Windows Server 2008 Highlights (Longhorn)

Build More Flexible Web Applications

For developers wanting to build flexible web applications, IIS7 provides a very powerful platform in which to build upon.

 The .NET Show: Bill Staples and Scott Guthrie on IIS7

 End-To-End Extensibility Example

 Downloads on IIS.net

Develop Federation-Aware Applications

With Windows Server 2008 technologies like Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS), and Windows Authorization Manager (AzMan) provide you, the developer, with the capabilities to develop "Single Sign-On", Federation-Aware applications.

 .NET Developers Guide To Identity

  Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) Resources

 Identity and Access Management Developer Center

Highly-Manageable Applications with DSI, Windows Eventing 6.0 and PowerShell

The Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) is Microsoft's technology strategy for products and solutions that help businesses enhance the dynamic capability of its people, process

 Windows PowerShell

 Design for Operations

 Dynamic Systems Initiative

More Reliability

By leveraging the new Application Recovery and Restart APIs, Restart Manager, Transactional NTFS, Transactional Registry, or even the new Kernel Transaction Manager, you can let the platform handle a large number of details and build more reliable applications at the same time.

 About Transactional NTFS

 Transaction Resources List

 Kernel Transaction Manager and Friends

More Scalability

Windows Server 2008 provides new scalability enhancements that enable you to build, deploy, host, and manage even the most demanding applications. New Thread Pool API enhancements, Thread Ordering Service and Wait Chain Traversal are some of new technologies.

 Thread Pooling

 Using Wait Chain Traversal

Last but not least: More virtuality

Windows Server Virtualization is the new Microsoft hypervisor-based Virtualization product for Windows Server 2008. There are many virtualization enhancements coming with Windows Server Virtualization, like: 64 bit support for hosts and guests and support for multiple virtual processors in the guest. Other enhancements include:

 Leverages new hardware-based virtualization technologies

 Capable of supporting large memory (>4 GB)

 Symmetric Multi-Processing capabilities for virtual machines

 Pass-through disk access for virtual machines

 New Virtual Service Provider / Virtual Service Client architecture (allowing requests to shared hardware like disk devices, networking devices, etc.)

 Runs on Server Core installation, minimizing footprint and increasing security of host

· Microsoft Virtualization Home

· Windows Server Virtualization - An Overview