Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003, codenamed "Whistler Server", is the sixth major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft and the first server version to be released under the Windows Server brand name. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2003. Windows Server 2003 is the successor to the Server editions of Windows 2000 and the predecessor to Windows Server 2008. An updated version, Windows Server 2003 R2, was released to manufacturing on December 6, 2005 and generally available on March 5, 2006.
Windows Server 2003 is based on Windows XP. Its kernel has also been used in Windows XP 64-bit Edition Version 2003 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.
As of July 2016, 18% of organizations used servers that were running Windows Server 2003.
It is the final version of Windows Server that supports processors without ACPI. IA-64 and x64 builds of Windows Server 2003 as well as Windows Server 2008 and later strictly require ACPI.
Overview
Windows Server 2003 is the follow-up to Windows 2000 Server, incorporating compatibility and other features from Windows XP. Unlike Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003's default installation has none of the server components enabled, to reduce the attack surface of new machines. Windows Server 2003 includes compatibility modes to allow older applications to run with greater stability. It was made more compatible with Windows NT 4.0 domain-based networking. Windows Server 2003 brought in enhanced Active Directory compatibility and better deployment support to ease the transition from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional.Changes
Several improvements and new features have been added to Windows Server 2003.Internet Information Services has been upgraded to v6.0. There have also been significant improvements to Message Queuing and to Active Directory, such as the ability to deactivate classes from the schema, or to run multiple instances of the directory server. There was also a notable change in the ability to create a rescue disk, which was removed in favor of Automated System Recovery. Other Improvements to Group Policy handling and administration have also been made. For the first time in the history of Windows Server, a backup system to restore lost files has been created together with improved disk management, including the ability to back up from shadows of files, allowing the backup of open files. Another important area where improvements have been made are the scripting and command-line tools, with the improvements being part of Microsoft's initiative to bring a complete command shell to the next version of Windows. Other notable new features include support for a hardware-based "watchdog timer", which can restart the server if the operating system does not respond within a certain amount of time. On this version of Windows Server the Themes service is disabled by default, defaulting to the appearance of previous Windows versions.
Windows Server 2003 is the first server edition of Windows to support the IA-64 and x64 architectures.
Development
Windows Server 2003 was the first Microsoft Windows version which was thoroughly subjected to semi-automated testing for bugs with a software system called PREfast developed by computer scientist Amitabh Srivastava at Microsoft Research. The automated bug checking system was first tested on Windows 2000 but not thoroughly. Amitabh Srivastava's PREfast found 12% of Windows Server 2003's bugs, the remaining 88% being found by human computer programmers. Microsoft employs more than 4,700 programmers who work on Windows, 60% of whom are software testers whose job is to find bugs in Windows source code. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates stated that Windows Server 2003 was Microsoft's "most rigorously tested software to date."The product went through several name changes during the course of development. When first announced in 2000, it was known by its codename "Whistler Server"; it was named "Windows 2002 Server" for a brief time in mid-2001, followed by "Windows.NET Server" and "Windows.NET Server 2003". After Microsoft chose to focus the ".NET" branding on the.NET Framework, the OS was finally released as "Windows Server 2003".
Windows Server 2003's codebase was reused for the Development of Windows Vista under its codename, "Longhorn". Pre-reset builds of "Longhorn" were based on the Windows.NET Server Release Candidate 1 codebase, whereas post-reset builds of "Longhorn/Vista" after the development reset in 2004 are based on the works-in-progress Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 codebase.
