Two years after the long-awaited release of Microsoft's flagship network operating system, Windows 2000 Server, the company is now busy grooming its successor, Windows .Net Server. Scheduled to be released this summer, Windows .Net Server is definitely an incremental NOS upgrade that's not nearly as revolutionary as the move from Windows NT Server 4.0 to Windows 2000 Server. Nevertheless, Windows .Net Server does contain some notable changes - some for the better and some for the worse. In this article, we'll review the versions of .Net Server that Microsoft will be releasing this year and take a closer look at the product's changes, based on the Beta 3 release. Versions of Windows .Net Server Let's start with the semantics. Microsoft has divided Windows .Net Server into four versions. (Windows 2000 Server, if you remember, has three, and Windows NT Server 4.0 had two.) The new versions are:

• Windows .Net Standard Server: This version is essentially the same as Windows 2000 Server. It supports up to two processors and up to 4 GB of RAM and is aimed at running basic services for smaller environments.
• Windows .Net Enterprise Server: This one succeeds Windows 2000 Advanced Server. It supports up to eight processors, 32 GB of RAM (Win2K AS supports only 8 GB), and clustering up to four nodes. This is Microsoft's industrial-strength NOS workhorse, meant to run in medium to large environments and to provide the backbone for robust application services, such as SQL Server and Exchange. There will also be a 64-bit version of Enterprise Server aimed mostly at supporting Intel's Itanium processor. That version will support up to 64 GB of RAM.
• Windows .Net Datacenter Server: Obviously, this product is the successor to Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, the widely touted but little-used high-end version of the Windows NOS. This version supports up to 32 processors (and requires a minimum of eight), 64 GB of RAM, and clustering up to eight nodes, and it provides native support for load balancing. It, too, will have a special 64-bit version aimed at Itanium servers, but it will support up to 128 GB of RAM.
• Windows .Net Web Server: This is the newest addition to the Windows NOS family. It's basically a scaled-down version of the NOS that is meant to run one primary application: Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0. Presumably, Microsoft is going to market this server as a quick and easy way to deploy a front-end Web server and establish an Internet presence. It will also provide a ready platform for deploying .Net Web services components. This version supports up to two processors and up to 2 GB of RAM. It lacks many of the built-in features of Standard Server and Enterprise Server, such as Remote Installation Services (RIS), Services for Macintosh, Windows Media Services, SharePoint Team Services, and Terminal Services.

Kudos and caveats There are certainly some things to like about the feature changes made to Windows .Net Server. And, of course, there are some changes that leave something to be desired. Let's take a look. IIS6 gets an overhaul Arguably the best and most important change to .Net Server was to make the default installation of the IIS Web server much more secure. There's no secret formula involved here. Microsoft simply followed the model of most Linux/UNIX software by scaling down the default IIS install to a minimal package with no extras. This basically forces the administrator to consciously add the extras, if they're needed. Many of these little extras, such as Active Server Pages and automatically installed sample scripts, are security hazards that admins didn't account for when installing previous versions of IIS. Kudos to Microsoft for getting serious about IIS security and making this important change. Granted, it needed to take some serious action after IIS became a favorite target for hackers in 2001 with the startling spread of Code Red and Nimda. Nevertheless, this change, along with the IIS Security Lockdown Wizard, which runs the first time you open the IIS 6.0 console, should help Windows .Net Server to provide much more secure Web server installs.