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MS Windows .Net Server 2003

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

Windows .Net Server 2003 is the latest offering in Server OSs to follow the Windows 2000 Server from Microsoft. The Windows 2003 Server family includes four products as against the three that are available in Windows 2000 Server. Apart from the Standard, Enterprise, (Advanced Server in Windows 2000) and Datacenter Editions, there is a new Web Edition in the Windows 2003 Server.

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The console lets

you add server roles on a new system

The Enterprise and the Datacenter Editions have 64-bit versions for running on Intel’s 64-bit Itanium processors. The Standard Edition supports 4-way Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) and 4 GB RAM. The Enterprise Edition supports 



8-way SMP and 32 GB of RAM, with the 64-bit version supporting 64 GB of RAM. The Datacenter Edition supports 32-way SMP and
64 GB of RAM, with its 64-bit version supporting 64 processors and 512 GB RAM.

The new Web Edition is meant for Web serving and hosting and is designed to be used primarily as an IIS 6.0 Web Server. It can only support 2-way SMP and 2 GB of RAM.

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We got a copy of Windows.Net Server 2003 RC2 (release candidate). Its desktop interface is the same as Windows XP, but with the Windows Classic theme and not the Windows XP theme.

A noticeable feature is the ‘Manage your server’ console, which comes up when you log into the system. This console is very different from the console that comes in the Windows 2000 Server. It lets you add server roles very easily using a wizard-driven interface. 

The various server roles are File Server, Print Server, Mail Server, Terminal Server, Remote access/ VPN Server, Domain Controller, DNS, WINS, DHCP and Streaming Media Server. After you have created roles, you can very easily manage these roles from the same console. It becomes a central point for managing your server.

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New e-mail services



For e-mail, the Windows 2000 Server provided only SMTP services and you had to use third-party programs for providing POP access to your users. Microsoft has added POP3 services in the 2003 Server, thus, making it a very basic mail server.

We say basic because these mail services won’t replace other focused messaging solutions such as MS Exchange or Lotus Domino. The POP3 Server in the 2003 Server is meant to support only a limited number of users.

Faster Active Directory



There are also some improvements in the Active Directory as its creation process is faster than it was in the 2000 Server.

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There is a special feature in the 2003 Server that allows you to rename domains, again, which was not possible in 2000. With the ability to rename domains, the job of IT managers becomes easier. However, renaming domains once the production systems are set, is not a very wise practise as it would unduly affect the network. The server also supports cross-forest trusts for large enterprises that need to integrate with their vendors’ or clients’ domains.

Volume shadow copy



Shadow copies let users view the contents of shared volumes as they appeared at some earlier point. Known as ‘snapshots’, they allow one to make point-in-time copies of volumes, even when the file is being changed. You can use shadow copies of Shared Folders as part of your overall disaster-recovery strategy to quickly recover files that were accidentally deleted or overwritten, as well as to compare different versions of files.

Enhancements in IIS 6.0



The new IIS 6.0 with the 2003 Server has many enhancements. You can now isolate an individual website or multiple websites into a self-contained process called an application pool. This process communicates directly with the kernel. You can set the amount of resources to be used by a particular application pool and then run multiple websites with each having its own resource set. If one site is over-loaded it will not overload the entire system and neither will it disrupt other applications. This is a very useful feature, which was absent in the 2000 Server that had only a single process for all websites

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The console lets

you manage roles created on the server

The health-monitoring capabilities of the 2003 Server allow you to discover, recover and prevent Web applications failures, by dynamically allocating resources.

The 2003 Server comes with the .Net Framework by default, which helps in building, deploying and running Web-based and XML Web services. This is not a valuable addition as you can always install the Framework on the 2000 Server for running XML-based Web services.

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For enhanced security, the IIS 6.0 is installed in a locked down state to prevent any accidental installation of the Web Server that would leave it unsecured and vulnerable to attacks.

The 2003 Server also has good memory-management features. The resource manager can take care of misbehaving applications by terminating them automatically. Also resource priorities can be set and scheduled for different applications. This way you can assign resources to applications depending on the application needs at different times of the day. For example, transactional applications can be allocated more resources during the day and batch jobs like back-ups can be allocated at night.

The 2003 Server comes with many new features and performance improvements as compared to the 2000 Server, but how helpful these features will be seen when the final version comes out. Microsoft is trying to push its .Net platform by bundling the server with .Net Framework and bringing out a new Web Edition of Windows .Net 2003 Server, especially to run Web servers that provide .Net-based Web services.

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Let us look at the installation and upgrading process from a 2000 Server to the 2003 Server.

The active directory wizard

clearly points out which clients cannot access the domain

Installation



To install .Net Server Enterprise Edition RC2, the recommended system requirements are a 733 MHz x86-based computer, 256 MB RAM and at least 1.5 GB hard drive. To start installing this Edition, just boot from the CD as its installation interface is same as that of Windows XP. During installation, you will be asked for the computer name, company name, license key etc, and it takes 40 to 60 minutes for the installation to complete. 

We installed .Net Server Enterprise Edition on an IBM e-Server, which had two 2.4 GHz Xeon processors with hyper-threading enabled, 512 MB RAM, and 40 GB of SCSI hard disk. The installation is user-friendly and doesn’t require any special skills. One change we noticed was that you can’t choose the packages to install during installation; this option was available in the 2000 Server.

Upgrading from Win 2K 



Upgrading to a 2003 Server is straightforward and very easy. If you have IIS Server 5 running on a Windows 2000 Server, it will be upgraded to IIS 6.0 during migration and the new metabase and security will be set. Windows .Net Server also includes a Key Management System (KMS) database migration tool for Exchange Server 2000 to migrate existing KMS database to .NET Server 2003.

Migrating to .Net Server



Migrating is a more painful task as compared to a new server set up. Even IT managers are concerned about running their older apps on new NOS (Network OS).

The 2003 Server has a feature that allows you to migrate applications from both Windows NT 4 and the 2000 Server, provided that they’ve been written in VB or C++. To run the VB applications you need VB runtime, and for the C++ apps, you need Microsoft Foundation Class, both of which have been included with the .NET Server. 

The process for migrating such applications involves creating a Write Manifest file for each

application, which should be in XML format. 

The file would contain the list of DLL and their version names, on which the application was originally built and tested. This file is used to load the DLLs listed in this file when the application is loaded.

Migrating ADS 



Window .Net Server has included a number of features in the Active Directory. Many utilities are inducted to upgrade the installation from Windows NT or Windows 2000. The new ADS (Active Directory Services) in Windows .Net Server 2003 has the ability to manage very large enterprises as well as support multiple domains, forests and sites. It can even copy passwords from Windows NT 4 or Windows 2000 environment, or between the forests in the Windows 2000 environment with the Active Director Migration Tool. To increase the performance of Windows .Net Server 2003, an option is provided to turn off the compression of the replication of traffic between the domain controllers residing in different sites. This reduces the CPU utilization and increases the domain controller availability. Windows .Net Server 2003 has tightened the security for remote users. In this, users can login locally to the server with a blank password. This option, however, is not available for remote users. 

A number of security policies based on application can also be set through its ADS. Also, these security policies can be set to individual users. One problem here is that computers running Windows 95 or Windows NT 4 SP3 or earlier versions won’t be able to login to the .Net Server domain.

Anoop Mangla and Sanjay Majumder

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