Chapter 1 -- Overview of Windows 2000

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Chapter 1

As with any new operating system, there has been a great deal of hype, speculation, criticism, praise, and confusion surrounding Microsoft Windows 2000—and it's undoubtedly worthy of some of each. It's certainly a big advance in the areas of network management, hardware support, Internet access, and more. That's not to say there aren't limitations, however. Windows 2000 has to work in the present as well as the future, and the necessity of backward compatibility results in compromises that are essential but probably not what one would hope for in a perfect world.

However, the positive changes are many. Windows 2000 is certainly more reliable, is easier to manage (once you get used to the changes), and is faster than Microsoft Windows NT. This chapter briefly summarizes Windows 2000, including significant changes to Windows NT Workstation (now called Windows 2000 Professional). Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, also called Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Standard Edition, is the successor to Microsoft Windows NT 4. Based on Active Directory, it features Kerberos and public-key infrastructure (PKI) security, Terminal Services, COM+ Component Services, Internet Information Services, Indexing Service, Message Queuing, up to 4 GB of physical memory and up to four-way symmetric multiprocessing (SMP).

Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server is the successor to Microsoft Windows NT 4 Enterprise Edition. It has all the features of Windows 2000 Server plus network load balancing, enhanced application fail-over clustering, up to 8 GB of physical memory and up to 8-way SMP. Microsoft Windows Datacenter Server, which will be released after the two products mentioned above, will have the features of Advanced Server plus up to 32-way SMP and up to 64 GB of physical memory and even more advanced clustering.

In this book, we make no distinctions among the servers, except that the clustering described is the cluster service released with Windows 2000 Advanced Server. So, except for that limited case, the word server applies to all versions of Windows 2000.