Microsoft Debuts Server Manager in Windows Longhorn Beta 2

Microsoft Tuesday launched Windows Longhorn Server Beta 2 equipped with new features including Server Manager and Scalable Networking Pack.

During his keynote at Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, or WinHEC, Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the server and tools business at Microsoft, said Beta 2 is becoming more mature but the full featured test version -- Beta 3 -- will follow in the first half of 2007.

Server Manager, demonstrated at WinHEC, is a new, centralized toolset within the server that vastly eases setup and configuration, Muglia said. Designed to replace the variety of administrative tools now scattered throughout Windows for those tasks, Server Manager -- with a new role wizard -- makes its debut in Longhorn Beta 2.

Microsoft also lifted the veil on its new Scalable Networking Pack to support network acceleration hardware. It is available now for download for Windows Server 2003 and will be built into the Longhorn server.

Longhorn Server will feature the Windows Workflow Foundation, IIS 7, Serial ATA, Communications Foundation, Federated Identity, Network Access Protection, Dynamic Partioning, Windows Virtualization Hypervisor, Service Hardening Windows Firewall, a next generation TCP/IP stack and enhanced Terminal Services, Muglia said.Muglia said he is confident the next major upgrade of the Windows server will be broadly available in the second half of 2007. "Beta 2 is available now. We feel good about stability," he said, noting, however, the server won't launch until it is ready. "There's no reason to rush to market. We have a lot of bake time."

That's not all. During his keynote, Muglia said the company's small business server upgrade and computer cluster server would be shipping this summer -- a minor delay for the two products, which were prrmised to ship in the first half of 2006.

Muglia also said the System Center Virtual Machine Manager, formerly code named Carmine, is another key server deliverable for Microsoft that will enable users to manage virtual machines offline, perform live migrations and provision resources.