Microsoft ships first public Longhorn beta

Microsoft Wednesday released the first public beta of Longhorn Server and said the software is on track to ship by year-end.

Longhorn Beta 3 is feature complete and will be the last beta before the software enters its final round of testing later this year with the shipment of the “Release Candidate” version. Final shipment is still scheduled to come before the end of 2007.

The previous two betas were only available to a select group of testers. Beta 3 is available here.

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Microsoft Wednesday released the first public beta of Longhorn Server and said the software is on track to ship by year-end.

Longhorn Beta 3 is feature complete and will be the last beta before the software enters its final round of testing later this year with the shipment of the “Release Candidate” version. Final shipment is still scheduled to come before the end of 2007.

The previous two betas were only available to a select group of testers. Beta 3 is available here.

Despite numerous delays over the years, Microsoft did hit its revised timeline for releasing Beta 3, an important milestone to convince users and partners that development is running smoothly.

The timing of Longhorn is critical since the shipment dates of a number of key technologies, especially hypervisor virtualization capabilities, are tied to the server’s release.

Microsoft two weeks ago said delivery of the first public beta of its Windows Server Virtualization technology, code named Viridian, would be in the second half of 2007 rather than the first half as previously announced. Microsoft, however, said the final version of Viridian would still ship on time, which is planned for 180 days after Longhorn Server.

In addition, the second versions of Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) and Identity Lifecycle Manager (ILM) also are expected to ship after Longhorn is released as part of a “wave” of products tied to the server. ADFS and ILM are components of Microsoft’s identity management strategy.

“We feel really, really good about the code,” says Ward Ralston, senior technical product manager at Microsoft. “Coming into Beta 3 we have thousands of computers running Longhorn internally [in Microsoft’s IT department] and in our Technology Adoption Program and we are getting good solid feedback.”

With Beta 3, Microsoft is filling out support for the Server Core feature of Longhorn.

Server Core is the modular design of the operating system that lets users deploy only the components of the operating system they want in order to build role-based servers that are less complex and more secure. Beta 3 adds support for deploying servers configured for print services, streaming media and Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services. Microsoft also has added the ability to run Viridian as a Server Core role.

As part of Beta 3, users will see for the first time integration of Microsoft’s new PowerShell command-line scripting tool and improvements in Active Directory Federation Services to ease the creation of trust relationships. In addition, Windows Firewall with Advanced Security is now on by default to help provide security during installation, and Network Access Protection (NAP) has been integrated with Microsoft Update and Windows Update.

Microsoft also it was making available an Internet Information Server (IIS) Go Live license, which let customers host Web applications and .Net 3.0 Web services on Beta 3 in live production environments.

Longhorn, which was originally targeted for a 2005 delivery date, has been a long time coming for Microsoft. In 2002, the project was “officially” cancelled only to be added back to the operating system roadmap four months later with a revised ship date of 2006. In May 2004, the ship date was moved back to 2007. Beta 1 was released in August 2005 and Beta 2 was shipped in May 2006.