Microsoft on Thursday will launch the most ambitious version yet of its Windows server operating system, as the company looks to push aside Unix servers and mainframes in the enterprise. In the meantime, server makers will be among the Microsoft backers on Thursday, plugging new customer wins and services for companies that are considering a move to Windows Server 2003.
Windows Server 2003 Calls on the Enterprise
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Yeah, analysts are predicting that MS will almost have no server market share in a few years. I’m glad many people is finding out that there are many alternative OSes and even better than MS.
n0dez
oh….please….maybe web servers. 😛
Can you produce an analyst name & document that supports such a claim?
It’s just a troll. Don’t feed it and it will crap elsewhere.
I’m currently using Windows 2003 Server and I can’t really see how it can push aside Windows 2000 Servers let alone Unix servers.
What do you use it for?
Depends on what your use is.
My guess is that MS is really after the NT4 market. There are still a LOT of NT4 installs that they want to upgrade. That’s prolly the target more than anything else.
Of course, the race is to get those NT4 folks on W2K3 instead of Linux !!!
I use it for programming and for delivering web applications to the company I work for. I also use OpenBSD for the latter, and it works much better in my opinion.
Although I did mention this in another article (the one earlier today about a Windows 2003 Server review), I should mention here that I have only used Windows 2003 Server for two days now. Please see the other post for an indepth look at my first impressions of this OS if you are interested.
openbsd probably does work better in your situation, since the web is one of the many things *nix does best.
the “push aside Unix” remark seems to be MS’s Datacenter edition campaign… I think they’re targeting IRIX, AIX and Solaris more than a BSD or Linux.
if they intended it to immediately replace Windows 2000 in any function, it would most likely be the cheaper Web server version as an upgrade to w2k + IIS5.
the “push aside Unix” remark seems to be MS’s Datacenter edition campaign… I think they’re targeting IRIX, AIX and Solaris more than a BSD or Linux.
I wish them luck. They’ll need it.
I hope their datacenter version sucks a lot less than the version I’m using. I do have access to their datacenter version as well. The company I work for has extremely large databases in several of their web-driven products. I’ll check it out and offer my opinions regarding it later.
By the way, anyone who has read my posts during the last year or so knows that I use Windows quite a bit. I worked for Microsoft for a couple of years, and most of the time, when I post to OSNews, it is from a Windows machine.
I’m telling you this so you don’t think I’m a zealot that hates Microsoft. The problem I have been having with them lately is that the quality of their stuff is greatly lacking. The quality of the user interface (the functionality of it, not the design) just sucks in Windows XP and 2003. Read the long post I wrote in the 2003 review article, which is a few articles below this one, for an example of one UI problem that is unforgivable (I believe is the phrase I used to describe it).
I don’t hate Microsoft, but let’s be realistic. If they don’t start putting out better quality in their products, they are not going to push anybody aside. On a positive note, however, I think that 2003 is an improvement over XP, which was absolutely dreadful. I don’t like it as much as 2000 though.
The thing I don’t understand is how on one hand they can come up with a great development platform (.NET) in which they do many thing right, and then on the other hand put out products like XP and 2003. I used to look forward to each new version of Windows (and DOS back in the day) because they were improvements over prior versions. That track record ceased with Windows 2000 being the pinnacle of Windows achievement. At least these are my opinions.
and :
– it has a lot of features like shadow volume that saves automatically versions of files
– it can be clustered up to 32 machines with the datacenter version
– it can run with up to 8 cpus
– it has lots and lots of nice features. Go see them 🙂
Cheers
Looks like the Linux heyday is over; Windows has it beat in security, performance, features, etc. Why would I want to compile stuff like Apache and Samba when I can set up equivalent services with a few clicks on Windows 2003 server? Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft corporation
I can’t wait till windows dominates the server market. Its going to be riot when it does. Then all you linux fanbois can go cry and take you compiling open crap software and jump into a river.
Microsoft has the money and power to dominate the server market, what does linux have? 2bit freelance developers who don’t get paid, i really don’t think they stand a chance against the microsoft machine.
Long live microsoft and its monopoly.
For the most common tasks, e-mail, web, and http://ftp…the differences between Red Hat Linux 9 and Windows 2003 are really not that great regarding stability, security, and ease of setup.
If you install apache it comes with a decent default setup outta the box, if you install sendmail and pop3d, you’ve got a mailserver, outta the box, ftp is really easy to setup too…and red hat’s got all sorts of GUI config tools
let’s face it…windows and linux are tied in the stability and security departments…don’t kid yourselves folks, you have to move up to Solaris or BSD to get better stability, for security, you’d have to go with something like OpenBSD or Netware
So really what it all comes down to is price…and that’s a battle MS will have a hard time winning.
-bytes256
Errrrrr. Are you being serious?
Long Live a Monopoly?
