As an early adopter for windows 2008 (a.k.a Longhorn Server) I decided to setup my new VPC with it on. I downloaded the June CTP from my MSDN account. The file I have is called:

en_windows_server_2008_ids3_enterprise_datacenter_standard_x86.iso

To begin the install I created a blank VM and allocated it 1GB Ram and 130GB of disk space. I attached the ISO to the VM and let it start. Firstly you will notice that it looks like a Vista Install.

As I am in the UK I selected the settings above.

Now for the easy bit simply press "install now".

As you can see we now have two versions of the server, one is the standard server that you and I are used to with the GUI; the other is called "Server Core" which is a command line version of the server. For this install I will select the standard server.

As you can see the install is now intelligent enough to realise that I don't have another version of windows installed so only offers me the "Custom" install option.

I will partition the drives as shown below.

Now we leave it for a while to complete. Actually on my VM running on my Toshiba Tecra M7 it took about 15 minutes for the first part of the install and then a little longer to complete the rest. Not bad I thought.

Once it has installed you get prompted to set your password.

Once you have reset your password and windows server tells you it has updated it should then start to load your user profile and ultimately the desktop.

I am going to set my server as a domain controller so firstly I need to set my server with a static IP address. This can be done by selecting the "configure networking" option.

This link just simply opens the standard IP Address settings for the server. Now I have mine set I can start the domain controller install. However before I do I am going to install a few things.

This is the new "skinned" server manager for windows 2008. If you notice there is a "roles summary" option. If we expand this option we can click the "Add Roles" button shown below:

We will now follow the wizard as shown below:

From the list I have selected the "Web Server (IIS)" role, notice that when you select it, it will prompt you to activate the relevant features. This is now built in to each role that you select.

Now the role will be activated.

Once the role is activated we still need to configure it. There is a wizard that will launch as shown below:

We now need to select the relevant role services for IIS; in our case I am selecting the "Application Development" items. Notice that you will be prompted for the relevant feature activations.

Once you have selected the items you want the wizard will then install and activate the role. In the roles summary the new "Web Server (IIS)" role should be listed.

Now we will repeat the same process but for making it a domain controller. I won't screen shot it all as it is fairly similar. Once the role is activated the wizard should look as below:

I won't run through the process as most of you should at some point done this. If not let me know and I will post about it. After the initial reboot of the server upon completing the "Active Directory Domain Services" the initial configuration tasks windows should now look as below:

Now we have a server built we can start looking at some of the new features and also whether we can get MOSS2007 installed on the server. Bob Fox has posted a great article about installing WSS v3 and MOSS2007 on Windows 2008. Check it out here:

http://bobfox.net/spblog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=58