Programming Windows: Longhorn Server (Premium)

Though it was impacted by the same delays as Longhorn/Windows Vista, Longhorn Server targeted a market that was more than willing to wait. It was also built by a different organization, the Windows Server group, which had been run by Bob Muglia since its inception in 2003. Among other changes, Muglia instituted a major/minor release cadence for the product line, starting with Windows Server 2003, which was a major release. Under this plan, major releases would appear roughly every four years with minor releases spaced evenly in the interim.

Windows Server 2003 R2 (for “Release 2”), as the first minor release was called, appeared right on schedule in September 2005, providing the predictability that Microsoft’s corporate customers wanted. It replaced the original Server 2003 release in the channel, as it offered the same compatibility while only adding a handful of optional new features.

Longhorn Server, as the next major Windows Server release was then called, was scheduled for 2007, though its delivery would get pushed back along with Vista’s. And Microsoft would eventually push it past the general availability of the client, and then realign the schedule so that Server would ship roughly one milestone after Vista.

“With ‘Longhorn’ Server, Microsoft is focused on providing customers with a rock-solid server foundation that is secure, manageable, responsive, interoperable, and compatible,” the software giant told me when it delivered Longhorn Server Beta 1 concurrently with Windows Vista Beta in mid-2005. “It will enable the rapid delivery of smart and connected applications, and it will give IT customers increased agility to improve operational efficiency. Key innovations within Longhorn Server will include policy-based networking, improved branch management, and enhanced end-user collaboration.”

Windows lead Jim Allchin was as enthused for Longhorn Server as he was for the client, noting earlier that year that his favorite new features in Server were the Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 webserver—“it will nail hosting like you wouldn’t believe,” he told Microsoft MVPs—new Network Access Translation (NAT) functionality, and federation improvements.

Other new Longhorn Server features would be revealed over time and are discussed below. But the two big themes here were componentization and automation: Microsoft was rearchitecting Windows Server to better take on the UNIX-like threat from Linux. And to do that, it was rethinking the original approach of its NT-based platform, which had been designed around monolithic functionality controlled by graphical tools.

Starting with Longhorn Server, that would change.

Going forward, Windows Server would be deeply componentized so that servers could be configured with a minimal number of subsystems with as few dependencies as possible. And, over time, the interfaces to those subsystems would be built natively for a modern new command line and scripting environment based on .NET. This plan called for graphical tools to be built on top of those interfaces, and these GUIs would never offer features that were not possible from the command line.

Three major Windows Server technologies came about because of this change: Windows PowerShell, Server Core, and Hyper-V. Interestingly, each later impacted the Windows client as well.

Windows PowerShell was a command line and scripting environment that was originally called Monad and was conceived as a Blackcomb deliverable. Fellow Windows NT Magazine alumni Mark Minasi and I had received an early peek at Monad during a trip to the Microsoft campus in early 2002. We were told at that time that this command line environment would provide comprehensive, consistent, and secure automation capabilities for both local and remote administration. It was positioned as a .NET-focused alternative for the popular UNIX and Linux command line shells of the day.

Like the rest of Longhorn and Longhorn Server, it followed a slow-boil development process: it was shown off publicly for the first time at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2003, hit the Beta 1 milestone in June 2005, and was renamed to Windows PowerShell in November 2006. PowerShell was backported to previous Windows and Windows Server versions. And today it is the default scripting environment in Windows.

Server Core, meanwhile, was a new minimal Windows Server configuration that provided a default command-line interface only (with select GUIs, like Task Manager).

“Server Core provides the basis for all Longhorn Server product editions,” I wrote in 2006. “When you add roles to Server Core, you get servers that are capable web servers, file servers, print servers, and so on, but with none of the unnecessary code that bogs down today’s servers. Because of its modular design, Longhorn Server installations will only include the parts of the system that they need to perform the roles you configure. This is good for performance, but it’s also critical for security and maintainability. Suddenly, roles aren’t just lip service. They’re integral to the system.”

With Windows 7, Microsoft took the work that the Server team did with Server Core and adapted it into a technology called MinWin (which I called MinWin/7 because of a previous MinWin effort in Longhorn) that would allow this more modular version of the OS to run on lower-end hardware through more efficient services loading and usage.

