The Many Ways to Install a Network Operating System

Regardless of which network operating system you choose to use for your network servers, you can use any of several common ways to install the NOS software on the server computer. The following sections describe these alternatives.

Full install versus upgrade

One of your basic NOS installation choices is whether you want to perform a full installation or an upgrade installation. In some cases, you may be better off performing a full installation even if you're installing the NOS on a computer that already has an earlier version of the NOS installed. Here are your choices:

• If you're installing the NOS on a brand-new server, you're performing a full installation that installs the operating system and configures it with default settings.

• If you're installing the NOS on a server computer that already has a server operating system installed, you can perform an upgrade installation that replaces the existing operating system with the new one but retains as many of the settings as possible from the existing operating system.

• You can also perform a full installation on a computer that already has an operating system installed. In that case, you have these two options:

  • Delete the existing operating system.

  • Perform a multiboot installation, which installs the new server operating system alongside the existing operating system. When you restart the computer, you can choose which operating system you want to run.

  Warning 

  Although multiboot installation may sound like a good idea, it's fraught with peril. I suggest that you avoid the multiboot option unless you have a specific reason to use it. For more information about multiboot setups, see the nearby sidebar "Giving multiboot the boot."

• You can't upgrade a client version of Windows to a server version. Instead, you must perform either

  • A full installation, which deletes the existing Windows operating system.

  • A multiboot installation, which leaves the existing client Windows intact.

  Either way, you can preserve existing data on the Windows computer when you install the server version.

Installation over the network

Normally, you install the NOS directly from the distribution discs on the server's CD-ROM drive. However, you can also install the operating system from a shared drive located on another computer, if the server computer already has access to the network. You can either use a shared CD-ROM drive or copy the entire contents of the distribution disc onto a shared hard drive.

Giving multiboot the boot

Multiboot installations enable you to have more than one operating system on a single computer. Of course, only one of these operating systems can be running at any time. When you boot the computer, a menu appears with each of the installed operating systems listed. You can choose which operating system to boot from this menu.

Multiboot is most useful for software developers or network managers who want to make sure that software is compatible with a wide variety of operating systems. Rather than set up a bunch of separate computers with different operating system versions, you can install several operating systems on a single PC and use that one PC to test the software. For production network servers, however, you probably don't need to have more than one operating system installed.

If you still insist on loading two or more operating systems on a network server, be sure to install each operating system into its own disk partition. Although most network operating systems let you install two (or more) operating systems into a single partition, doing so is not a good idea. To support two operating systems in a single partition, the operating systems have to play a risky shell game with key system files-moving or renaming them each time you restart the computer. Unfortunately, things can go wrong. For example, if lightning strikes and the power goes out just as the NOS is switching the startup files around, you may find yourself with a server that can't boot to any of its installed operating systems.

The best way to set up a multiboot system is to install each operating system into its own partition. Then you can use a boot manager program to choose the partition you want to boot from when you start the computer.

Obviously, the server computer must have network access for this technique to work. If the server already has an operating system installed, it probably already has access to the network. If not, you can boot the computer from a floppy that has basic network support.

Tip 

If you're going to install the NOS on more than one server, you can save time by first copying the distribution CD to a shared hard drive. That's because even the fastest CD-ROM drives are slower than the network. Even with a basic 10/100 Mbps network, access to hard drive data over the network is much faster than access to a local CD-ROM drive.

Automated and remote installations

In case you find yourself in the unenviable position of installing a NOS on several servers, you can use a few tricks to streamline the process:

• Automated setup: Lets you create a setup script that provides answers to all the questions asked by the installation program. After you create the script, you can start the automated setup, leave, and come back when the installation is finished.

  Tip 

  Creating the setup script is a bit of work, so automated setup makes sense only if you have more than a few servers to install.

• Remote Installation Services (RIS): The Microsoft feature that lets you install Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003 from a remote network location without even going to the server computer.

  Tip 

  This feature is tricky to set up, so it's worth it only if you have to install operating systems on a lot of servers. (RIS can also install client operating systems.)