited its customers to use the software in live production environments.

For example, Longhorn includes IIS 7, and Microsoft has introduced the IIS7 Go Live License to promote real world use of the product. It also includes the latest version of .NET, version 3.0.

"Between early adopter customers and Microsoft IT, we have hundreds of servers running in production environments today," Windows Server head Bill Laing said. "If there's one message we want to send today, it is get ready, download and evaluate."

Other new or improved features include a Server Core installation option, which limits the server footprint and potential attack surface; Network Access Protection; Read-Only Domain Controllers; and Windows Firewall. Windows PowerShell would also now be included in the product.

However, a big focus of this release is security, as it was with the consumer release of Windows Vista. Across the board, performance will also be of marked improvement, Microsoft claims.

Microsoft is pointing to the rest of the year as a oncoming "wave of innovation." Following the successful launch of Vista and Office 2007, Longhorn Server would come in the second half, along with the next version of Visual Studio, "Orcas," and Microsoft SQL server, "Katmai."

Microsoft has not yet said whether Beta 3 can be installed successfully within Virtual Server 2005 R2, which would arguably be the optimum environment for customer tests.