And Hyper-V was a dramatic new virtualization capability, originally codenamed Viridian and then Windows Server Virtualization. Unlike traditional “user mode” virtualization solutions of the day—like Microsoft’s Connectix-based Virtual Server and Virtual PC products—Hyper-V would use a hypervisor, a kernel-like system component, to host and manage virtual machines (VMs) and interact directly with the hardware. Put another way, Hyper-V would sit between Windows Server and the hardware, rather than use Windows Server to access the hardware, and it would allocate resources to what were called parent (Windows Server) and child (VMs) partitions. This type of system is more modular, and it offers dramatically better performance than do user mode virtualization solutions. And it was so successful that Microsoft also created a free standalone Hyper-V Server, without Windows Server. It also brought Hyper-V to the Windows client over time.

Historical sidenote: Microsoft also used Hyper-V as the basis for its Xbox One operating system several years later.

In early September 2005, Microsoft announced the inevitable: it was scaling back support for the unwieldy Itanium chipset that had been co-developed by Intel and HP and would instead focus its 64-bit efforts on AMD’s x64 platform. And so Longhorn Server would “be designed specifically for database workloads, and custom and line-of-business applications,” and not for the full range of roles and workloads supported by the x86 and x64 versions of the product.

As with Windows Vista, Longhorn Server would be served by interim Community Technology Preview (CTP) builds of the product, and Microsoft issued the first such build at PDC 2005 in September.

“Like Beta 1, this updated build is still very much in the ‘plumbing’ stage,” Microsoft communicated. “Many features are still in development, and there’s still not a lot to see and experience at this point for review. At the Beta 2 milestone …  there will be more to see, experience, and evaluate.” That said, this build did include the first developer release of IIS 7.

With the release of the September CTP, reviewers like myself were finally able to discuss what we had learned about Longhorn Server since Beta 1, and the news was entirely positive: even in Beta 1 form, Longhorn Server represented a major advance over Windows Server 2003 and Server 2003 R2.

It would support multiple roles—among them networking, remote access, security, identity management, Terminal Services (TS), file and portal storage, print, email, collaboration, application/web server, Unix integration services, database, high-performance computing (HPC), software distribution, virtualization, operations management, general-purpose and enterprise, medium business (a new product version then codenamed Centro), and small business.

It would include major security advances. For example, Secure Install would prevent a server from being compromised during previously vulnerable stages. Secure Startup (codenamed Cornerstone) would require a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2 chipset and would prevent network connections until the security subsystem was activated. And Full Volume Encryption (FVE), based on the Encrypting File System (EFS) that debuted in Windows 2000, would encrypt the entire hard drive and prevent someone from physically stealing a server and then accessing its data by installing the hard drive in another system.

It would be much easier to configure and manage. Once the system was first installed, it booted into a new Initial Configuration Tasks screen that let admins specify options such as the administrator password (required), networking configuration, computer name and domain, time zone, regional and language settings, and Product Activation. You could also download and install any product updates, configure Automatic Updates, and customize the server with server roles. If you chose the latter option, you’d be presented with a series of Longhorn Server roles, including Certificate Services, DHCP, Directory (AD), DNS, Fax, File, Media, RADIUS/IAS, Remote Access (VPN Server), Terminal Server (Application Server), Terminal Server Proxy, Terminal Server Session Proxy, Web, and Windows Deployment Services. And the events logs were now be stored in XML, which was more easily processed electronically but was still human-readable.

And with the move to x64, performance and scalability would reach new heights.

“Longhorn Server is being built on both 64-bit and 32-bit platforms,” Microsoft senior technical product manager Ward Ralston told me that year. “But we expect to see x64 take off with Longhorn Server. 8 TB of RAM is absolutely possible.” At the time, Windows Server 2003 x64 editions were limited to 1 TB of RAM.

By May 2006, Microsoft was finally ready to deliver a Beta 2 release of both Windows Vista and Longhorn Server. With it came an attempt to replicate Windows Vista’s “clear, confident, connected” messaging. Which, in Server’s case, was initially positioned as “control, availability, and flexibility.” This would be fine-tuned later, but it’s unclear whether the “better together” messaging with Windows Vista resonated with customers either.

In any event, Microsoft senior vice president of Server and Tools Bob Muglia announced the Beta 2 release at WinHEC 2006 that month, noting that a beta version of Windows Server Virtualization, as it was then still called, would ship by the end of the year, while the final release of that technology would trail the release of Longhorn Server by some months. “We plan to release it within 180 days of Windows Server Longhorn RTM [release to manufacturing],” he said.

