Windows Server 2003 Release 2 (R2) is Microsoft's latest revision in the Windows Server product line, essentially replacing the earlier version of Windows 2003. If you buy a new license for Windows 2003, you'll get the R2 version. Only Software Assurance (SA) customers can upgrade to R2 at no cost; other customers will require a full license. Even so, the new R2 release has some compelling new features—especially for remote branch office scenarios. Here are my 10 favorite new R2 features. To check out these new features for yourself, you can download an evaluation version from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/trial/default.mspx.
10. Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0—The inclusion of the new .NET Framework 2.0, working in combination with Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1), provides the foundation for highly scalable Web applications. The new .NET Framework provides support for both 32- and 64-bit Web applications, improved performance, enhanced Web site logging, and a new Microsoft Management Console (MMC) plug-in for managing ASP.NET application settings.
9. PMC—Print management is a necessary evil that's common to virtually every IT department. R2 adds a new Print Management Console (PMC) that lets you manage multiple print servers, view the status of print jobs, and manage print drivers and ports.
8. MMC 3.0—Microsoft has enhanced MMC 3.0 with the ability to manage file and print services across the enterprise. The new version is more task-driven than its predecessor, and it enables centralized infrastructure support and reduces the need for hands-on management at remote sites.
7. Remote Control Add-on for Active Directory Users and Computers—The new Remote Control Add-on for the MMC Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in lets you easily open a Remote Desktop connection to computers listed in the snap-in. To use the Remote Control feature, right-click a computer account in the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in and choose Remote Control.
6. ADFS—Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) lets companies securely share identity management information across organizational boundaries. ADFS works similar to the way a Windows-trust relationship works, but unlike a standard trust relationship, it lets companies connect across the Internet.
5. Storage Manager for SANs—Microsoft Storage Manager for SANs is designed to make SAN technology more accessible by letting you create and manage LUNs on SANs that support Virtual Disk Service (VDS).
4. DFS—With the R2 release, Microsoft has rewritten Distributed File System (DFS) and added a new, more efficient file-replication technology called Remote Differential Compression (RDC). RDC sends only the differences between files (instead of the entire file) when synchronizing files between remote DFS servers.
3. FSRM—The new File Server Resource Manager (FSRM) is an MMC plug-in that enables volume-based quota management. FSRM lets you create hard or soft quotas to limit the space allowed for a volume or folder and notify users when the quota limits are exceeded. In addition, you can create file filters to restrict users from saving files that have certain extensions.
2. SFU—Interoperability is a challenge for virtually every Windows administrator, and Microsoft has finally met this challenge in R2 by including Windows Services for UNIX (SFU). SFU offers a plethora of integration tools, including 300 UNIX utilities, Perl, password synchronization, and NFS server support.
1. Virtual Server 2005—Although R2 has a lot of great new features, my favorite is Virtual Server 2005. Virtual Server 2005 is a separate product, but you're entitled to use it free of charge with R2 Enterprise Edition and at a substantial discount with R2 Standard Edition. R2 Enterprise lets customers run up to four virtual machines (VMs) using the R2 OS with no additional licensing costs.
Major new functionality. Windows 2003 R2 will address three major areas of functionality: simplified branch-office server deployment and management, Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS—formerly code-named TrustBridge), and storage management. Here's a brief overview of this functionality.
On the branch-office front, Microsoft is tackling the needs of businesses that have physically separate offices, particularly those that aren't staffed with administrators or technically savvy IT professionals. Businesses need to deploy and manage systems in remote offices, where they often must contend with low-bandwidth connections. They also need solutions that can work remotely, removing the need for administrators to continually travel to remote offices.
To help address these needs, R2 includes a new version of Microsoft DFS, which the company renamed DFS Namespaces. DFS Namespaces includes DFS Replication (the successor to File Replication Service—FRS) and support for multilevel failover and failback. A new technology, Remote Differential Compression (RDC), provides sub-file replication. In earlier Windows versions, files are the smallest entity you can replicate. RDC now lets you replicate parts of files. The technology uses an algorithm to determine which parts of which files have changed and replicates only those file parts, which saves time and bandwidth. R2 also supports new server roles for branch-office file and print serving.
ADFS provides cross-company Federated Identity Management (FIM) services, which let large corporations selectively open their infrastructures to trusted partners and customers. ADFS supports a variety of organizational infrastructures via standardized Web Services Federation Language (WS_Federation) technologies. ADFS will appeal to large enterprises and governments; Microsoft says that the auto industry, European governments, and insurance companies are among those organizations now evaluating this solution.
In R2, Microsoft is improving two core storage-management solutions—quota management and SAN provisioning. Storage Resource Manager provides folder-based quota management rather than the more limited volume-based system that earlier Windows Server versions use. The tool supports file screening—so you can restrict users to storing only certain types of files—and has a full reporting engine. R2's Storage Manager for SANs simplifies SAN management by providing an easy-to-use Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in and a wizard that let you create LUNs to allocate space on storage arrays and chop up the storage in SANs or NAS however you want. It's compatible with all Virtual Disk Service (VDS) 1.1 hardware providers.
Minor new features. Windows 2003 R2 provides several minor new features, including Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, MMC 2.1 (which features a new task-oriented pane), the Common Log File System (CLFS), and IP– and Web–services-based hardware management support. R2 also includes a new MMC Printer Management Console snap-in that lets you manage all printers in an environment from one location.
Minor new features adopted from feature packs. R2 bundles updated versions of three of the feature packs that were previously released for Windows 2003: ADAM, Windows SharePoint Services 2.0, and the Subsystem for UNIX Applications (previously called Windows Services for UNIX—SFU).
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