Microsoft WindowsServer 2003 RC2 review

Networking and Terminal Services

In Server 2003, Microsoft releases its production-quality IPv6 protocol suite. IPv6 has been a long time coming and arguably is only of importance to the largest networks and internetworks, but now it's possible to use standard Windows servers to operate in that IPv6 space. There are IPv6-enabled tools in the system to let you work with it out of the box, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, Telnet client, FTP client, Microsoft IIS 6, file and print sharing. It also provides support for IPv6/IPv4 co-existence technologies such as 6to4 and Intra-site Automatic Tunnel Addressing Protocol (ISATAP).

Terminal Server users will appreciate the significant improvements that have been made in the RDP 5.1 protocol and client. No longer are you limited to 256 colours. If you have the bandwidth, you can run all the way to a Truecolour 16.7 million colour space, which means even photo-realistic work can be done via a Terminal Server session. Plus, the maximum resolution is up to 1,600 x 1,200 pixels.

The protocol is richer as well - with RDP5.1, you can access many of the local resources within the remote session. So with the right client, it's possible to get to the local file system, or smart cards, audio output, serial ports, printers including network printers, as well as the clipboard. This means you can open a local file, work on it remotely and then print it to a locally connected printer - a major improvement over the 'here and there' limitations of previous Terminal Server implementations.

IIS & .NET Framework

Here's not the best place to discuss in depth the new features and facilities of IIS 6. Suffice it to say, IIS has been completely rearchitected to be much more scalable, reliable and easier to use, configure and deploy. Again, Microsoft has definitely taken lessons from the past heritage of IIS 3, early ASP and so forth.

Server 2003 is the first Microsoft OS platform to ship with the .NET Framework already built in. From a system administrator's point of view, this is somewhat of a headache, because it's a large, complex and new area for them to understand. Fortunately, it won't impact on them unless they need to dive into the configuration and management, at which point there's a requirement for a large and deep set of skills to be learned.

All together now

So what is Server 2003 like overall, and is it a worthwhile upgrade? Much of the answer to that question will depend upon where you're coming from, what problems need to be addressed and what your expectations are.

There are a number of clearly definable groups where Server 2003 will come like a breath of fresh air. Those engaged in ASP .NET programming, Visual Studio application building and so on will greatly benefit from having Server 2003 instead of Windows 2000, and this is mostly related to the work on the frameworks and on IIS 6.

If you have a large contingency of Terminal Server users, you'll look at Server 2003 and see much there to benefit your environment and user base. Similarly, if you're thinking about deploying a SAN, the storage improvements will definitely be worth looking at, in order to decide whether you'll move to Server 2003 as part of your SAN roll-out, or whether the capabilities can be waited for in a later deployment.

If you're a large corporate and the issues of domain naming, renaming, company merging and all the management issues of AD are an issue to you, you'll want to move. Similarly, if you have a geographically spread WAN, the Server 2003 improvements will come as a godsend to your system administrators who are tasked with keeping your WAN network running on a day-to-day basis.