Chapter 1. What s New in Windows Server 2003 and ProLiant Architecture and Tools

Chapter 1. What's New in Windows Server 2003 and ProLiant Architecture and Tools

Windows 2000 made a gigantic leap in technology from Windows NT in terms of scalability, stability, industry-standard protocols, and manageability. In the process, Windows 2000 allowed companies to simplify and consolidate their computing environments, which resulted in significant savings. Before merging with HP, Compaq eliminated hundreds of domain controllers and simplified an NT domain structure that consisted of 13 master account domains and about 1,700 resource domains to a single root domain with three child domains. In my book, Windows 2000: Active Directory Design and Deployment , I dedicated three chapters to identifying new features, benefits, and business justification.

Moving to Windows 2003 from Windows 2000 won't be nearly as dramatic as was moving from NT to Windows 2000, but there are some significant benefits. If you are migrating from NT to 2003, you can expect all the benefits of the migration to Windows 2000 plus the additional benefits provided by Windows Server 2003.

While we outline the significant new features and benefits of Windows Server 2003 in this chapter, we also will identify benefits throughout the remaining chapters of this book and discuss how you can apply them in the various aspects of your Windows Server 2003 design and deployment. In this chapter, we won't attempt to identify every single change or improvement made since Windows 2000. Rather, we will focus on significant features that will aid system architects or Administrators in identifying benefits to their organizations that might help solve a particular problem, aid in justifying a migration to Windows Server 2003, or provide information that will aid in the design or reconfiguration of the Active Directory (AD) enterprise.

In this chapter we focus on new features in Active Directory (AD), Networking, and Security. You can read about the new features in Exchange, Clusters, Virtual Private Networking (VPN), and Terminal Services (TS) in Chapters 12-15, respectively.