eWEEK Labs Walk-Through: Windows Server Longhorn Beta 3

Longhorn Server sports a beefed-up initial configuration tasks dialog that greeted us after installation.

Longhorn suggested that we rename our administrator account while assigning that account an initial password.

At Longhorns urging, we logged out after changing our admin account name.

We opted in for automatic updates.

Longhorn Servers Add Roles wizard is chockfull of explanatory text and help file pointers.

Lonhorn Servers Add Roles wizard can now sort out the installation of multiple roles at once.

Terminal Services is one of the Windows Server areas thats seen the most change in Longhorn.

While Longhorns software management framework still isnt as rigorous as that of Debian GNU/Linuxs, its moving in the right direction.

In the last Longhorn Server build we tested, there was no option for allowing pre-RDP 6 clients to access Terminal Services. We were happy to find this rectified in Beta 3, as theres not yet an RDP 6.0 client available for Linux.

Longhorn Server will ship with a new, more modular version of Microsofts IIS Web server.

Windows various file serving capabilities, including its distributed file system and NFS, are all packed up into the File Services role dialog.

All the help text is not yet in place, but the help system integration shows promise.

Longhorns knack for sorting out the dependencies across multiple roles was handy, but for us the process ran a bit slowly.

As in Windows Server 2003, Longhorn Server does a good job of helping to sort out configuration issues.

We could block access to particular file types, based on their name extensions.

Longhorns Server Manager offers up a wealth of information.

Longhorn Server also ships with a command-line version of its Server Manager, although, strangely enough, this application will not work with Longhorns trimmed-down, command-line-only server core configuration-the app relies on .Net, which itself relies

Microsofts spiffy new Powershell command-line interface also ships with Longhorn, and, also strangely, Powershell will not work with the Longhorn Server core. Again, the culprit is a .Net dependency.

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