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 lin...