“It’s worth noting that Windows Server Longhorn and Windows Vista originated as part of a single development project, and as such, they share a number of new technologies across networking, storage, security, and management,” he said in a canned Q&A published during the show. “When they branched into separate releases, those enhancements remained in place, so organizations that deploy both operating systems together can expect to see additional manageability, performance, productivity and security advantages from the combined client-server infrastructure.”

In November 2006, just ahead of the Windows Vista business launch, Microsoft released Windows PowerShell to the web as an add-on for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, and future versions including Windows Server Longhorn.

In April 2007, Microsoft issued a Beta 3 version of Longhorn Server. By this time, it had honed its marketing to three “pillars,” which had evolved to “more control, increased protection, and greater flexibility.” It had also finalized the server roles that Longhorn Server would provide. They were:

Active Directory Certificate Services. Formerly called Windows Certificate Services, ADCS provided X.509 certificate management features. It was backed by a new cryptography API (literally called Cryptography Next Generation, or CNG) and consisted of four role services: Certification Authority, Certification Authority Web Enrollment, Online Certificate Status Protocol, and Microsoft Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol.

Active Directory Domain Services. Formerly known simply as Active Directory, Active Directory Domain Services (AD) was the foundation on which virtually all of Windows Server’s management features are built. AD was a directory service that can store data for users, computers, hardware, applications, network services, and other objects.

Active Directory Federation Services. ADFS provided cross-company, federated identity management services, allowing large corporations to selectively open their infrastructures to trusted partners and customers. (i.e. it was cross-forest trust across the Internet divide.) ADFS provided three core capabilities: extranet authentication, Web single sign-on, and identity federation services for IIS-based web applications.

Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services. Formerly called AD Application Mode, or ADAM, AD LDS was a special mode of AD in which the directory services were configured solely for applications. This lightweight AD mode provided both storage for and access to applications, using the same interfaces administrators and developers already understood.

Active Directory Rights Management Services. Formerly called Windows Rights Management Services, AD RMS was a centrally managed digital rights management (DRM) infrastructure for email and other documents created within an organization.

Application Server. New to Longhorn Server Beta 3, the Application Server role was then separated from the Web Server role. This role configured a server with the technologies needed for deploying and running server-based business applications. These technologies included .NET Framework 3.5, COM+, Message Queuing, and various Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) web services.

DHCP Server. This role provided Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) services, allowing the server to manage and allocate IP addresses to clients dynamically.

DNS Server. This role provided Domain Name System (DNS) services, allowing the server to process and resolve TCP/IP network-based DNS queries that translated user-friendly domain names into IP addresses. In Longhorn Server, DNS Server supported IP version 6 (IPv6) for the first time, in addition to the more commonly used IPv4.

Fax Server. The Fax Server role managed and sends faxes, fax queues, and fax clients.

File Services. Longhorn Server’s File Services role allowed the server to perform as a file server. This involved a number of storage-related technologies and tools, including DFS (Distributed File System), Storage Area Networks (SANs), the File Server Resource Monitor (FSRM), and so on.

Network Policy and Access Services. Formerly named Network Access Server, this role served as the foundation for compliance- and security-based remote network access and it was a requirement for Longhorn’s new Network Access Protection (NAP) network quarantining feature.

Print Server. Longhorn Server’s Print Server role allowed one to install, view, and manage printers in an organization. This included a new Print Management console as well.

Terminal Services. Significantly enhanced in Windows Server Longhorn, Terminal Services (TS) was an application virtualization technology that allowed administrators to provide remote clients with entire Windows environments or individual applications that are running on the server. New features in this version included TS Gateway, for delivering Terminal Services securely over HTTPS connections, TS RemoteApp, for delivering individual remote applications, and TS EasyPrint.

UDDI Services. This role allowed an organization to configure a Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration server for categorizing and managing XML-based Web services. UDDI was a core component of the Windows Server web services infrastructure as it provided a way for discovering, sharing, and reusing Web services across a network.

Web Server. Newly split from Application Server in Longhorn Server Beta 3, the Web Server role provided access to the IIS 7 web server and a host of related technologies, including ASP .NET and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) web services. As with Longhorn Server itself, IIS had been thoroughly rearchitected to be highly componentized and configurable in a far more granular manner than previous versions.

Windows Deployment Services. New to Longhorn Server, Windows Deployment Services (WDS) replaced Remote Installation Services (RIS) and other deployment tools from previous Windows versions. WDS worked with both the new image-based installs used by Windows Vista and Longhorn and the technologies used by older Windows versions. It could be used to deploy both client and server-based systems on the network.

