LABS
OPINION: FREE ENTERPRISE
Sun has set its Java free, but the
Java app floodgates are looking
rusty, says Jason Brooks
PAGE 44
‘Longhorn’ does more with less
MICROSOFT MAKES STRIDES WHILE DECREASING AREAS VULNERABLE TO ATTACK
B Wy Jason Brooks at risk for exposure uct, in its full-install
hile there’s no would be those of and Core flavors, on
shortage of new the branch office’s virtual machines run-a n d e x p a n d e d users. ning under VM ware
functionality in We’realsorather Workstation 6. We
Microsoft’s “Long- interested in Long- tried to test with ESX
horn” Server, the forthcom- horn’s new support Server, but couldn’t
ing follow-on to Windows for being deployed get Longhorn Server
2003 Server also makes a in a Server Core to recognize our vir-virtue out of doing less. configuration, in tual hard drives in
In eWeek Labs’ tests of which the product the initial installation
Longhorn Server Beta 3, we runs only with those phase. Our full Long-noted the strides that Micro- binaries required to horn Server installa-soft has made in building carry out a handful tion tipped the scales
more helpful server manage- of core Windows at 5.6GB, compared to
ment tools and in extending roles. Server Core, a svelte 1.5GB for the
the product’s file and termi- with an interface Server Core variant.
nal services, but what most that’s been whit- Longhorn Server
Longhorn Server sports a beefed-up initial configu-
caught our attention were tled down to little ration tasks dialog that greeted us after installation. sports a beefed-up
the new ways that compa- more than a com- initial configuration
nies may deploy Longhorn mand line, will save system windowsserver/longhorn, tasks dialog that greeted us
to expose less surface area resources and obviate the download the release and after installation. The first
to attack than was possible need for many of the patches spend some time evaluating task that Longhorn asked
in the product’s previous that the full version of Long- the product before it begins us to address was renam-incarnations. horn will inevitably require. shipping toward the end of i n g o u r a d m i n i s t r a t o r
I n p a r t i c u l a r , w e’ r e Ho wever, as we learned in the year. account and assigning that
intrigued by Longhorn’s our testing, there’s plenty of Separate versions of account an initial password.
support for serving as a more worktobe done before Longhorn Beta 3 are avail- It’s always a good idea to
read-only domain control- Windows will wear its head- able for x86, x86-64 and avoid using the common
ler that limits the exposure lessness as comfortably as Intel Itanium 2 processor defaults of “administrator”
of sensitive directory data Linux or Solaris do. platforms. We tested the or “root” for your adminis-by accessing and caching Beta 3 is the first pub- x86-64 version of Longhorn trator or root accounts, and
credentials on an as-needed licly accessible Longhorn Server on a Dell PowerEdge Longhorn server—in its full
basis. That way, if aread-only Server test release. We rec- 830 server with a dual-core (non-Core) mode—is chock-domaincontroller locatedin ommend that sites running Intel Pentium D processor full of this sort of advice,
a branch office were to be Windows Server head over and 2GB of RAM. We tested with pointers to help files
stolen, the only credentials to www.microsoft.com/ the x86 version of the prod- [CONTINUED ON PAGE 42]
