Server: An Introduction

A server is any combination of hardware or software designed to provide services to clients. When used alone, the term typically refers to a computer which may be running a server operating system, but is commonly used to refer to any software or dedicated hardware capable of providing services.

For example, a file server is a computer and storage device dedicated to storing files. Any user on the network can store files on the server. A print server is a computer that manages one or more printers, and a network server is a computer that manages network traffic. A database server is a computer system that processes database queries.

Servers are often dedicated, meaning that they perform no other tasks besides their server tasks. On multiprocessing operating systems, however, a single computer can execute several programs at once. A server in this case could refer to the program that is managing resources rather than the entire computer.

Server may be of Application Servers, Audio/Video Servers, Chat Servers, Fax Servers, FTP Servers, Groupware Servers, IRC Servers, Mail Servers, News Servers, Proxy Servers, Servers, Web Servers.

Windows Server 2000:

Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on business desktops, notebook computers, and servers. Windows 2000 is a continuation of the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems, replacing Windows NT 4.0. Four editions of Windows 2000 are Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter Server.

Features of Windows Server 2000:

Windows 2000 introduced many of the new features of Windows 98 such as Windows Desktop Update, Internet Explorer 5,Outlook Express, NetMeeting, FAT32 support, Windows Driver Model,Internet Connection Sharing,[28] Windows Media Player, WebDAV support[31] etc.

NTFS 3.0

Microsoft released the version 3.0 of NTFS as part of Windows 2000; this introduced disk quotas (provided by QuotaAdvisor), file-system-level encryption, sparse files and reparse points. Sparse files allow for the efficient storage of data sets that are very large yet contain many areas that only have zeros.

Encrypting File System

The Encrypting File System (EFS) introduced strong file system-level encryption to Windows. It allows any folder or drive on an NTFS volume to be encrypted transparently by the user.

Active Directory

A new way of organizing Windows network domains, or groups of resources, called Active Directory, is introduced with Windows 2000 to replace Windows NT's earlier domain model. Active Directory's hierarchical nature allowed administrators a built-in way to manage user and computer policies and user accounts, and to automatically deploy programs and updates with a greater degree of scalability and centralization than provided in previous Windows versions. It is one of the main reasons many corporations migrated to Windows 2000.[citation needed] User information stored in Active Directory also provided a convenient phone book-like function to end users. Active Directory domains can vary from small installations with a few hundred objects, to large installations with millions. Active Directory can organise and link groups of domains into a contiguous domain name space to form trees. Groups of trees outside of the same namespace can be linked together to form forests.

Active Directory services could only be installed on a Windows 2000 Server, Advanced Server, or Datacenter Server computer, and cannot be installed on a Windows

2000 Professional computer. However, Windows 2000 Professional is the first client operating system able to exploit Active Directory's new features. As part of an organization's migration, Windows NT clients continued to function until all clients were upgraded to Windows 2000 Professional, at which point the Active Directory domain could be switched to native mode and maximum functionality achieved.

Editions of Windows 2000 server:

Windows 2000 Professional Windows 2000 Server Windows 2000 Advanced Server Windows 2000 Datacenter Server

Hardware Requirements for Windows 2000 (minimum)

Windows 2000 Professional

Minimum Requirements

Processor 133 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible CPU

Memory 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM recommended minimum; more memory generally improves responsiveness

Hard Disk 2GB hard disk with a minimum of 650MB of free space

CPUSupport Windows 2000 Professional supports single and dual CPU systems

Windows 2000 Server

Minimum Requirements

Processor 133 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible CPU

Memory 256 megabytes (MB) of RAM recommended minimum [128 MB minimum supported; 4 gigabytes (GB) maximum]

Hard Disk 2 GB hard disk with a minimum of 1.0 GB free space. (Additional free hard disk space is required if you are installing over a network.)

CPUSupport Windows 2000 Server supports up to four CPUs on one machine

Windows 2000 Advanced Server

Minimum Requirements

Processor 133 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible CPU

Memory 256 MB of RAM recommended minimum (128 MB minimum supported; 8 GB maximum)

Hard Disk 2 GB hard disk with a minimum of 1.0 GB free space. (Additional free hard disk space is required if you are installing over a network.)

CPUSupport Windows 2000 Advanced Server supports up to eight CPUs on one machine

Windows 2000 Datacenter Server

Minimum Requirements

Computer 8-way capable or higher server (supports up to 32-way) *Note: Fault-tolerant system configurations are required to have at least 8 processors within the hardware solution

Processor Pentium III Xeon processors or higher

Memory 256 megabytes (MB) of RAM recommended

Hard Disk 2 gigabyte (GB) hard disk with a minimum of 1 GB free space. (Additional free hard disk space is required if you are installing over a network.)

