Introduction to Windows 2003
Windows Server 2003 is a Network
Operating System from Microsoft, introduced on April 2003. Microsoft
released another modified and improved version, Windows Server 2003 R2, on December 2005. The Windows Server 2003 family is the successor to the
Windows 2000 Server
family, which was based on Windows NT Server. Windows Server 2003
introduces many new features and offers significant improvements to many
features which were avalilable in earlier Windows Network Operating
Systems.
Windows Server 2003 is a multithreaded, multiprocessing,
multitasking operating system. Windows Server 2003 has a rich set of built-in APIs that make application development very easy.
Some improvemnts of Windows 2003 over the previous operating systems are listed below.
• Active Directory improvements
• .NET technologies support
• Windows XP integration
• Internet Information Services (IIS) v6.0 - An improved version of IIS.
• Industry standard support
• Interface and tool improvements
• Group Policy improvement
• Increased in security and built-in firewall. Most services in Windows 2003 are disabled by default.
• Improved disk management. New backup feature included which allows to back up open files.
Windows 2003 family Editions |
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Windows Server 2003 is available in the following four editions:
Standard Edition: Standard Edition is intended for file-and-print services and general purpose application support. It can also act as an Internet gateway and dial-in server.
Enterprise Edition: Enterprise Edition has greater memory and processor capacity than Standard Edition, along with support for clustering and advanced certificate
services. It is intended for high-end applications and
high-availability services. It also supports services that are no longer
included in the Standard Edition package.
Datacenter Edition: Datacenter Edition comes as part of a hardware/software package supplied by authorized hardware vendors. Datacenter Edition has more memory and clustering capacity than Enterprise Edition and contains features that support superior availability. Datacenter Edition is suitable for large, critical datacenter applications.
Web Edition: Web Edition is a new addition to the Windows server family which is specially made for web services and web hosting applications. Web Edition lacks many of the features in the Standard Edition. But Web Edition is priced less than other editions.
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