Windows Server 2003, codenamed "Whistler Server", is the sixth major version of the
Windows NT
Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
produced by
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
and the first server version to be released under the
Windows Server brand name. It is part of the
Windows NT
Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...
family of
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
s 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 XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
.
Its kernel has also been used in
Windows XP 64-bit Edition and
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.
It is the final version of Windows Server that supports processors without
ACPI.
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
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
. 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
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
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".
Windows Server 2003's codebase was reused for the
development of Windows Vista
Development or developing may refer to:
Arts
*Development (music), the process by which thematic material is reshaped
*Photographic development
*Filmmaking#Development, Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting
*Developm ...
under its codename, "Longhorn".
Pre-reset builds of "Longhorn" were based on the Windows .NET Server Release Candidate 1 (3663) codebase, whereas post-reset builds of "Longhorn/Vista" after the development reset in 2004 are based on the works-in-progress Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (3790.1232) codebase.
Development
Windows Server 2003 was the first
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
version which was thoroughly subjected to semi-automated
testing for
bugs with a software system called PREfast
developed by
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...
Amitabh Srivastava at
Microsoft Research
Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...
.
The automated bug checking system was first tested on
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...
but not thoroughly.
Amitabh Srivastava's PREfast found 12% of Windows Server 2003's bugs, the remaining 88% being found by human
computer programmer
A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming.
The professional titles ''software developer'' and ''software engineer'' are used for jobs that require a progr ...
s.
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
In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer.
Since a computer, at base, only ...
. Microsoft co-founder
Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...
stated that Windows Server 2003 was Microsoft's "most rigorously tested software to date."
Changes
Several improvements and new features have been added to Windows Server 2003.
Internet Information Services
Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Services, IIS, 2S) is an extensible web server created by Microsoft for use with the Windows NT family. IIS supports HTTP, HTTP/2, HTTP/3, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SMTP and NNTP. It has been an integral part o ...
(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
Schema may refer to:
Science and technology
* SCHEMA (bioinformatics), an algorithm used in protein engineering
* Schema (genetic algorithms), a set of programs or bit strings that have some genotypic similarity
* Schema.org, a web markup vocab ...
, 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).
Editions
Windows Server 2003 comes in a number of editions, each targeted towards a particular size and type of business.
In general, all variants of Windows Server 2003 have the ability to share files and printers, act as an application server, host message queues, provide email services, authenticate users, act as an
X.509 certificate server, provide
LDAP directory services, serve
streaming media
Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a Computer network, network for playback using a Media player (disambiguation), media player. Media is transferred in a ''stream'' of Network packet, packets from a Server (computing), ...
, and to perform other server-oriented functions.
Web
Windows Server 2003 Web is meant for building and hosting Web applications, Web pages, and XML
web service
A web service (WS) is either:
* a service offered by an electronic device to another electronic device, communicating with each other via the Internet, or
* a server running on a computer device, listening for requests at a particular port over a n ...
s. It is designed to be used primarily as an
IIS web server
and provides a platform for developing and deploying XML Web services and applications that use
ASP.NET technology. Domain controller and Terminal Services functionality are not included on Web Edition. However, Remote Desktop for Administration is available. Only 10 concurrent file-sharing connections are allowed at any moment. It is not possible to install Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange software in this edition without installing Service Pack 1. Despite supporting XML Web services and ASP.NET,
UDDI cannot be deployed on Windows Server 2003 Web. The .NET Framework version 2.0 is not included with Windows Server 2003 Web, but can be installed as a separate update from Windows Update.
Windows Server 2003 Web supports a maximum of two physical processors and a maximum of 2 GB of RAM.
It is the only edition of Windows Server 2003 that does not require any
client access license (CAL) when used as the internet facing server front-end for
Internet Information Services
Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Services, IIS, 2S) is an extensible web server created by Microsoft for use with the Windows NT family. IIS supports HTTP, HTTP/2, HTTP/3, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SMTP and NNTP. It has been an integral part o ...
and
Windows Server Update Services. When using it for storage or as a back-end with another remote server as the front-end, CALs may still be required.
Standard
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard is aimed towards small to medium-sized businesses. Standard Edition supports file and printer sharing, offers secure Internet connectivity, and allows centralized desktop application deployment. A specialized variant for the
x64 architecture was released in April 2005. The IA-32 variants supports up to four physical processors and up to 4 GB RAM;
the x64 variant is capable of addressing up to 32 GB of RAM
and also supports
Non-Uniform Memory Access.