Advantages of Windows server 2000:

Windows 2000 Server is developed and sold by Microsoft. The company continually provides supports and updates. Users who are familiar with Windows will find themselves comfortably using Windows 2000 Server. Most people using Windows 2000 Server hosting utilize Active Server Pages (ASP) technology. This is the main reason why people are turning to Windows 2000 Server hosting. Users can develop web site using familiar interface of Microsoft tools such as Microsoft FrontPage, Visual Interdev, and Microsoft Access. With ASP users can develop a database-driven web site using Microsoft Access and Microsoft SQL as the database.

What are the disadvantages of Windows 2000 Server?

Unlike Unix, Windows 2000 Server requires more system resource. You need a powerful machine to run Windows 2000 Server. The Windows 2000 Server does not have a good reputation in term of server stability. The Windows 2000 Server needs reboot more frequent than Unix. If you are using Windows 2000 Server hosting services, you may find yourself investing a lot of money in the development tools. Most of them are Microsoft products. The costs of applications that can run on your web site are usually higher than that of Unix. For example, you can find a lot of free scripts to run web board, chat room, web stats, email (and more) for your Unix-based web site, but you won't find many free applications in Windows 2000 Server world.

Windows Server 2003:

Windows Server 2003 (also referred to as Win2K3) is a server operating system produced by Microsoft. Introduced on 24 April 2003 as the successor to Windows 2000 Server, it is considered by Microsoft to be the cornerstone of its Windows Server System line of business server products.

According to Microsoft, Windows Server 2003 is more scalable and delivers better performance than its predecessor, Windows 2000.

Features of Windows Server 2008:

Internet Information Services (IIS) v6.0 - A significantly improved version of IIS. Increased default security over previous versions, due to the built-in firewall and

having most services disabled by default. Significant improvements to Message Queuing. Manage Your Server - a role management administrative tool that allows an

administrator to choose what functionality the server should provide. Improvements to Active Directory, such as the ability to deactivate classes from

the schema, or to run multiple instances of the directory server (ADAM) Improvements to Group Policy handling and administration Provides a backup system to restore lost files Improved disk management, including the ability to back up from shadows of

files, allowing the backup of open files. Improved scripting and command line tools, which are part of Microsoft's

initiative to bring a complete command shell to the next version of Windows. 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.

Editions:

Web Edition Standard Edition Enterprise Edition Datacenter Edition

Web Edition:

Windows Server 2003, Web Edition is mainly for building and hosting Web applications, Web pages, and XML Web services. It is designed to be used primarily as an IIS 6.0 Web server and provides a platform for rapidly developing and deploying XML Web services and applications that use ASP.NET technology, a key part of the .NET Framework.

This edition does not require Client Access Licenses and Terminal Server mode is not included on Web Edition. However, Remote Desktop for Administration is available on Windows Server 2003, Web Edition.

The .NET Framework version 2.0 is not included with Windows Server 2003, Web Edition, but can be installed as a separate update from Windows Update.

Standard Edition:

Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition is aimed towards small to medium sized businesses. Standard Edition supports file and printer sharing, offers secure Internet connectivity, and allows centralized desktop application deployment.

The initial release of Windows Server 2003 was available solely for 32-bit processors; a 64-bit version supporting the x86-64 architecture (AMD64 and EM64T, called collectively x64 by Microsoft) was released in April 2005.The 32-bit version will run on up to 4 processors with up to 4 GB RAM; the 64-bit version is capable of addressing up to 32 GB of RAM and also supports Non-Uniform Memory Access, something the 32-bit version does not do.

Enterprise Edition

Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition is aimed towards medium to large businesses. It is a full-function server operating system that supports up to eight processors and provides enterprise-class features such as eight-node clustering using Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) software and support for up to 32 GB of memory through PAE (added with the /PAE boot string).

Datacenter Edition

Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition is designed for infrastructures demanding high security and reliability. Windows Server 2003 is available for x86, Itanium, and x86_64 processors. It supports a maximum of up to 32 processors on 32-bit or 64 processors on 64-bit hardware. 32-bit architecture also limits memory addressability to 64 GB, while the 64-bit versions support up to 1 TB. Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, also allows limiting processor and memory usage on a per-application basis.

Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition has better support for Storage Area Networks (SAN). 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.

Other Features

Distributed File System (DFS):

DFS allows multiple network shares to be aggregated as a virtual file system.

Support for SAN and iSCSI:

Computers can connect to a Storage Server over the LAN, and there is no need for a separate fibre channel network. Thus a Storage Area Network can be created over the LAN itself. iSCSI uses the SCSI protocol to transfer data as a block of bytes, rather than as a file. This increases performance of the Storage network in some scenarios, such as using a database server.