Either you’re seriously right-wing, working for M$, or just plain out ignorant…
Even though there are already loads of ignorant bashes against Windows Server 2003…
No matter what you make of the TPC-C benchmarks… The Itanium 2 (Madison in this case) + Windows Server 2003 is pretty impressive. Top 2 spots…
Atleast the performance is good. I’d say give M$ a few years to prove if this is a good server OS or not, because that’ll be the time you’ll need to see if it’s stable or secure…
Using the beta’s alone or test driving it for 5 hours isn’t exactly what I would call a “good review”.
windows has been been doing great on TPC results for years. reality environments have been quite different, with MS having minimal impact as yet in the lucrative high end market.
Either you’re seriously right-wing, working for M$, or just plain out ignorant…
Why is it that you associate “right-wing” with plain ignorant?
Looks like the Linux heyday is over; Windows has it beat in security, performance, features, etc.
In what ways?
Why would I want to compile stuff like Apache and Samba when I can set up equivalent services with a few clicks on Windows 2003 server?
In my opinion, the three clicks you are referring to are the reason that Microsoft software is so insecure. If you don’t know squat about running IIS, it doesn’t matter because you can click on three buttons in the IIS for Newbie Wizard and you’re off service pages. People are all too eager to take three uninformed clicks than to actually study what they are doing in their mind and actually learn how something works.
Microsoft’s remedy for this security problem with IIS 6 and 2003 Server is to simply encase the whole thing in lead so you can’t do anything but serve static pages by default (well, IIS isn’t even installed by default, but if you installing yourself, it defaults to only serving static web pages and disabling everything else).
The problem is that disabling the lead encasing is very easy with one or two clicks, and also necessary if you want any kind of dynamic site; which invalidates any default security measures they may have implemented.
I think Windows is a great desktop OS (except for the repaint problems that plague both XP and 2003 Server). I don’t think much of it as a production server though for many reasons.
I agree. For large multi-processor machines using x86 I’d suggest Solaris, for Itanium, HP-UX, for uniprocessor machines, FreeBSD.
It is going to be interesting however how Linux turns out in the long run.
As for Windows 2003, I still don’t trust Microsoft to produce something of quality. If one was wise, they’d looking at Microsofts apaulling history of promises and hyping and the enevitable results down the track. Every release Microsoft declares Windows to be the UNIX killer, and every release 12months down the track they promise that the next version will be even better. As for units shipped, of course there are more WIndows servers shipped, they’ve never been strong in the multi-processor market. Just look at what happened with the 16way and 32way configurations on offer.
In a nut shell, UNIX’s strength is on large mutliprocessor machines, Windows should just stick to what is is good at, Desktop and small business servers who don’t mind the occasional downtime. That is where their strength is.
>Windows should just stick to what is is good at, Desktop and small business servers who don’t mind the occasional downtime. That is where their strength is
I totally agree. When the “senior systems engineer on the Microsoft.com operations team” says that uptimes of 3 months or more are “crazy”, you really must be wondering whether this is can be considered a serious piece of software when the BSD’s are already in the several years mark (according to netcraft).
It seems that reliability still isn’t as good as it should be, certainly not for the datacentre market, and is best left for the small businesses who can cope with the downtimes.
to the blue screen of death. Installed at 7pm….ran it until 10pm. Booted up in the morning, started IIS, got blue screen. I have been running XP Pro since it came out and not gotten a BSOD. Oh and where did all the drivers go? Had to install network card drivers from disk, because it didnt recognize my linksys card. One plus is that the OS was fast…..while it was up.
I installed the test version of the Enterprise Server last night on a spare desktop, as a test, and I have to say it’s illuminating.
Things I like:
Fast file acquisition, as well as boot/reboot
Cluster and Network Management
Flexible-most services/apps/configurations are disabled by default. I really like that.
Media Server Included
Easy Seperation of users/admin/power user privleges.
Can be easy to configure, if your needs are simple.
Inclusion of IIS/ASP.net helpful
Seems solid-no BSOD
Things I don’t Like:
From a user standpoint, it’s pretty much XPPRO version 2.
Doesn’t do anything that Linux can’t already do, cheaper.
Metadata file system not too useful, yet…
Very complex to configure if your needs are not plain vanilla server.
It’s clear that Redmond has been paying some close attention to Linux. An “everything” install of a standard linux distro covers most of the same functionality /features that I see here.
That said, why would I buy “Microsoft Linux”, when I can download a great server OS for free?
On the other hand, it excels as a very expensive Desktop/Workstation OS. Since the underlying OS seems to be a hardened version of XP, you get alot of the benefits of XP, such as common hardware recognition, DirectX software use, without the “spyware” and useless services of XP.
Maybe they should rethink their marketing.
I never directly associated them together… He was EITHER Right-wing or Ignorant… Not that right-wingers are ignorant…
He coulda been an Ignorant Liberal for all I care.
>Errrrrr. Are you being serious?
>Long Live a Monopoly?
>Either you’re seriously right-wing, working for M$,
>or just plain out ignorant..
-I think this is called ‘irony’…
I’m even confusing myself…
.