Windows Server 2003 Flavors
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Before we conclude this chapter, I’ll talk briefly about the different “flavors” of Windows Server 2003 because they impact to a degree the capabilities (and sometimes the features) of the platform’s IIS 6 component. First, recall that the previous platform in this series from Microsoft, Windows 2000, came in four flavors:
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Windows 2000 Professional The desktop version of the platform
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Windows 2000 Server A departmental server platform that included IIS 5 and supported 4-way SMP and up to 4GB of memory
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Windows 2000 Advanced Server An enterprise-level server that included everything Windows 2000 Server had, plus 2-node clustering and network load balancing; and it supported 8-way SMP and up to 8GB of memory.
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Windows 2000 Datacenter Server A high-availability platform available only through OEM channels that included everything Windows 2000 Advanced Server had, plus 4-node failover clustering; and it supported 32-way SMP and up to 64GB of memory.
In Microsoft’s new Windows XP/ 2003 Server family platform, which is the successor to the earlier Windows 2000 line, these four earlier products have now evolved into six new ones:
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Windows XP Home Edition A lightweight successor to both Windows 98/Me and Windows 2000 Professional.
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Windows XP Professional Edition Replaces Windows 2000 Professional on the corporate desktop.
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Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition Includes IIS 6 and is the natural successor to Windows 2000 Server as a basic departmental file, print, and application server. Standard Server supports four-way SMP and up to 4GB of memory.
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Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition The natural descendant of Windows 2000 Advanced Server. Enterprise Server includes everything found in Standard plus 8-node Edition clustering and support for 8-way SMP and up to 32GB of memory (Windows 2000 Advanced Server supported only 8GB of memory).
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Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition The super high-end mission- critical platform that you can only buy direct from an OEM. Features are similar to Windows 2000 Datacenter Server with advanced clustering support.
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Windows Server 2003, Web Edition A.k.a. “Blade” (with apologies to Wesley Snipes), this is the new baby in the evolutionary tree and represents a radical (and refreshing) departure for Microsoft: it’s a version of their server operating system specifically intended for use as a web server. the Web Edition is easy to deploy and manage and is intended primarily for running on rack-mountable “blade servers” where multiple physical servers, each the size of a peripheral card, are mounted inside a chassis for greater density of server resources. As a result of its intended use, the Web Edition lacks many of the features found on the other Windows Server 2003 family members, such as Internet Connection Sharing and Services for Macintosh. In addition, the Web Edition cannot be deployed as a domain controller, does not support clustering, and supports 2-way SMP and up to 2GB of memory, making it the most lightweight of the Windows Server 2003 family.
In addition, I should mention that two members of the family—namely, Enterprise and Datacenter Servers—are also available in 64-bit versions that run on Intel’s new Itanium processor architecture. Enterprise Server supports up to 64GB of memory on Itanium, while Datacenter Server can go up to 512GB of memory on this platform. For a closer comparison of the features supported by the four Windows Server 2003 family members, see Table 1-1. The hardware requirements for these different platforms will be specified in detail in Chapter 3, “Planning Deployment.”
| Feature | Web | Standard | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clustering Technologies | |||
| Cluster Service | Yes | ||
| Network Load Balancing (NLB) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Directory Services | |||
| Active Directory | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| Metadirectory Services (MMS) Support | Yes | ||
| File and Print Services | |||
| Distributed File System (Dfs) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Encrypting File System (EFS) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Fax Service | Yes | Yes | |
| Removable and Remote Storage | Yes | Yes | |
| Services for Macintosh | Yes | Yes | |
| Shadow Copy Restore | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SharePoint Team Services | Yes | Yes | |
| Management Services | |||
| IntelliMirror | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Remote Installation Services (RIS) | Yes | Yes | |
| Remote OS Installation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Resultant Set of Policy (RSoP) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Command Line | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Multimedia Services | |||
| Windows Media Services | Yes | Yes | |
| .NET Application Services | |||
| ASP.NET | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Enterprise UDDI Services | Yes | Yes | |
| Internet Information Services 6 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| .NET Framework | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Networking Services | |||
| Internet Authentication Service (IAS) | Yes | Yes | |
| Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) | Yes | Yes | |
| IPv6 support | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Network Bridge | Yes | Yes | |
| Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) | Yes | Yes | |
| Virtual Private Networking (VPN) | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| Scalability | |||
| 64-bit Support for Itanium Platform | Yes | ||
| Hot Add Memory | Possible | ||
| Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) | Possible | ||
| Security Services | |||
| Certificate Services, PKI, and Smart Cards | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| Internet Connection Firewall | Yes | Yes | |
| Terminal Services | |||
| Remote Desktop for Administration | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Terminal Server | Yes | Yes | |
| Terminal Server Session Directory | Yes | ||
| Note | I’ve omitted coverage of Windows Datacenter Edition from Table 1-1 as this is an OEM product whose specifications depend in part on hardware support. Because it is unlikely that Datacenter Server would be used as a web application server (it is intended mainly as a back-end database server), it is not covered in this book. |
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You are currently running your company's website on a combination of IIS 4 and 5 machines and are considering upgrading to IIS 6. What reasons can you give your boss to justify the cost of the upgrade? What benefits do you expect to achieve with IIS 6 over previous versions? How concerned are you about your legacy web applications running on the new platform? Which flavors of Windows Server 2003 would you utilize for running IIS 6?
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