Virtual Disc Service:

It allows NAS devices, RAID devices and SAN shares to be exposed and managed as if they were normal hard drives.

Updates of Windows server 2003:

SERVICE PACK 1:

On 30 March 2005, Microsoft released Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2003. Among the improvements are many of the same updates that were provided to Windows XP users with Service Pack 2.

Features:

Security Configuration Wizard Hot Patching

This feature is set to extend Windows Server 2003's ability to take DLL, Driver, and non-kernel patches without a reboot.

IIS 6.0 Metabase Auditing Windows Firewall Windows Media Player version 10 Internet Explorer 6 SV1 (e.g. 'IE6 SP2')

WINDOWS SERVER 2003 R2:

Windows Server 2003 R2, an update of Windows Server 2003, was released to manufacturing on 6 December 2005. It is distributed on two CDs, with one CD being the Windows Server 2003 SP1 CD. The other CD adds many optionally installable features for Windows Server 2003. The R2 update was released for all x86 and x64 versions, but not for Itanium versions.

Advantages of Windows Server 2003:

With its familiar Windows interface, Windows Server 2003 is easy to use. New streamlined wizards simplify the setup of specific server roles and routine server management tasks so that even servers without a dedicated administrator are easy to manage. Maintaining Active Directory is easier with new features, such as the ability to rename domains and redefine schema, giving administrators the flexibility to handle organizational changes that may occur. In addition, cross-forest trusts let administrators connect Active Directory forests, providing autonomy without sacrificing integration. Lastly, improved deployment tools, such as Remote Installation Services, help administrators quickly create system images and deploy servers.

Features:

Secure Connected Infrastructure Enterprise-Class Reliability, Availability, Scalability, and Performance Lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) Through Consolidation and the Latest

Technology Create Dynamic Intranet and Internet Web Sites Fast Development with Integrated Application Server Work Smarter By Turning Your File Server into a Powerful Collaboration Server Automate Operations with Script-based and Policy-based Management Tools Increase Document Protection and Availability via Intelligent File Storage Easy to Find, Share, and Reuse XML Web Services.

System Requirements of Windows server 2003:

Requirement Standard Edition Enterprise Edition Datacenter Edition

Web Edition

Minimum CPU Speed

133 MHz 133 MHz for x86-based computers

733 MHz for Itanium-based computers*

400 MHz for x86-based computers

733 MHz for Itanium-based computers*

133 MHz

Recommended CPU Speed

550 MHz 733 MHz 733 MHz 550 MHz

Minimum RAM 128 MB 128 MB 512 MB 128 MB

Recommended Minimum RAM

256 MB 256 MB 1 GB 256 MB

Maximum RAM 4 GB 32 GB for x86-based computers

512 GB for Itanium-based computers*

64 GB for x86-based computers

512 GB for Itanium-based computers*

2 GB

Multiprocessor Support **

Up to 4 Up to 8 Minimum 8 required

Maximum 64

Up to 2

Disk Space for 1.5 GB 1.5 GB for x86-based 1.5 GB for x86- 1.5 GB

Setup computers

2.0 GB for Itanium-based computers*

based computers

2.0 GB for Itanium-based computers*

* Important: The 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition are only compatible with 64-bit Intel Itanium-based systems. They cannot be successfully installed on 32-bit systems.

** Windows Server 2003 may not use multiple processors with some Intel Pentium Pro or Pentium II Processors. For more information, please review Windows Server 2003 May Not Use Multiple Processors with Some Pentium Pro or Pentium II Processors – 319091

Windows Server 2008

Windows Server 2008 is the most recent release of Microsoft Windows' server line of operating systems. Released to manufacturing on 4 February 2008 and officially released on 27 February 2008, it is the successor to Windows Server 2003, released nearly five years earlier. Like Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 is built on the Windows NT 6.0 kernel. A second release, named Windows Server 2008 R2, is currently under development and has been released in a Release Candidate version.

System requirements:

System requirements for Windows Server 2008 are as follows

Minimum RecommendedProcessor 1 GHz (x86) or 1.4 GHz

(x64)2 GHz or faster

Memory 512 MB RAM (may limit performance and some features)

2 GB RAM or higher Maximum (32-bit systems): 4 GB RAM (Standard) or 64 GB RAM

(Enterprise, Datacenter)Maximum (64-bit systems): 32 GB RAM (Standard) or 2 TB RAM (Enterprise, Datacenter and Itanium-Based Systems)

Video adapter and monitor

Super VGA (800 x 600) Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher resolution

Hard drive disk free space 10 GB 40 GB or higher

Computers with more than 16 GB of RAM require more disk space for paging and dump files.