Editions
Windows Server 2003 comes in a number of editions, each targeted towards a particular size and type of business. In general, all variants of Windows Server 2003 have the ability to share files and printers, act as an application server, host message queues, provide email services, authenticate users, act as an X.509 certificate server, provide LDAP directory services, serve streaming media, and to perform other server-oriented functions.Web
Windows Server 2003 Web is meant for building and hosting Web applications, Web pages, and XML web services. It is designed to be used primarily as an IIS web server and provides a platform for developing and deploying XML Web services and applications that use ASP.NET technology. Domain controller and Terminal Services functionality are not included on Web Edition. However, Remote Desktop for Administration is available. Only 10 concurrent file-sharing connections are allowed at any moment. It is not possible to install Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange software in this edition without installing Service Pack 1. Despite supporting XML Web services and ASP.NET, UDDI cannot be deployed on Windows Server 2003 Web. The.NET Framework version 2.0 is not included with Windows Server 2003 Web, but can be installed as a separate update from Windows Update.Windows Server 2003 Web supports a maximum of two physical processors and a maximum of 2 GB of RAM. It is the only edition of Windows Server 2003 that does not require any client access license when used as the internet facing server front-end for Internet Information Services and Windows Server Update Services. When using it for storage or as a back-end with another remote server as the front-end, CALs may still be required.
Standard
Windows Server 2003 Standard is aimed towards small to medium-sized businesses. It supports file and printer sharing, offers secure Internet connectivity, and allows centralized desktop application deployment. A specialized variant for the x64 architecture was released in April 2005. The IA-32 variants supports up to four physical processors and up to 4 GB RAM; the x64 variant is capable of addressing up to 32 GB of RAM and also supports Non-Uniform Memory Access.Enterprise
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise is aimed towards medium to large businesses. It is a full-function server operating system that supports up to 8 physical processors and provides enterprise-class features such as eight-node clustering using Microsoft Cluster Server software and support for up to 64 GB of RAM through PAE. Enterprise Edition also comes in specialized variants for the x64 and Itanium architectures. With Service Pack 2 installed, the x64 and Itanium variants are capable of addressing up to 1 TB and 2 TB of RAM, respectively. This edition also supports Non-Uniform Memory Access. It also provides the ability to hot-add supported hardware. Windows Server 2003 Enterprise is also the required edition to issue custom certificate templates.Datacenter
Windows Server 2003 Datacenter is designed for infrastructures demanding high security and reliability. Windows Server 2003 is available for IA-32, Itanium, and x64 processors. It supports a maximum of 32 physical processors on IA-32 platform or 64 physical processors on x64 and IA-64 hardware. IA-32 variants of this edition support up to 64 GB of RAM. With Service Pack 2 installed, the x64 variants support up to 1 TB while the IA-64 variants support up to 2 TB of RAM. Windows Server 2003 Datacenter also allows limiting processor and memory usage on a per-application basis.This edition has better support for storage area networks : It features a service which uses Windows sockets to emulate TCP/IP communication over native SAN service providers, thereby allowing a SAN to be accessed over any TCP/IP channel. With this, any application that can communicate over TCP/IP can use a SAN, without any modification to the application.
The Datacenter edition, like the Enterprise edition, supports 8-node clustering. Clustering increases availability and fault tolerance of server installations by distributing and replicating the service among many servers. This edition supports clustering with each cluster having its own dedicated storage, or with all cluster nodes connected to a common SAN.
Derivatives
Windows Compute Cluster Server
Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, released in June 2006, is designed for high-end applications that require high performance computing clusters. It is designed to be deployed on numerous computers to be clustered together to achieve supercomputing speeds. Each Compute Cluster Server network comprises at least one controlling head node and subordinate processing nodes that carry out most of the work.Compute Cluster Server has a built-in Message Passing Interface, the Microsoft Messaging Passing Interface v2 which is used to communicate between the processing nodes on the cluster network. Alternative MPI Stacks can also be used with the OS. It ties nodes together with a powerful inter-process communication mechanism which can be complex because of communications between hundreds or even thousands of processors working in parallel.
The application programming interface consists of over 160 functions. A job launcher enables users to execute jobs to be executed in the computing cluster. MS MPI was designed to be compatible with the reference open source MPI2 specification which is widely used in High-performance computing. With some exceptions because of security considerations, MS MPI covers the complete set of MPI2 functionality as implemented in MPICH2, except for the planned future features of dynamic process spawn and publishing.