&Microsoft has released the June Community Technology Preview of Windows Server 2008, which serves as an interim release between Beta 3 and Release Candidate 1. The company says Beta 3 has already been downloaded over 200,000 times in the two months since its release.

While it may represent a minor update, the June CTP brings to the table a major new feature: the addition of IIS7 as part of the Server Core installation option. As previously reported by BetaNews, Microsoft disclosed at TechEd 2007 earlier this month that IIS would become the seventh ready-made "role" available for the operating system.

The change should make it tremendously easier for admins to provision and deploy low-overhead Web services very rapidly, even using the command line, and could finally close the similarities gap between itself and the world's most deployed Web server software, Apache. (More information from Microsoft here.)

In a statement, Microsoft explained that, "IIS7 is a powerful Web server that allows IT administrators to increase Web site and application availability while lowering system administration costs. In addition, IIS7 gives Web-hosters a cost-effective, more scalable Web server for delivering reliable Web hosting to a broader set of customers."

Perhaps more importantly, however, is that the company has decided to put all of its weight behind IIS as a competitor in the Web server space; some Microsoft employees had previously suggested the Redmond company would replace the complex server with a minimum-overhead WS-* standards-compliant solution.

In an interview at TechEd 2007, product manager Brian Goldfarb told BetaNews' Scott Fulton that Windows Communications Foundation -- the end product of the Indigo project -- is and may always be directly dependent on IIS, which he called "the glue" that fits all Web interactions together in the current Microsoft model. "You have to have port 80," Goldfarb said.

The Windows Server 2008 June CTP is available today to MSDN and TechNET subscribers, as well as Microsoft Connect beta testers.

BETA CAPSULE Server Core

An installation option built into the upcoming Windows Server 2008 that omits graphical services and most libraries, in favor of a stripped-down, command-line-driven system. It's not unlike an upgraded version of DOS.

Typically, a Server Core-based server is designed to be administered remotely. The new System Center Operations Manager, along with other tools, can present a graphical adminstrative panel for a Server Core machine. During installation, Server Core is set up so that the server performs one of seven roles so it serves its purpose well when left unattended.

Now, a DNS or DHCP server or an auxiliary domain controller can be a dedicated server "box" with its own discrete, uninterrupted role. It can be a separate machine, or it can be a virtual server. Since it runs little or nothing else, its "attack surface" is reduced to a bare minimum - you can't take advantage of a buffer overflow problem with Windows Explorer, when there's no Windows Explorer. What's more, a Server Core system can be a rather spartan piece of equipment - maybe an older server, or a blade. This could drastically reduce both up-front cost and total cost of ownership.