I’ve installed the Beta 3 of Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition onto a test box today. Installation was a breeze. A couple quickies I have noticed (I won’t get into many details just yet):

• Like I said, installation is a breeze, didn’t take much time at all on the test box I’ve set up, which is a 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 H/T with 2 Gb RAM and 200 Gb hard disk space. I believe the operating system uses approximately 11 Gb of space once the install was complete.
• Once the operating system is set up, it’s a bare bones build. Great idea, which is brought along from Windows Server 2003. Remember the days back when installing a Windows 2000 Server and it would default with IIS on the build? How dumb.
• I installed IIS 7, and I must say, the new IIS management console is slick. I like it. A lot. I’ll be putting up a test site to see if I like IIS 7 even more (important for what I do).
• Much improved firewall technologies, you can now specify inbound and outbound connections. Pretty much like Vista’s firewall I believe.
• Improved system logging (again, this is important for what I do).
• A bunch of other enhancements and new utilities which I’ll get into further with an upcoming post.

Overall, I am impressed with the look of Windows Server 2008 Beta 3. Now, all I need to do is put it to work and see how it will hold up in a test environment. Hmmm, perhaps a “test” blog with a SQL backend for starters.

Stay tuned.

Tags: windows server, beta 3 ii