Windows Server 2003, codenamed "Whistler Server", is the second version of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2003. Windows Server 2003 is the successor to the Server editions of Windows 2000 and the predecessor to Windows Server 2008. An updated version, Windows Server 2003 R2, was released to manufacturing on December 6, 2005. Windows Server 2003 is based on Windows 2000.
Windows Server 2003's kernel has also been used in Windows XP 64-bit Edition and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and was the starting point for the development of Windows Vista.
Windows Server 2003 is the final version of Windows Server that supports processors without ACPI. Its successor, Windows Server 2008, requires a processor with ACPI in any supported architecture (x86, x64 and Itanium).
As of July 2016, 18% of organizations used servers that were running Windows Server 2003.
Overview
Windows Server 2003 is the follow-up to Windows 2000 Server, incorporating compatibility and other features from Windows XP. Unlike Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003's default installation has none of the server components enabled, to reduce the attack surface of new machines. Windows Server 2003 includes compatibility modes to allow older applications to run with greater stability. It was made more compatible with Windows NT 4.0 domain-based networking. Windows Server 2003 brought in enhanced Active Directory compatibility and better deployment support to ease the transition from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional.
Windows Server 2003 is the first server edition of Windows to support the IA64 and x64 architectures.
The product went through several name changes during the course of development. When first announced in 2000, it was known by its codename "Whistler Server"; it was named "Windows 2002 Server" for a brief time in mid-2001, followed by "Windows .NET Server" and "Windows .NET Server 2003". After Microsoft chose to focus the ".NET" branding on the .NET Framework, the OS was finally released as "Windows Server 2003".
Development
Windows Server 2003 was the first Microsoft Windows version which was thoroughly subjected to semi-automated testing for bugs with a software system called PREfast developed by computer scientist Amitabh Srivastava at Microsoft Research. The automated bug checking system was first tested on Windows 2000 but not thoroughly. Amitabh Srivastava's PREfast found 12% of Windows Server 2003's bugs, the remaining 88% being found by human computer programmers. Microsoft employs more than 4,700 programmers who work on Windows, 60% of whom are software testers whose job is to find bugs in Windows source code. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates stated that Windows Server 2003 was Microsoft's "most rigorously tested software to date."
Microsoft used Windows Server 2003's kernel in the development of Windows Vista.
Changes
Several improvements and new features have been added to Windows Server 2003.
Internet Information Services (IIS) has been upgraded to v6.0.There have also been significant improvements to Message Queuing and to Active Directory, such as the ability to deactivate classes from the schema, or to run multiple instances of the directory server (ADAM). There was also a notable change in the ability to create a rescue disk, which was removed in favor of Automated System Recovery (ASR).Other Improvements to Group Policy handling and administration have also been made. For the first time in the history of Windows Server, a backup system to restore lost files has been created together with improved disk management, including the ability to back up from shadows of files, allowing the backup of open files.Another important area where improvements have been made are the scripting and command line tools, with the improvements being part of Microsoft's initiative to bring a complete command shell to the next version of Windows. Other notable new features include support for a hardware-based "watchdog timer", which can restart the server if the operating system does not respond within a certain amount of time. On this version of Windows Server the Themes service is disabled by default, defaulting to the appearance of previous Windows versions (such as Windows 2000).