Chapter 13: Windows Past, Windows Present: Windows NT and Windows 2000

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Over the past decade or so, Microsoft has introduced a great many operating systems as it has attempted to move from a strictly desktop company to one that could effectively service the needs of the enterprise. That road has certainly been a bumpy one, but the releases over the past couple of years, particularly Windows 2000 Server, indicate that the company is serious about establishing its enterprise credentials. In this chapter, we take a look at the various Windows operating systems of the past and present, focusing on those of most relevance to disk management and servers. The discussion covers Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, and Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. Windows 2000 Server is given the lion's share of coverage, as it is likely to be around for a long time to come. It represents a major shift up the server hierarchy for Microsoft due to its scalability, reliability, and manageability, as well as the incorporation of Active Directory (AD), which makes Windows directory management far easier than previously.

Windows NT

Windows NT marked the entry of Microsoft into the enterprise arena. It is a 32-bit operating system available in client and server versions and includes built-in networking and some multitasking capabilities. NT supports simultaneous multiprocessing (SMP), an architecture in which multiple CPUs in one machine are sharing the same memory resources. SMP systems provide scalability, as CPUs can be added when transaction volume rises. NT also has some enterprise security features and has added significant administrative capabilities to the Windows arsenal. The enterprise edition supports clustering and failover.

Although NT lacks sufficient reliability and has failed to scale high enough to be a serious threat to the mid-range and high-end of the server market, it has established a beachhead at the low end of the server hierarchy, principally as a file and print server and a Web server. Since introducing NT, Microsoft has steadily gained ground, and, before it was replaced by Windows 2000 Server a couple of years back, NT had captured a sizable portion of the low-end of the server market.

Windows NT in Action

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena utilized 150 Novell NetWare file servers in 1997. By 1999, that number had been cut in half, with the NetWare servers being replaced by 75 NT servers. This shift to Windows NT did not come about as a result of a senior-level policy decision; rather, it occurred as a gradual shift, primarily on a user-by-user basis. JPL's NetWare file servers were primarily used for file storage, print services, workstation backup, and hosting databases for such applications as cc:Mail. As the lab moved to a more standards-based, Standard Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) e-mail system, however, the need for NetWare servers diminished and they began to be phased out. Many have now been converted to NT servers, which run the same software and can double as application servers for the lab's Internet Information Server (IIS) (WWW and FTP services), SQL, and various custom-built applications.

During the period that NT was gaining ground at JPL, the application set it supported mushroomed. By the late 1990s, in fact, Windows NT came to support more applications than any other operating system. At JPL, even some of the UNIX-based tools used in engineering became available in Windows NT versions. And, as the Intel/NT combo gained in computing power, it became possible to duplicate traditional UNIX functions at a considerably reduced cost.

Why did JPL choose Windows NT? According to IT executives, Windows NT was perceived to be more stable, more secure, and less likely to freeze due to application failure. As a result, the NASA unit standardized its office, administrative, and financial systems, as well as e-mail systems, on NT. The e-mail consolidation was necessary due to the profusion of systems previously available at JPL — a jumble of proprietary e-mail packages, such as cc:Mail, Quickmail, WordPerfect Mail, MS Mail, and POP, each one storing, transmitting, coding, and decoding messages, attachments, and rich-text messages differently. Although JPL used SMTP to handle correspondence between these mail systems, translation created a considerable loss of continuity. To resolve its e-mail woes, the lab adopted the MIME standard, as well as a NASA-defined set of data interchange formats for e-mail attachments and messages, word processing, spreadsheets, presentation graphics, and HTML extensions. As a result of this consolidation, only POP and IMAP are used for e-mail.

NT's Days Are Numbered

These days, JPL has largely phased over to Windows 2000. The majority of companies that adopted NT during the 1990s, it turns out, have already made the switch to Windows 2000. Those remaining on NT are advised to migrate as soon as possible because its days are numbered. The Windows 2000 Server has been out for three years now, and Microsoft has released the Windows Server 2003 line and has further server releases on the horizon. Microsoft will drop support for NT, and that day is coming very soon. Microsoft is phasing out support for Windows NT (and 9x). Critical users and applications should be migrated off these platforms before that date, and all users should probably be taken off these platforms by the end of 2004 at the very latest.



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Server Disk Management in a Windows Enviornment
Server Disk Management in a Windows Enviornment
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 197

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