Windows 2000 Vs. Windows2003

The IT department has been tasked with researching Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2003 Server, and Windows XP. Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows Server 2003 are being considered for upgrading the Network Operating System at the corporate Office in San Jose, California. Windows XP will be the desktop operating system. This report will inform, in detail, on all three products. A recommendation will be made on which Network Operating System will be used and an explanation will be given on why Windows XP has been chosen for the desktops.

Windows 2000 Advanced Server was introduced, by Microsoft, in February of 2000. Windows 2000 Advanced Server (W2KAS) is intended for use in medium to large businesses and is ideal for line-of-business and e-commerce applications. E-commerce and line-of-business require scalability and high availability.

By today’s hardware standards W2KAS does not need much power to operate. W2KAS needs a minimum of a 133mhz. Pentium processor running on 256mb of RAM. Windows 2000 Advanced Server needs 1 GB of space on the hard disk and needs a VGA or better video card. Also, W2KAS supports the FAT, FAT32, and NTFS file systems. Again, by today’s standards, Riordan should not have any trouble finding a box that can run Windows 2000 Advanced Server.

Windows 2000 Advanced Server is backward compatible with 16bit Windows programs. These are programs that one would find running on Windows 3.x. W2KAS also has command prompt for running programs in a DOS window.

The interface for Windows 2000 Advanced Server is basically the same that Microsoft introduced with Windows 95. It is a graphical user interface. Meaning, that Windows 2000 Advanced Server is icon driven and not command prompt driven. This interface makes W2KAS easier to use and to manage.

Windows 2000 Advanced Server is part of a family of server and desktop operating systems. These include the base model Windows 2000 server, Windows 2000 datacenter server, and Windows 2000 Professional, which is used on desktop clients.

Windows 2000 Advanced Server comes with all the same functionality of the base model, Windows 2000 Server, plus some enhancements. With W2KAS, a Systems Administrator can set the server as a domain controller by installing Active Directory. Active Directory, as defined by www.rlmueller.net/terms.htm, is a database, that windows uses to organize and manage the different objects connected to the domain. Another function is Dynamic Host Control Protocol. DHCP, as defined by webmaster.lycos.co.uk/glossary/D/, is a service that dynamically assigns IP addresses to clients on a network. One more standard Windows 2000 Server function is DNS. DNS is the Domain Name System as is used to translate IP addresses to fully qualified domain names. For example, 192.169.45.2 might be translated by DNS to myserver.mydomain.com. Other standard services are WINS, IIS, File and Print Sharing, and application sharing. All of these can be set up on a Windows 2000 Advanced Server box.

Some of the differences, according to http://www.activewin.com/win2000/features3.shtml, of Windows 2000 Advanced Server, as compared to the basic Windows 2000 server, are Enhanced Symmetric Multiprocessor Scalability, Cluster Service, and Network Load Balancing.

As described at http://www.activewin.com/win2000/features3.shtml, Enhanced Symmetric Multiprocessor Scalability is a technology that lets software use multiple processors on a single server in order to improve performance, a concept known as hardware scaling, or scaling up. Windows 2000 Advanced Server supports up to 8-way SMP. Improvements in the implementation of the SMP code allow for improved scaling linearity, making Windows 2000 Advanced Server an even more powerful platform for business-critical applications, databases, and Web services.

Within the pages of http://www.activewin.com/win2000/features3.shtml, Cluster service is a way of using multiple servers as one server. The objective of clustering is providing a high level of availability of applications and data. Cluster service also supports some functions that help to limit or eliminate downtime. One such component is server updates. Cluster service allows an administrator to take one server offline, install new hardware or software, and bring it back up without losing any configurations or interrupt service. Another advantage of the Cluster service is ability to recover from network failures. Cluster service for Windows 2000 implements a sophisticated algorithm to detect and isolate network failures and to improve failure recovery actions. It can detect a number of different states for network failures and then use the appropriate failover policy to determine whether or not to fail over the resource group.

Another feature of Windows 2000 Advanced Server is Network Load Balancing. According to http://www.activewin.com/win2000/features3.shtml,