1.3. What R2 Adds Alas, Windows Server 2003 R2, released in late 2005, is a less obvious upgrade: it's the first deliverable in Microsoft's newly adopted server update schedule. The idea is that a new versionthat is, what most of us would characterize as a major releasewill be offered every four years. Two years after each major release, Microsoft will issue an incremental version upgrade that will refresh the product and bring it more in line with other out-of-band software releases the company may have made. (Case in point: Windows SharePoint Services [WSS] was released after the original version of Windows Server 2003 hit the commercial channels. Windows Server 2003 R2 includes WSS, thus adding a fresh face to the original release.) If you do the math, you'll see that the next major version of the core Windows server product, which is codenamed Longhorn at this point, is due in 2007, with Longhorn Server R2 supposedly due in 2009. As you probably know, though, forward-looking statements, when made about Microsoft products and release dates, are hardly ever very precise. At any rate, R2 ships as a second CD in the Windows Server 2003 product, and that product includes an integrated version of Service Pack 1 so that you're automatically at the latest service pack level when you install. From a more general standpoint, R2 includes a lot of upgrades to already released technologies. There's an update to the Microsoft Management Console, improvements to Active Directory Application Mode, and an integrated version of Windows SharePoint Services with its second service pack. Specifically, though, the most useful enhancements to R2 are as follows: Upgrades to the Distributed File System (DFS). There's great new functionality involved in replicating files, folders, and software out to branch offices over sometimes unpredictable links. And if you're an NT veteran and are familiar with the instability and limitations of the old File Replication Service (FRS), take heart: R2 has a completely new DFS replication engine that handles huge files and huge numbers of files effortlessly. You can use the new engine to maintain real-time replicas of large data volumes in a central location, which makes multiple-targeted DFS links completely possible. I'll cover these updates in Chapter 3. The introduction of Active Directory Federation Services. If you do cross-site business that involves managing the identity of business partners, you need ADFS now. ADFS lets you automatically and securely share identity information with business partners electronically, reducing the headaches caused when users forget passwords or leave companies. ADFS could also be considered a security enhancement. Check out Chapter 5 for more information. The release of the new Print Management Console. The PMC is what print management in Windows should have been a long time ago: you sort your printers into various categories based on name, location, number of jobs in the queue, and so on, or let the PMC detect all the network print servers in a subnet and automatically add them to the console as managed printers. Once all printers are managed, you can see every single printer and its queued jobs, and you can easily access the web interface of network print servers. All of this is a big improvement over using three or four different interfaces in a mixed environment of tens or hundreds (or even thousands) of network print servers. Chapter 3 has full details. Easier management of hard disks and other media with the Storage Resource Manager (SRM) . Microsoft licensed storage management technology from Veritas and with it comes improved quota support, among other things. You can assign quotas to individual folders or sets of folders and limit folder size regardless of who created the files. There's even an AutoQuota where applying a quota to the top folder above the user home folders limits the size of each user folder to a specific maximum, with intermediate settings that trigger email and administrative updates and alerts. You'll also find a file screening utility with which you can block storage of music, videos, and ripped DVDs, and a great reporting facility where you can get statistics by file size, owner, least recently used files, duplicate files, and more. SRM can generate reports automatically every night so you keep yourself informed when things go awry storage-wise. Look in Chapter 3 for a detailed walkthrough of this as well.
R2 includes quite a few other, more minor improvements that, due to time constraints, I was unable to cover in detail in this edition. However, the four major features outlined above are covered in depth in this book. And if you're wondering whether R2 is a good investment for you personally, continue reading; I'll address that at the end of the chapter. |
