Windows Server 2003 Defined

More than three years after its release date, and well over five years from the time early adopters were putting it out in production environments, Windows Server 2003 has proven itself to be the most stable and reliable server operating system Microsoft has ever shipped. Many have called Windows Server 2003 a major Service Pack for Windows 2000 for the ease of the upgrades from Windows 2000 to Windows 2003. However, many consider the new security, fault tolerance, add-on tools, and overall functional improvements to be the long-awaited rewrite of the Windows operating system.

To the casual observer, Windows Server 2003 looks like nothing more than the Windows XP graphical user interface on top of the old Windows 2000 server operating system, with a few added utilities. However, now that organizations have been able to deploy Windows 2003 throughout their enterprises, when you look under the hood, Windows Server 2003 is a major rewrite of the Windows 2000 operating system, with significant changes to the kernel that makes Windows Server 2003 achieve the reliability, fault tolerance, and scalability that major organizations have been demanding of their network operating system for years.

This chapter introduces the significant enhancements and diverse capabilities of the Windows Server 2003 operating system, and references the chapters through the balance of this book that detail these improvements. The differences that Windows Server 2003 adds to a networking environment, along with best practices learned from enterprise implementation of Windows 2003, require a re-education so that design and implementation decisions made with previous versions of Windows are handled differently with Windows Server 2003 to take advantage of the enhanced operating system capabilities.

Note

This edition of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Unleashed covers the base Windows 2003 operating system as well as the Windows 2003 R2 update. Throughout this chapter and this book, references will be made to features standard to the base configuration of Windows 2003, as well as what has been incrementally added to the Windows 2003 R2 update.

Windows .NET Framework Versus Windows Server 2003

When we're talking about Windows Server 2003, one of the first points that frequently needs to be clarified is the difference between the Windows Server 2003 operating system and the Windows .NET Framework. These two terms are frequently (and improperly) used interchangeably; however, they are completely different.

The Windows .NET Framework was announced first, formally during the summer of 2001, in reference to a completely new application development environment by Microsoft. When we refer to Windows Server 2003, it is an actual network operating system product in which software is installed on a server and applications are executed. Windows Server 2003 is a part of the Windows .NET Framework.

Understanding the Windows .NET Framework

The Windows .NET Framework is the application development environment in which a common language runtime, framework classes, and an application development process are defined. Until the introduction of the Windows .NET Framework, some organizations developed applications using Visual Basic; some organizations, using Visual C; some organizations, using Active Server Pages technology for a Web server; and some organizations, using an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) front-end application to Microsoft SQL or Microsoft Access.

Now with the Windows .NET Framework, a default programming model called ASP.NET is defined. ASP.NET makes building real-world Web applications much easier. It has a series of built-in framework classes that allow a developer to call a built-in application function instead of having to code the function line by line. This capability greatly minimizes the amount of programming necessary to create a Web application similar to those created in the past.

ASP.NET does not require any single application development tool; in fact, it supports dozens of standard programming languages available today, such as VBScript, JScript, Visual Basic .NET, C#, Visual Basic, and the like.

Other significant improvements in ASP.NET include a dynamic code compilation that automatically detects changes and compiles the code so that it is ready to run at any time. The Windows .NET Framework is a distributed application environment allowing for code to be distributed across multiple systems within a Web farm.

In addition, to deploy a Windows .NET Framework application for access within an organization or to the general public, all the developer needs to do is copy the files to a Windows .NET Framework server. There is no need to run regsrv32 to register components on the server because configuration settings are stored in an XML data file within the application.

For organizations looking to develop Web-based applications, the Windows .NET Framework greatly simplifies application development. The Windows .NET Framework has created a powerful development environment that has a series of built-in routines that decrease application coding time and effort, while providing the support for existing standards for application programming languages.

As server add-ons are created for a Windows Server 2003 environment, such as Outlook Web Access for Exchange 2003 and SharePoint 2003, or even add-on tools like the Directory Services Mark-up Language (DSML), the .NET Framework is leveraged more and more in developing core applications and Feature Packs.

Understanding the Core Windows Server 2003 Operating System

Whereas the Windows .NET Framework is the set of tools and technologies used for application development, the Windows Server 2003 product is a full network operating system. As a traditional network operating system, Windows Server 2003 can serve in the following roles:

• File and print server As a file and print server, the Windows Server 2003 system can provide network users with centralized access to data files or can act as a print queue server to host multiple printers. Several improvements have been made in Windows Server 2003 for file security (covered in Chapter 12, "Server-Level Security"), file server fault tolerance (covered in Chapter 30, "File System Fault Tolerance"), and the configuration of redundant print services (covered in Chapter 3, "Installing Windows Server 2003").

• Web server In Windows Server 2003, Web servers take on a much more expanded role than they did with early Windows NT or even Windows 2000 Web environments. Rather than just hosting static HTML Web pages, Windows Server 2003 participates in Web farms that distribute dynamic Web content with network load balancing (covered in Chapter 31, "System-Level Fault Tolerance [Clustering/Network Load Balancing]").

• Application server With the release of the Windows Server 2003 operating system, ongoing updates to the applications that run on the Windows Server 2003 system will be released regularly. Some of the applications that come with Windows Server 2003 include Windows Terminal Services for thin client computing access (covered in Chapter 27, "Terminal Services"), Windows Media Server for video and audio hosting and broadcasting (covered in Chapter 37, "Windows Media Services"), and utility server services such as DNS and DHCP (covered in Chapters 9, "Domain Name System," and 10, "DHCP/WINS/Domain Controllers"). Add-ons to Windows Server 2003 include Windows Server 2003 editions of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, SharePoint Portal Server 2003, BizTalk Server 2004, and ISA Server 2004.

• Windows .NET application host New to Windows Server 2003 is the capability for the server to act as a host system for the execution of Windows .NET Framework applications. With built-in Internet Information Server version 6 (covered in Chapter 11, "Internet Information Services"), Windows .NET applications can be copied straight to the Windows Server 2003 for execution.

This book focuses on the Windows Server 2003 operating system and the planning, migration, security, administration, and support of the operating system. Windows Server 2003 is also the base network operating system on top of which all future Windows server applications will be built.