Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 operating systems take the best of Windows 2000 Server technology and make it easier to deploy, manage, and use. The result: a highly productive infrastructure that helps make your network a strategic asset for your organisation. Windows Server 2003 provides enhanced security, increased reliability, and a simplified administration to help enterprise customers across all industries.
Windows Server 2003 includes all the functionality customers need today from a Windows Server operating system to do more with less, such as security, reliability, availability, and scalability. In addition, Microsoft has improved and extended the Windows server operating systems to incorporate the benefits of Microsoft .NET for connecting information, people, systems, and devices.
Availability
The Windows Server 2003 operating system provide improved availability through enhanced clustering support. Clustering services have become essential for organizations deploying critical e-commerce and line-of-business applications, because they provide significant improvements in availability, scalability, and manageability. Clustering installation and setup is easier and more robust in Windows Server 2003, while enhanced network features in the product provide greater failover capabilities and high system uptime. The Windows Server 2003 operating systems supports server clusters for up to eight nodes. If one of the nodes in a cluster becomes unavailable because of failure or maintenance, another node immediately begins providing service, a process known as failover. Windows Server 2003 also supports network load balancing (NLB), which balances incoming Internet Protocol (IP) traffic across nodes in a cluster.
Scalability
The Windows Server 2003 operating systems provide scalability through scale-up, enabled by symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), and scale-out, enabled by clustering. Internal tests indicate that compared to Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003 delivers up to 140 percent better performance in the file system and significantly better performance in various other features including the Microsoft Active Directory service, Web server and Terminal Server components, and networking services. Windows Server 2003 scales from single processor solutions all the way up to 64-way systems. It supports both 32-bit and 64-bit processors.
Security
Businesses have extended the traditional local area network (LAN) by combining intranets, extranets, and Internet sites. As a result, increased system security is now more critical than ever before. As part of the Microsoft commitment to reliable, secure, and dependable computing, the company has intensely reviewed the Windows Server 2003 operating systems to identify possible fail points and exploitable weaknesses. Windows Server 2003 provides many important new security features and improvements including:
- The common language runtime This software engine is a key element of Windows Server 2003 that improves reliability and helps ensure a safe computing environment. It reduces the number of bugs and security holes caused by common programming mistakes. As a result, there are fewer vulnerabilities for attackers to exploit. The common language runtime also verifies that applications can run without error and checks for appropriate security permissions, making sure that code performs only appropriate operations.
- Internet Information Services 6.0 To increase Web server security, Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 is configured for maximum security out of the box. IIS 6.0 and Windows Server 2003 provide the most dependable, productive, connected, and integrated Web server solution with fault tolerance, requesting queuing, application health monitoring, automatic application recycling, caching, and more. These are among the many new features in IIS 6.0 that enable you to conduct business securely on the Web.
The following versions of Windows 2003 can be provided on all servers
Windows 2003 Standard Edition 32bit (+£15/Month Per Processor)
- Maximum 4 Physical CPU's
- Maximum Memory 4 GB
Windows 2003 Standard Edition 64bit (+£15/Month Per Processor)
- Maximum 4 Physical CPU's
- Maximum Memory 16 GB
Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition 32bit (+£30/Month Per Processor)
- Maximum 8 Physical CPU's
- Maximum Memory 32 GB
Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition 64bit (+£30/Month Per Processor)
- Maximum 8 Physical CPU's
- Maximum Memory 64 GB