Enterprise
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise is aimed towards medium to large businesses. It is a full-function server operating system that supports up to 8 physical processors and provides enterprise-class features such as eight-node
clustering using
Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) software and support for up to 64
GB of
RAM through
PAE.
Enterprise Edition also comes in specialized variants for the x64 and Itanium architectures. With Service Pack 2 installed, the x64 and Itanium variants are capable of addressing up to 1 TB and 2 TB of RAM,
respectively. This edition also supports
Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA). It also provides the ability to hot-add supported hardware. Windows Server 2003 Enterprise is also the required edition to issue custom certificate templates.
Datacenter
Windows Server 2003 Datacenter is designed for infrastructures demanding high security and reliability. Windows Server 2003 is available for IA-32, Itanium, and x64 processors. It supports a maximum of 32 physical processors on IA-32 platform or 64 physical processors on x64 and IA-64 hardware. IA-32 variants of this edition support up to 64 GB of RAM.
With Service Pack 2 installed, the x64 variants support up to 1 TB while the IA-64 variants support up to 2 TB of RAM.
Windows Server 2003 Datacenter also allows limiting processor and memory usage on a per-application basis.
This edition has better support for
storage area networks (SANs): It features a service which uses Windows
sockets to emulate TCP/IP communication over native SAN service providers, thereby allowing a SAN to be accessed over any
TCP/IP
The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...
channel. With this, any application that can communicate over TCP/IP can use a SAN, without any modification to the application.
The Datacenter edition, like the Enterprise edition, supports 8-node
clustering. Clustering increases availability and fault tolerance of server installations by distributing and replicating the service among many servers. This edition supports clustering with each cluster having its own dedicated storage, or with all cluster nodes connected to a common SAN.
Derivatives
Windows Compute Cluster Server
Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 (CCS), released in June 2006, is designed for high-end applications that require
high performance computing clusters. It is designed to be deployed on numerous computers to be clustered together to achieve
supercomputing
A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instruc ...
speeds. Each Compute Cluster Server network comprises at least one controlling head node and subordinate processing nodes that carry out most of the work.
Compute Cluster Server has a built-in
Message Passing Interface, the
Microsoft Messaging Passing Interface v2 (MS-MPI) which is used to communicate between the processing nodes on the cluster network. Alternative MPI Stacks can also be used with the OS. It ties nodes together with a powerful
inter-process communication
In computer science, interprocess communication (IPC) is the sharing of data between running Process (computing), processes in a computer system. Mechanisms for IPC may be provided by an operating system. Applications which use IPC are often cat ...
mechanism which can be complex because of communications between hundreds or even thousands of processors working in parallel.
The
application programming interface
An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that des ...
consists of over 160 functions. A job launcher enables users to execute jobs to be executed in the computing cluster. MS MPI was designed to be compatible with the reference open source
MPI2 specification which is widely used in
High-performance computing
High-performance computing (HPC) is the use of supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems.
Overview
HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into ...
(HPC). With some exceptions because of security considerations, MS MPI covers the complete set of MPI2 functionality as implemented in MPICH2, except for the planned future features of dynamic process spawn and publishing.
Windows Storage Server
Windows Storage Server 2003, a part of the Windows Server 2003 series, is a specialized server
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
for
network-attached storage
Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a Heterogeneous computing, heterogeneous group of clients. In this context, the term "NAS" can refer to both th ...
(NAS). Launched in 2003 at
Storage Decisions in Chicago, it is optimized for use in file and print sharing and also in
storage area network (SAN) scenarios. It is only available through
Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Unlike other Windows Server 2003 editions that provide file and printer sharing functionality, Windows Storage Server 2003 does not require any CAL.
Windows Storage Server 2003 NAS equipment can be ''headless'', which means that they are without any monitors, keyboards or mice, and are administered remotely. Such devices are plugged into any existing
IP network and the storage capacity is available to all users. Windows Storage Server 2003 can use
RAID
RAID (; redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical Computer data storage, data storage components into one or more logical units for th ...
arrays to provide
data redundancy
In computer main memory, auxiliary storage and computer buses, data redundancy is the existence of data that is additional to the actual data and permits correction of errors in stored or transmitted data. The additional data can simply be a com ...
,
fault-tolerance and high performance. Multiple such NAS servers can be clustered to appear as a single device, which allows responsibility for serving clients to be shared in such a way that if one server fails then other servers can take over (often termed a
failover) which also improves fault-tolerance.
