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  Microsoft Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition (2)
Overclocker 24 Apr2003

If you are an e-commerce developer, you might want to consider tapping into the enhanced clustering support on the Windows Server 2003.

Enhanced Clustering Support is provided on Windows Server 2003 for companies that deploy e-commerce solutions so that there is minimum down time during system failures. 8 nodes are supported and if one node is down, the other node will take over. Network Load Balancing also provides balancing of IP traffic within the network so that no one node will be overwhelmed by IP traffic thereby spreading the workload across all nodes.

Further performance can be brought to the overall systems by upgrading the system using SMP especially if you are thinking of tapping the power of IIS 6.0 and the new Intel Hyperthreading CPU e.g. P4 3.06HT or dual cpu support. Windows 2003 Server also support up to 32 way SMP and 32bit and 64 bit processors.

Nowadays, we usually do not monitor the system locally, rather remotely. Terminal services provides just the facility for remote control of your web servers by remotely login. Terminal services can also be used as a central login. With Terminall Server, a single point of installation allows multiple users to access the desktop of a server running one of the Windows Server 2003 family operating systems. Users can run programs, save files, and use network resources as though they were sitting at that computer. The server delivers the Windows desktop and Windows-based applications to computers that might not typically be able to run Windows operating systems.

 

Internet applications
 

What is the point of having the best Web server when you can't tap on the power of IIS 6.0. IIS 6.0 has been improved over the earlier versions and it has included more reliabliity and scalability than before. With its support of Enterprise UDDI services, which is an infrastructure for XML web services, it allows developers to easily locate reusable web services within the company.

Windows Media Services includes Windows Media Encoder and the Windows Media Software Development Kit, this turns your Windows 2003 Server immediately into a audio/video streaming station.
As we are talking abt UDDI which provides a easy to locate service for the reusable web services on the network, the MS .NET technology does need a mention too.

As we know, the .NET Framework enables web services to be shared and they form the basic modules to form larger applications. This allows excisting Windows applications that were previously written to be "weblified" and turned into a repackaged XML Web service. Furthermore, such web services deployed has less code as most of the important ASP.net, transaction monitoring, MQ, data access are taken care of by the Windows Server 2003.

 Security

Common Language Runtime (CLR) is a software engine that traps and reduce the number of common programming bugs e.g. memory leaks. It can be set in such a way if an application uses up to a certain amt of CPU resources, it will be removed from tasks list. The CLR keeps track of where code was downloaded from, if it was signed by a trusted developer, and if it has been altered in any way since it was signed.

A software firewall (ICT) - Internet Connection Firewall which monitors in/out traffic to the internet. Policies can be set to identify program that can be executed. IIS 6 includes selectable cryptographic services, advanced digest authentication and configurable access control of processes. In addition, the Web server does not install automatically, and installs in lockdown mode by default. This provides a greater level of control over the security of back-end servers and Web sites.

Finally, Windows Server 2003 includes improvements upon the industry-standard security technologies that Microsoft incorporated into Windows NT 4 and Windows 2000. Windows Server 2003 includes technologies like Kerberos, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and Smart Card logon. The Encrypting File System (EFS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) have been improved in Windows Server 2003. Microsoft also has included integration with Microsoft Passport for Web-based authentication and security.

Shut Event Tracker

When you are shutting down the system, Windows 2003 Server will prompt for you to supply information of why you are shutting down the server. This is especially useful for system administrators to track when the server was shut down (with explanation) or without. The Shutdown Event tracker tool enables you to shutdown local or remote by using a GUI. All the tracking are recorded in the event log and can be viewed by Event viewer by opening the system log. This helps us to troubleshoot the problems in server if it keeps shutting down or restart periodically resulting in system instability.

Conclusion

It is impossible to list down all the improvements in such a review. What we have done is to highlight the important differences that will benefit most if not all. Windows 2003 Server has evolved over time and it will definitely be here to stay. Of course, just like any new release of an OS, we would expect it to eat up even more disk space with features like Shadow Copy etc. I would say that this is an important feature which we will let the administrator decide if it will be used in the organisation. It is a nice feature to have on a file server.

IIS 6.0 is available too if you decide to deploy website with ease. Terminal services also allows thin client to be implemented across various versions of Windows OS. With Terminal Services central point of deploying applications, the TCO is greatly reduced.

The server can also be deployed as a streaming media server right out of the box since it already has windows media encoder all there and IIS 6.0. This is especially useful for radio and tv stations to tap the potential worldwide audience using audio/video streaming on the net.

Overall, Windows 2003 Server is worth the wait.

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