Microsoft News Tracker

Yesterday, Microsoft released the February Community Technical Preview (CTP) of Windows Server Longhorn to select beta testers. So far there is no word on whether it will be available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers as was the December CTP. The ostensible plan is for a public beta around midyear and shipment before the end of 2007, hopefully without the eccentricities of the Vista release.

Update 2/21: David at Microsoft’s Windows Server Division Weblog reports that MSDN and TechNet subscribers will have access to the CTP shortly. Also:

This build also marks the appearance of many of the various editions in which we will release Windows Server “Longhorn”. The list of editions shouldn’t come as a surprise to most people, with Windows Server “Longhorn” Standard, Windows Server “Longhorn” Enterprise, and Windows Server “Longhorn” Datacenter, each being available in both 32-bit and 64-bit editions. One other change where the SKUs are concerned is the availability of a separate Windows Server “Longhorn” for Itanium-based Systems edition. This is different from what we did with Windows Server 2003, where we had separate Itanium versions of the Enterprise and Datacenter SKUs, but as disclosed before, this edition will focus primarily on the Application Server and database workloads.

We expect to release one more CTP before Beta 3 and we hope to have it soon.

It’s not clear whether the Web edition that appears today in Windows Server 2003 is being dropped or is just not in the CTP.