Microsoft WindowsServer 2003 RC2

The arrival of Windows Server 2003 heralds the end of an era. It brings to a close all the work that has been running since the first version of Windows NT 3.1 went beta on 5 July 1992, with Server 2003 being the equivalent of Windows NT 5.2.

Although Server 2003 is a new release of the core server operating system - bringing about a new era of capability - when looked at in the correct historical perspective it's the end of the first main server-side OS cycle from Microsoft. What comes next, after Server 2003, can't just do more of the same. It can't come up with better answers to the current problems. The bottom line is that Server 2003 answers all of the current mainstream server OS questions, and the time is fast approaching for some radical changes to be made to the thinking, to the questions asked and to the answers delivered.

With the historical view, Microsoft has delivered all it promised in the days of NT 3.1. Back then, we were looking forward to a new age of 32-bit desktop and server computing, large memory spaces, and an overall explosion in the price/performance ratios that still makes the head spin.

With Windows 2000 Server (W2K) and Active Directory, Microsoft finally divorced itself on the server side from the security authentication engine of NT LAN Manager, which dated back to the early days of 16-bit OS/2 in the mid-1980s. With Windows 2000 Professional, it clearly indicated that the desktop, both professional and home/gaming, would be moving to the NT/Windows 2000 core and this finally came to pass with the XP desktop releases of XP Professional and XP Home.

Windows Server 2003 is the equivalent second release after Windows 2000 on the server side. It's more than a huge set of service packs, as there are fundamental new things in Server 2003 that aren't present in the W2K family. But much of what's new in Server 2003 is improvements or fixes to limitations found in W2K.

This immediately sets the stage for Server 2003. If you're currently on W2K and have no problems with it, it's going to be hard to justify the upgrade to Server 2003. However, if you're pushing the boundaries on W2K, many of the new features in Server 2003 will be of significant interest.

Active Directory

The core authentication and security engine of W2K and now Server 2003 is known as Active Directory (AD). Many of the issues that arose during the late beta testing and early deployments of W2K AD showed that the development team hadn't thought about some complex and awkward scenarios. For example, it wasn't possible to rename the DNS name or NetBIOS name of an organisation in W2K AD. This might seem like a major hassle, and in today's timescale it is. But back in the era when companies were tending to do their first AD deployment, it wasn't a big issue - they hadn't had AD installed long enough for a company or domain rename to come about. With Server 2003, this has been nailed once and for all. These design decisions are now reversible, which is of considerable importance to companies that are mid-merger or mid-rename, for example.

Another first-release gotcha in W2K AD was the fact that you couldn't delete any schema changes from the AD Schema. So if you added a new property and then decided not to use it, you couldn't remove it from the AD design. With Server 2003's AD, this isn't the case - you can now deactivate attributes and class definitions in the AD Schema. Attributes and classes may be redefined if an error was made in the original definition. I would still caution the ability of even highly trusted system administrators to fiddle with the Schema, but at least damage can be undone now.