<div align="justify"><p>One reason for the delays in launching Windows Server 2003 was the need to make sure it was as secure as possible, as part of Microsoft's 'Trustworthy Computing' initiative. </p><p>Several new features have been added as a result, including the Common Language Runtime (CLR), a new component designed to reduce the number of bugs and potential security flaws that could result from application programming errors. </p><p>To achieve this aim, the CLR verifies that applications can run without error and checks for appropriate security permissions as well as making sure that code only performs authorised operations. </p><p>For example, it checks for things such as where the code was downloaded or installed from, whether it has a digital signature or not and whether the code has been altered since it was signed. </p><p>Additionally, the digital certificate services introduced in Windows 2000 are enhanced, with 2003 also supporting two-stage authentication using physical tokens such as smartcards. </p><p>Together with improved Certificate Revocation List (CRL) capabilities, these features enable companies to more easily implement their own public key infrastructure (PKI) and to do so without the need for extra software. </p><p>That said, Microsoft faces stiff competition in this area from vendors who offer broader platform support and much simpler management, even though the fact that PKI services are now fully integrated into Windows is a point in its favour. </p><p>When it comes to more mundane - though nonetheless necessary - security protection, Windows Server 2003 now comes with an Internet Connection Firewall, much like that included in XP. </p><p>It can be used with Ethernet, dial-up, VPN and PPPoE connections. Security for wireless networking is another new addition and the Internet Authentication Service (IAS) has also been enhanced in the new server. </p><p>Cross-forest trusts can also be configured on Active Directory networks using a new wizard, and there's a policy-driven mechanism to identify software running in a domain and control its execution. Using this it's possible to, for example, identify hostile or un-licensed software and prevent it running on both Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 systems on the Lan. </p><p>Finally, a word about the missing bit of the moniker. Just because Microsoft dropped .Net from the name of its new server doesn't mean it isn't a key part of the Microsoft web services strategy. </p><p>And in case you've missed what that's all about, it's the ability to deploy self-contained building block services on the web, which can be discovered and used by other applications to perform tasks without the need for custom programming. </p><p>The .Net Passport service is a good example, enabling applications to authenticate users simply and easily. </p><p>Despite the slimmed down name, Windows Server 2003 is fully integrated with the .Net framework and provides native support for all the standards related to web services. </p><p>Those are led by XML (Extensible Markup Language) and Soap (Simple Object Access Protocol), the XML-based messaging protocol used to encode web service request and response messages before sending them over a network. </p><p>The Common Language Runtime (CLR) in Windows Server 2003 is another key component of the .Net Framework, together with a new Enterprise UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) service. </p><p>A kind of yellow pages for distributed web services, UDDI is required to enable applications to find, share and re-use web services and other resources. So by including UDDI services as part of Windows Server 2003, Microsoft is clearly hoping companies will base their web services strategies on its platform rather than its rivals. </p><p>However, just because it's crucial to Microsoft's plans for .Net, Windows Server 2003 isn't only about web services. As we've tried to highlight in this feature, it's a lot more besides and very much the next step on the traditional server operating system ladder. </p><p>File and print and IIS web server are still prime features, with lots of enhancements too, in terms of performance, reliability, security and manageability, to encourage existing Windows NT or 2000 users to upgrade. </p><p>There's a lot more besides, such as the new SMTP/Pop3 mail server, enhanced clustering, VPN and terminal services which we haven't the space to include. We'll look at some of those features in future issues of PCW, when all the noise around the Windows Server 2003 launch has died down. </p><p><b>How we tested</b> </p><p>Microsoft makes big claims for the performance improvements possible using Windows Server 2003, but, in the main, these are derived from large scale tests on already very powerful hardware. </p><p>To test the performance of the new operating system more realistically, we put it through its paces in the PCW labs using ordinary mid-range server hardware connected to our test network. </p><p>The tests were run using two standard benchmarks, the first of which - Netbench - is used to gauge file sharing performance on the Lan. </p><p>The other - Webbench - measures application server performance for the combined operating system and associated web server software, and can also be used to see how well that performance scales when multiple processors are deployed in a server. </p><p><b>File sharing tests</b> </p><p>It's widely understood that file sharing doesn't actually require much in the way of processing power, so rather than test the new operating system on a state of the art SMP server we opted, instead, to use a slightly older system. </p><p>That way we would be able to measure the kind of improvement you might reasonably expect to see simply by upgrading an existing reasonably modern server from Windows 2000 to Windows Server 2003. </p><p>The server we used was a Dell Poweredge 2550 with a single 1.26GHz Pentium III processor and 512MB of memory, fitted with Ultra160 SCSI storage. This we tested using Windows Server 2003 (Enterprise Edition) and Windows 2000 Advanced Server, using, as far as possible, an identical file server set-up. </p><p>Not surprisingly, at low client loads, where the operating system is relatively un-stressed, there was little difference in throughput, such that on small networks there would be no noticeable effect of switching to Windows Server 2003. </p><p>However, at higher loads, Windows Server 2003 delivered up to 30 per cent more data to the attached clients than the Windows 2000 Advanced Server configuration. That sort of improvement would be obvious on any reasonably-sized network. </p><p><b>Application server tests </b> </p><p>The Webbench application server tests were, similarly, performed using both Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. </p><p>This time they were run on an IBM Xseries 225 server fitted with dual 2.4GHz Xeon processors, together with 1GB of memory and Ultra320 SCSI storage. </p><p>We used a client mix where the clients were required to run server-side scripts on the host web server and ran the tests with one and two processors, to see how the different operating systems and web servers would scale. </p><p>At low client loads there was little difference, with Windows 2000 and IIS 5 marginally out-performing the Windows Server and IIS 6 configuration. </p><p>However, as client numbers increased in our tests, the positions were quickly reversed and Windows Server 2003 with IIS 6 consistently out-performed the equivalent Windows 2000 with IIS 5 set-up. </p><p>The biggest differences were on a dual-processor configuration where at higher client loads we recorded gains of almost 60 per cent. The new software also scaled better when upgrading from one to two processors. </p><p>Even with one processor, Windows Server 2003 was often better than Windows 2000 with two processors fitted, enabling it to support more users and provide faster response times than the equivalent Windows 2000 platform. </p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b> </p><p>Hardware and software developers are well known for making exaggerated performance claims for their products. </p><p>In the case of Windows Server 2003, however, many of those claims do turn out to be justified, the only proviso being that it depends on the size of your network and the load put on the server as to whether it's worth upgrading or not. </p><p>For a small network with less than around 20 users, for example, it's doubtful whether there would be any noticeable improvement compared to Windows 2000. </p><p>That's because the server would primarily be used for file sharing, and any gains from the enhanced IIS 6 web server architecture would also be negligible, making an upgrade questionable. </p><p>However, on larger networks and where Windows servers are used to host public websites, the performance gains are palpable and really worth having. </p><p>Admittedly we were only able to test with a two-way server and weren't able to test the 64-bit implementation, but if the trends we recorded are followed through on such platforms, they too should see significant performance gains using the new Windows software. </p></div>