Windows 2003

Windows Server 2003 is a server operating system produced by Microsoft. Introduced on March 28th, 2003 as the successor to Windows 2000 Server, it is considered by Microsoft to be the cornerstone of their Windows Server System line of business server products. more...

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Windows Server 2003 is well-known for its good stability, security and user friendliness compared to other server operating systems or even its precedessor Windows 2000. According to Microsoft, Windows Server 2003 takes less time to set up and is much easier to configure than Windows 2000 .

Overview

Released on April 24, 2003, Windows Server 2003 (which carries the version number 5.2) is the follow-up to Windows 2000 Server, incorporating compatibility and other features from Windows XP. Unlike Windows 2000 Server, 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. Incorporating and upgrading a Windows NT 4.0 domain to Windows 2000 was considered difficult and time consuming, and generally was considered an all or nothing upgrade particularly when dealing with Active Directory. 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.

Significant enhancements have been made to various services such as the IIS web server (which was almost completely re-written to improve performance and security), Distributed File System (which now supports hosting multiple DFS roots on a single server), Terminal Server, Active Directory, Print Server, and a number of other areas. Windows Server 2003 was also the first operating system released by Microsoft after the announcement of their Trustworthy Computing initiative, and as a result, contains a number of improvements to security defaults and practices.

The product went through several name changes during the course of development. When first introduced to technical beta testers in mid-2000, it was known by its codename, "Whistler Server"; it then changed to "Windows 2002 Server" for a brief time in mid-2001, before being renamed "Windows .NET Server" as part of Microsoft's effort to promote their new integrated enterprise and development framework, Microsoft .NET. However, due to fears of confusing the market about what ".NET" represents and responding to criticism, Microsoft removed .NET from the name during the Release Candidate stage in late 2002. This allowed the name .NET to exclusively apply to the .NET Framework, as previously it had appeared that .NET was just a tag for a generation of Microsoft products.

In 2005, Microsoft announced Windows Server "Longhorn" as the next major version of Windows Server after Windows Server 2003, with a targeted release date of the first half of 2007.

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