Microsoft Windows NT Server

Microsoft Windows NT Server, a 32-bit operating system, has evolved from code originally intended to be used for OS/2 version 3.0. OS/2 was jointly developed by Microsoft and IBM be-fore the companies development agreement ended.

Windows NT Server leverages the Windows GUI into the world of networking.

After one of the longest beta tests anyone could remember (ac-cording to the Usenet groups), Microsoft Windows NT version 3.1 was released in September 1993. Unlike Microsoft Windows 3.1, a graphical environment that runs on top of MS-DOS, Windows NT is a complete operating system. To the user, the interface for Windows NT versions 3.1 and 3.5x make the products look just like Windows 3.1; the Windows 95 GUI is used for Windows NT version 4.0. But while Windows NT uses the same interfaces as Windows 3.x and Windows 95, it surpasses these systems with true multithreading and built-in networking, security, and memory protection. While users get the desktop GUI they are accustomed to for personal productivity applications, they also get the power of a UNIX-type operating system.

When Microsoft conceived of Windows NT, the company had several market requirements in mind:

• Portability
  
  
• Multiprocessing and scalability
  
  
• Distributed computing
  
  
• POSIX compliance
  
  
• C2 security

The underlying capabilities of Windows NT echo those of OS/2 and UNIX. Windows NT was offhandedly described as OS/2 and Windows combined, but on steroids. This obviously was not a coincidence, since many of the engineers who had worked on Windows NT had also worked on OS/2, and many of the technical capabilities of UNIX were explicitly included. What Microsoft left out of its Windows NT product was also intentional: it disregarded the diversity that existed among UNIX vendors. Windows NT has consistent GUI, application features, and API (Win32), regardless of the hardware it s used on.