Windows Storage Server 2003 can also be used to create a
Storage Area Network, in which the data is transferred in terms of chunks rather than files, thus providing more granularity to the data that can be transferred. This provides higher performance to
database
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...
and
transaction processing
In computer science, transaction processing is information processing that is divided into individual, indivisible operations called ''transactions''. Each transaction must succeed or fail as a complete unit; it can never be only partially c ...
applications. Windows Storage Server 2003 also allows NAS devices to be connected to a SAN.
Windows Storage Server 2003 led to a second release named Windows Storage Server 2003 R2. This release adds file-server performance optimization, Single Instance Storage (SIS), and index-based search. Single instance storage (SIS) scans storage volumes for duplicate files, and moves the duplicate files to the common SIS store. The file on the volume is replaced with a link to the file. This substitution reduces the amount of storage space required, by as much as 70%.
Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 provides an index-based, full-text search based on the indexing engine already built into Windows server.
The updated search engine speeds up indexed searches on network shares. This edition also provides filters for searching many standard file formats, such as
ZIP archives,
AutoCAD models,
XML documents,
MP3 audio files,
PDF documents, and all
Microsoft Office file formats.
Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 includes built in support for Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server, and adds a Storage Management snap-in for the Microsoft Management Console. It can be used to manage storage volumes centrally, including
DFS shares, on servers running Windows Storage Server R2.
Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 can be used as an
iSCSI target with standard and enterprise editions of Windows Storage Server 2003 R2, incorporating
WinTarget iSCSI technology which Microsoft acquired in 2006 by from StringBean software. This will be an add-on feature available for purchase through OEM partners as an iSCSI feature pack, or is included in some versions of WSS as configured by OEMs.
Windows Storage Server 2003 can be promoted to function as a domain controller; however, this edition is not licensed to run directory services. It can be joined to an existing domain as a member server.
Features
*
Distributed File System
A clustered file system (CFS) is a file system which is shared by being simultaneously Mount (computing), mounted on multiple Server (computing), servers. There are several approaches to computer cluster, clustering, most of which do not emplo ...
(DFS): Allows multiple
network shares to be aggregated as a virtual file system.
* Support for
SAN and
iSCSI: Allows computers to connect to a Storage Server over the
LAN, without the need for a separate
fibre channel
Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to Server (computing), servers in storage area networks (SAN) in ...
network, thus a
Storage Area Network can be created over the
LAN itself. iSCSI uses the
SCSI protocol to transfer data as a block of bytes, rather than as a file. This increases performance of the Storage network in some scenarios, such as using a database server.
* Virtual Disc Service: Allows
NAS devices,
RAID
RAID (; redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical Computer data storage, data storage components into one or more logical units for th ...
devices and SAN shares to be exposed and managed as if they were normal hard drives.
* JBOD systems:
JBOD (''Just a bunch of discs'') systems, by using VDS, can manage a group of individual storage devices as a single unit. There is no need for the storage units to be of the same maker and model.
* Software and Hardware RAID: Windows Storage Server 2003 has intrinsic support for hardware implementation of
RAID
RAID (; redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical Computer data storage, data storage components into one or more logical units for th ...
. In case hardware support is not available, it can use software enabled RAID. In that case, all processing is done by the OS.
* Multi Path IO (MPIO): It provides an alternate connection to IO devices in case the primary path is down.
Editions
Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 was available in the following editions:
Windows Unified Data Storage Server is a variant of Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 with iSCSI target support standard, available in only the standard and enterprise editions.
Windows Small Business Server
Windows Small Business Server (SBS) is a
software suite which includes Windows Server and additional technologies aimed at providing a small business with a complete technology solution.
The Standard edition of SBS includes
Microsoft Remote Web Workplace,
Windows SharePoint Services,
Microsoft Exchange Server, Fax Server,
Active Directory, a basic
firewall,
DHCP server and
network address translation
Network address translation (NAT) is a method of mapping an IP address space into another by modifying network address information in the IP header of packets while they are in transit across a traffic Router (computing), routing device. The te ...
capabilities. The Premium edition of SBS adds
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and
Microsoft ISA Server 2004.
SBS has its own type of CAL that is different and costs slightly more than CALs for the other editions of Windows Server 2003. However, the SBS CAL encompasses the user CALs for Windows Server, Exchange Server, SQL Server and ISA Server, and hence is less expensive than buying all other CALs individually.
