A peek into "Longhorn"
First off, I don't think I'm outside of any NDA . In fact I think my participation in the Windows Server Code Name "Longhorn" Invitational CTP is meant exactly for me to pass along what I find and help educate others. So... if someone reads this and I am in violation of the terms of the invitational CTP let me know. But I looked and saw nothing of the sort.
So with no further ado let me begin. This will be a long post because I have approximately 20 screenshots to provide.
The Installation Environment
First, let me lay the groundwork. Below you will find the specifications of the machine on which I installed. I did install the x64 version of Longhorn because I truly expect most installations to occur on 64 bit machines.
Figure 1: The Installation System
I am running a Perc 4/SCSI RAID Controller with the drives running under RAID 0. I installed this on a new partition I created thanks to Acronis Disk Director Server 10.0. I did have an issue with the Longhorn seeing one of the partitions, the partition that was not a system, active or boot partition, properly. It showed the partition as raw. I assigned it a drive letter and it was fine after that. The partition that was the active for the other OS it assigned a drive letter without incident. Otherwise the install went off without a hitch.
As you might expect, the install looks very similar to Vista. An issue that will definitely need reporting and resolved prior to release is what I refer to as the SQL 2000 admin password issue. Remember how SQL 2000 started out defaulting the SA password to blank. Well, Longhorn does the same thing. I was so caught off guard by this that when it reboot the first time and I went to log in I kept putting in various passwords in an attempt to logon. Then it hit me- had I ever been asked for a password during setup. Nope! So I left the password field blank and immediately was able to logon as the Administrator. In defense of the install process it does have an Initial Configuration Tasks window that appears similar to a Windows 2003 Server install that indicates that the user should change the Administrator account name and set a strong password. You can see below that it does show that as task one in the config tasks. But I think at least prompting for such a password creation during install would be the best route to go.
Figure 2: Initial Configuration Tasks
The Server Manager Console looks very different, in my opinion, than under Win2k3. The capture is below. Sorry for the poor quality. If you click the image you will be taken to a full size image. The full size will not fit appropriately in this blog space.
Figure 3: Server Manager Console
Setup After Installation
After installation the selection for what features to install begins. Unlike Windows 2003 Server (Win2k3)most features are off by default unless they are selected to be enabled. The ability set roles for the server exists just as it did in Win2k3. When selecting roles it will enable the minimal features required to fulfill that role and will provide choices for additional feature sets for those roles. The capture below shows the role selection screen.
Figure 4: Longhorn Server Roles
A pretty impressive list. There are a few things to note about the list. Notice that Web Server (IIS) differs from Application Server. A screen capture showing the default description of each of these is just below.
Figure 5: Web Server Role Description
Figure 6: Application Server Role Description
Just using this differential in how Longhorn addresses the truly different roles of IIS and Application server, which up to now have really been bundled as one role, will go a long way in destroying the myth by the non .NET, non Windows community that Microsoft doesn't really have an application server. Those of us that have long been working with the technologies have long known this to be untrue but this will further differentiate the Application Server concept from the more simple Web Server role. To indicate some of the differential in the features you are presented for install when selecting Web Server Role versus Application Server Role I will utilize a real world example I ran across during my first foray into Longhorn.
I am an avid user of Virtual Server 2005. In fact, this server is really dedicated to run virtual server and various virtual environments for testing and development. Naturally, my second non-OS software installation was Virtual Server 2005 R2 x64 SP1 Beta (that's a mouthful). Virtual Server was second only to SnagIT, obviously. Virtual server installed just fine but when I went to go to the Virtual Server administration website I kept getting some sort of file streamed to me versus the admin page I had expected. I had only installed the Web Server role in preparation for the Virtual Server. After deciding I needed to install the Application Server role and a greater set of features the Virtual Server admin site almost worked as expected. Just as had occurred with my Virtual Server install on Vista running IE in a non-elevated state would not allow me to kick off the application within the web server that was needed to provide the administration functions. I believe there are better solutions than what I performed which was to run IE 7 as administrator which then had me running the virtual server admin screen. The count is still out on how Virtual Server works under the Longhorn CTP because it was at this time I realized the one partition that was not visible to Longhorn and I have not yet had time to go back and attach some virtual machines and give it a whirl. I'll keep you informed in a later post.
The remaining roles on the list as shown in Figure 6 are fairly straightforward. What was very interesting were the features that could be selected. Very nice!! Very nice indeed. Be prepared I am to drop in a slew of screen captures that show descriptions of the many feature descriptions. I highlighted the descriptions. First, let me point out one of the features I found most interesting - the Windows Internal Database Feature. You can see in the screen captures below the description and then the first page of the wizard when selecting to install the feature. I'm uncertain what forms come after the initial page because I have not installed the feature. Another thing to let you know about in the future.
Figure 7: Windows Internal Database Feature Description
Figure 8: Windows Internal Database Feature Information Form
As I warned you above, I am about to throw at you a slew of captures. I will deviate from the form to this point by not adding figure numbers. Each one is self descriptive of the feature.
WOOHOO!
OK, This one is actually a role versus a feature.
Likewise, another role versus feature. But you get the idea.
One other issue I found with Longhorn was when I opened msconfig. As I mentioned earlier, this is a dual boot server and I wanted to be able to adjust the default booting OS so that I did not need to connect a monitor and keyboard to the machine when I wished to boot into the non-default OS. Yes, unfortunately I don't have a KVM switch at the house- plus my other machine is a notebook and I do not use an external keyboard though I do use a second monitor as an extended desktop. On an aside, I extend my desktop to the left which seem quite the less popular arrangement. When I opened up msconfig in order to set the default boot for the Win2k3 partition I found it did not list the older version operating system in the boot tab. I have yet to check if the Windows 2003 Server properly shows the Longhorn instance in the boot tab. I suspect it will.
Conclusions and What's Next Time
In conclusion, I found what I consider to be a few bugs. This is to be expected in a CTP. I have yet to run it through a lot of paces and there is so much to look at that I doubt I'll get to go as deeply as I would like. I have additional areas that I have tested and investigated but will save those for a near future post. I delve fairly thoroughly into Events, Event Logs, subscribing to events on the server and taking some sort of action based on that or providing custom event filters. In addition, I jump into the performance toolsets such as perfmon, data collectors and reports, reliability monitoring etc. Also I promise addition defects I have found to go along with the areas. So stay tuned. The next longhorn session also has about 20 screen captures as well.
I have been inspired by Eric Lee and his use of Camtasia and Screencast.com so perhaps I'll create a screen cast of some of the features. The downside is Camtasia doesn't run on Vista, yet and definitely not Longhorn so I'll have to get onto an XP machine remote into the Longhorn box and capture the RDP session. Then again... I'm just as likely to never get around to such a screen cast because I have the March CTP of Orcas to dig into. I have heard mixed reviews- positives on the new features but lots of things that just don't work yet. It's early!