The Reliability Monitor generates a "stability index," which is a painfully arbitrary number supposedly representin on a scale of 1 to 10 how pristine your system is. Unfortunately, the index needs recalibration before release, because the result of its computations shows that Windows simply decays over a period of 30 days with no appreciable activity -- something that either defends the old adage of Windows Rot or smacks of beta-quality releases.

There will be other improvements before Longhorn Server releases, but at this point in the development cycle, the team is focused on becoming "feature complete." By Beta 3, intense work on reliability and performance will begin.

Analysis and conclusion

Longhorn Server presents an interesting set of features that will result in tangible benefits for many administrators. The Server Core version of the product is perhaps the most useful new edition of Windows on the server in quite a while, and it's appropriate for use in many situations where rock-solid servers are required.

If your server farms host network-intensive applications, you'll find the changes to the TCP/IP stack and other network performance improvements tantalizing, and hardware assistance now makes network scaling much more cost-effective by requiring fewer physical servers than before. Of course, security is of paramount importance, and NAP alone is worth investing in Longhorn Server when it's released. Management capabilities are improved as well.