Windows Media Services. This role configured the server as a media server, able to distribute audio and video content throughout your organization.

Windows SharePoint Services. This role, which worked in tandem with Web Server, allowed for the creation of SharePoint-based intranet websites, which were used for document-based collaboration.

Windows Server Virtualization. Though not included in Beta 3—indeed, the technology wouldn’t ship until after Longhorn Server was made available late in 2007, and it would be renamed to Hyper-V–Windows Server Virtualization would allow admins to configure a server as a host for virtualized computing environments. In this scenario, the host OS was installed to a parent partition, while guest OSes were installed to child partitions, side-by-side on the disk. Each environment got configurable access to the underlying hardware resources, and you could manage the server remotely using standard Windows Server management tools.

One thing hadn’t changed, however: Longhorn Server was still expected in 2007 and Longhorn Server R2 was set for 2009. I speculated at this time, correctly, as it turns out, that Longhorn Server would be named Windows Server 2008 before its final release.

“Windows Server Longhorn is a major release and an exciting one at that,” I wrote in my Beta 3 review. “It’s going to take months for you to get fully acquainted with the wide range of new functionality that’s available here, and Beta 3 is the logical time to start. If you administer a Windows-based network or Windows servers in a heterogeneous environment, now is the time to start evaluating this product. But here’s the good news: Though any migration to Longhorn Server will involve some hiccups, the bewildering array of new features and functionality will make it all worthwhile. Windows Server just keeps getting better with each release, and Longhorn Server is just so deep, and so thoughtfully designed, you’ll just keep running into reasons to upgrade.”

In May 2007, Microsoft announced that a public beta of Windows Server virtualization would be made available alongside the release to manufacturing (RTM) version of Windows Server “Longhorn” in the second half of the year.

Then, four days later, and at WinHEC 2007, Microsoft announced the final branding for Longhorn Server: Windows Server 2008.

“A wave of great new hardware products from our partners has played a major role in the strong demand we’ve seen for Windows Vista,” Bill Gates said during his keynote address. “Going forward, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 will provide a platform for hardware innovations that will deliver more intelligent and compelling computing experiences for consumers and business users, driving increased demand for a wide range of new PCs and new devices.”

In September, Microsoft announced the curiously named RC0 (“release candidate 0”) version of Windows Server 2008, which included a beta version of Windows Virtualization. I was told that this would not be the final name for that technology, and that Veridian has been “retired as a codename” because Microsoft wanted to convey that it was a part of Windows Server 2008 and not some separate thing. (This was ironic given how things developed.)

Microsoft then followed that release up with a more traditional Release Candidate 1 (RC1) build in early December that was timed not coincidentally to the RC1 release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1).

And then, finally, I received word that development was about to conclude.

“I mentioned a few weeks ago that Windows Server 2008 was likely going to RTM during the first part of February,” a source at Microsoft told me on January 31. “I have an update to share with you regarding specific timing. I have just received confirmation that Windows Server 2008 will publicly RTM on Monday, February 4, 2008 at 6:00 am PST.”

And sure enough, Microsoft announced that it had completed the development of Windows Server 2008, alongside Vista SP1, on February 4.

“Windows Server 2008 was released to manufacturing today and will be available for purchase to new customers on March 1,” the announcement explained. “Microsoft Volume Licensing customers with active Microsoft Software Assurance coverage or an Enterprise Agreement will be able to download the server software toward the end of February as part of the joint Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 ‘Heroes Happen Here’ launch event.”

That launch event was held on February 27 in New York and, for some reason, NBC’s Tom Brokaw was on hand. But Microsoft wasn’t quite done with this release: It renamed Windows Virtualization a second time, to Hyper-V, and then completed development of that product in June. Microsoft also announced that it was separating Hyper-V from Windows Server 2008 and making a standalone version of the product available for free. Both versions would RTM in October 2008, roughly on schedule.

By that time, Microsoft was already talking up Windows Server 2008 R2 (“release 2”), which would include Hyper-V 2.0 and two optional new features, Direct Access and Branch Cache. And the “better together” messaging had shifted to Windows 7, of course, with Microsoft expecting to deliver the product sometime in 2010. But there were bigger changes afoot. At the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in late October, Microsoft announced the platform called Windows Azure that would one day replace Windows Server and forever shift Microsoft’s attention—and fortunes—to the cloud.

The Longhorn era was finally over.