Drives DVD-ROM DVD-ROM or better Devices

Devices Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution monitor, keyboard and mouse

Planning for the Windows server 2003 Installation:

When you run the Windows Server 2003 Setup program, you must provide information about how to install and configure the operating system. Thorough planning can make your installation of Windows Server 2003 more efficient by helping you to avoid potential problems during installation. An understanding of the configuration options will also help to ensure that you have properly configured your system.

1. Verifying Minimum Hardware Requirements:

The first step of the installation is verifying that your hardware meets the system requirements. Keep in mind that, although there is a minimum requirement for the CPU and RAM, there is also a recommended CPU and RAM configuration. For the sake of performance, you should usually stay away from the minimum requirements and stick to the recommended settings (or better).

2. Determining the Type of Server to Install

You have the choice of making your server a domain controller (DC), a member server, or a standalone server. After you determine the tasks the server will perform, you can determine the role you will assign to it.

Domain controllers and member servers play a role in a new or existing domain. Standalone servers are not joined to a particular domain.

3. Gathering the Information Necessary to Proceed

During the installation of Windows Server 2003, you will have to tell the Setup Wizard how you want your server configured. The wizard will take the information you provide and will configure the server settings to meet your specifications.

Taking the time to gather the information described in the following sections before starting your installation will likely make your installation go faster and easier.

4. Selecting the Computer Name

Each computer on a network must have a name that is unique within that network. Many companies have a standard naming convention for their servers and workstations. If not, you can use the following information as a guideline for creating your own. Although the computer name can contain up to 63 characters, workstations and servers that are pre–Windows 2000 recognize only the first 15 characters. It is widely considered a best practice to use only Internet-standard characters in your computer name. This includes the letters A–Z (upper- and lowercase), the numbers 0–9, and the hyphen (-).

Although it's true that implementing the Microsoft domain name system (DNS) service in your environment could allow you to use some non-Internet standard characters (such as Unicode characters and the underscore), you should keep in mind that this is likely to cause problems with any non-Microsoft DNS servers on your network. You should think carefully and test thoroughly before straying from the standard Internet characters noted in the preceding paragraph.

5. Name of the Workgroup or Domain

During the server installation, the Setup Wizard will ask for the name of the workgroup or domain that the server will be joining. You can either enter the name of an existing organizational structure or enter a new name, creating a new workgroup or domain.

Users new to Microsoft networking may ask, "What is the difference between a workgroup and a domain?" Simply put, a domain is a collection of computers and supporting hardware that share the same security database. Grouping the equipment in this manner allows you to set up centralized security and administration. Conversely, a workgroup has no centralized security or administration. Each server or workstation is configured independently and locally for all security and administration settings.

Network Protocol and IP Address of the Server

When installing Windows Server 2003, you must install and configure a network protocol that will allow it to communicate with other machines on the network. Currently, the most commonly used protocol is called TCP/IP, which stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. This protocol allows computers throughout the Internet to communicate. After you install the TCP/IP protocol, you need to configure an IP address for the server. You can choose one of the following three methods to assign an IP address:

Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA)— APIPA can be used if you have a small network that does not have a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server, which is used for dynamic IP addresses. A unique IP address is assigned to the network adapter using the LINKLOCAL IP address space. The address always starts with 169.254 and is in the format 169.254.x.x. Note that if an APIPA is in use, and a DHCP server is brought up on the network, the computer will detect this and will use the address that is assigned by the DHCP service instead.

Dynamic IP address— A dynamic IP address is assigned by a DHCP server. This allows a server to assign IP addresses and configuration information to clients. Some examples of the information that is distributed include IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, domain name system (DNS) server address, and Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS) server address. As the dynamic portion of the name suggests, this address is assigned to the computer for a configurable length of time, known as a lease. When the lease expires, the workstation must again request an IP address from the DHCP server. It

may or may not get the same address that it had previously. Although servers and workstations can both be configured to use this method of addressing, it is generally used for workstations rather than servers.

Static IP address— Using a static IP address is the most common decision for a server configuration. By static, we mean that the address will not change unless you change the configuration of the server. This point is important because clients and resources that need to access the server must know the address to be able to connect to it. If the IP address changed regularly, connecting to it would be difficult.

Backing up Files

Whether you are performing a new installation on a previously used server or upgrading an existing server, you should perform a complete backup of the data and operating system before you begin your new installation. This way, you have a fallback plan if the installation fails or the server does not perform the way you anticipated.

When performing a new installation on a previously used server, you overwrite any data that was stored there. In this scenario, you will have to use your backup tape to restore any data that you want to preserve.

On the other hand, if you are going to upgrade an existing server, a known good backup will allow you to recover to your previous state if the upgrade does not go as planned.

Bibliography:

http://www.petri.co.il/hardware_requirements_for_windows_server_2003.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_(computing)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Server_2003

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Server_2008

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Server_System

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_operating_systems