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Getting Ready for Longhorn
Although it's a way off, still, that doesn't mean you can't start thinking about what Windows Longhorn Server will mean for your environment. And you'll want it in your environment: Longhorn is possibly the most compelling server OS we've had since...well, Windows NT 3.1, I think. It's not the revolutionary change that Win2000 was (with its introduction of Active Directory), but some of the things in Longhorn will just beg to be used in.My current favorite is Server Core, a 500MB, stripped-down, "windowless" version of Longhorn that can act as a file server, domain controller (DC), DNS server and/or DHCP server. I know, 500MB. I'm thinking a nice 1U rackmount server or blade that has, oh, 8GB of RAM (x64 processor, of course) and a pretty small hard drive. And this is what you should be thinking of now: how you'll utilize Server Core when it finally arrives. This is going to be the most stable version of Windows ever, simply because it has so few "moving parts." If the industry estimate of 1 bug per 1,000 lines of code is close, I'm betting 500MB of code will contain a lot fewer bugs than the full-on version of Longhorn, which is going to be huge. 500MB means less patches, less potential vulnerabilities and less maintenance. "Windowless" means servers you can lock in a closet and manage entirely from your desktop, since there's no GUI on the server in the first place.