Windows Vista beta 2 has been publicly released.
As a long time, experienced beta tester I know the only way to seriously test something is to use it in production. It’s the only way to really understand limits and improvemens of a new technology.
Anyway the beta tester role can be very risky, mostly when you are working with a new operating system, so I highly suggest you first P2V migrate your existing environment in a virtual machine. It’s not just because you’ll have a chance to revert back with a V2P migration (something you could probably do much easier with a hard disk clone operation), but mostly because the previous system will be always available side by side with Vista, and you’ll be able to do meaningful comparisons.
The free Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 could be the solution but it actually doesn’t install on a Windows Vista host OS.
It depends on the missing components in IIS and the privileges limitations enforced by UAC.
Luckily Ben Armstrong published a great article helping everybody to workaround problems and go for a flawless installation.
Read it here.