Tech Ed Day 1: Longhorn Chalk Talk

These are the main points I noted from the Longhorn "Chalk Talk."  These points are not organized and are little more than a transcription of the notes I took.  Keep in mind they are talking about beta software so everything is subject to change at final release.

 

Longhorn Chalk Talk

 

• Beta 3 available 1^st half of calendar year 2007
• 17 roles available in add role wizard so far – Longhorn is not feature complete yet
• The Longhorn codebase branched from Vista at Longhorn Beta 2
  • When Longhorn is released, the codebase will be re-merged
  • So… the codebase in the released Longhorn will be Vista SP1
• Longhorn R2 is slated for 2009
• Long horn is Windows Server 200x – the x will be determined at release.  It depends on which fiscal year it’s released.
• There will be an option for a read-only DC (they’re calling it a “really cool BDC”)
• It will have advancements for ADFS
  • Federated SharePoint and federated Rights Management Services planned so far
• ADAM is being called Lightweight Directory Services
• New feature:  Terminal Services Gateway à RDP over HTTPS
  • New RDP client:  RDP 6.0
• Terminal Services Remote programs – like Citrix published  applications
• Drag and Drop coming to terminal services in Beta 3
• There are no server roles installed by default with Longhorn (Beta 2 installs File Server role, though)
• A new type of installation:  Server Core
  • At this time, only includes DNS, DHAP, AD, File server services
  • No GUI
  • No .NET framework
  • 500 MB footprint
  • Being called the “perfect branch office DC”
• Longhorn will be their last server OS with a 32-bit version (they’ll also have a 64-bit version
  • Longhorn R2 will be 64-bit only
• Hypervision – this wasn’t clear to me.  It has something to do with Virtual Server
• Windows Deployment Services replaces RIS
  • Being added to Server 2003 SP2
  • SP2 for 2003 is also adding Group Policy support for WPA2
• Restartable AD –Stop AD services, repair, restart – no rebooting in another mode
• Features of Storage Server will be in Longhorn – it sounded like not until R2 of Longhorn
  • Feature like Single Instance Storage of files
• Sysvol replication will use Remote Differential Compression – like what DFS uses
• There will be USB device redirection in RDP
• Adm files will be stored as XML files and called admx files
  • You will be able to add comments to group polices and search for policies based on these comments
• Longhorn will support Exchange 2003 and SQL 2005.  It will not support SQL 2000
• Network Access protection.  It’s kind of like VPN quarantine.  You can perform a “System Health Check” to determine whether a system can have access to the network
• They’re claiming rootkits should be a thing of the past