SBS has the following design limitations, mainly affecting Active Directory:
* Only one computer in a
Windows Server domain can be running SBS
* SBS must be the root of the
Active Directory forest
* SBS cannot trust any other domains
* SBS is limited to 75 users or devices depending on the type of CAL
* SBS is limited to a maximum of 4 GB of RAM
* SBS domains cannot have any child domains
*
Terminal Services only operates in
remote administration mode on SBS, meaning that only two simultaneous RDP sessions are allowed
To remove the limitations from an instance of SBS and upgrade to regular Windows Server, Exchange Server, SQL and ISA Server, there is a Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 Transition Pack.
Windows Home Server
Windows Home Server (WHS) is an operating system from Microsoft based on Windows Small Business Server 2003 SP2. Windows Home Server was announced on January 7, 2007, at the
Consumer Electronics Show
CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...
by
Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...
and is intended to be a solution for homes with multiple connected PCs to offer file sharing, automated backups, and remote access.
Windows Home Server began shipment to OEMs on September 15, 2007.
Windows Server for Embedded Systems
Windows Server 2003 for Embedded Systems replaced "Windows 2000 Server for Embedded Systems". Intended use was for building firewall, VPN caching servers and similar appliances. Variants were available with "Server Appliance Software" and with "Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server"
Availability of the original version ended May 28, 2003. Availability of R2 ended March 5, 2006. End of extended support was July 14, 2015 (all variants except Storage Server
), and End of Licence was May 28, 2018 (R2 and original). The End of Licence date is the last date that OEM's may distribute systems using this version. All variants continued to receive Critical security updates until the end of extended support:
Release 2 for Embedded Systems was available in 32 and 64 bit variants, Standard (1–4 CPU) and Enterprise (1–8 CPU):
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition was released less than a month after Windows Server 2003 SP1, and used the same kernel and source code tree. While many features of the 32-bit variant of Windows XP were brought over into Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, other limitations imposed by constraints such as only supporting 64-bit drivers, and support for 16-bit programs being dropped led to incompatibilities with the 32-bit Windows XP editions available. It later received a Service Pack update as part of the release of Windows Server 2003 SP2.
Updates
Service Pack 1
On March 30, 2005, Microsoft released Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2003. Among the improvements are many of the same updates that were provided to Windows XP users with Service Pack 2. Features that are added with Service Pack 1 include:
* Security Configuration Wizard, which is a tool that allows administrators to more easily research, and make changes to, security policies.
* Hot Patching, a feature made to extend Windows Server 2003's ability to take DLL, Driver, and non-kernel patches without a reboot.
* IIS 6.0 Metabase Auditing, a feature allows the tracking of metabase edits.
*
Windows Firewall, which brings many of the improvements from Windows XP Service Pack 2 to Windows Server 2003; also with the Security Configuration Wizard, it allows administrators to more easily manage the incoming open ports, as it will automatically detect and select default roles.
* Other networking improvements include support for Wireless Provisioning Services, better IPv6 support, and new protections against
SYN flood TCP attacks.
* Post-Setup Security Updates, a panel which is shown only when the operating system is first installed. This window allows you to configure and update your server, and halts incoming connections until it is closed.
*
Data Execution Prevention (DEP), a feature to add support for the
No Execute (NX) bit which helps to prevent
buffer overflow exploits that are often the attack vector of Windows Server exploits.
*
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player (WMP, officially referred to as Windows Media Player Legacy to retronym, distinguish it from Windows Media Player (2022), the new Windows Media Player introduced with Windows 11) is the first media player (application soft ...
version 10
*
Internet Explorer 6 SV1
[SV1 stands for "Security Version 1", referring to the set of security enhancements made for that releas]
. This version of Internet Explorer is more popularly known as IE6 SP2, given that it is included with Windows XP Service Pack 2, but this can lead to confusion when discussing Windows Server 2003, which includes the same functionality in the SP1 update to that operating system. (e.g. 'IE6 SP2')
* Support for fixed disks bearing data organized using the
GUID Partition Table system
A full list of updates is available in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.
Service Pack 2
Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2003 was released on March 13, 2007.
The release date was originally scheduled for the first half of 2006.
On June 13, 2006, Microsoft made an initial test version of Service Pack 2 available to Microsoft Connect users, with a build number of 2721. This was followed by build 2805, known as Beta 2 Refresh. The final build is 3790.
Microsoft has described Service Pack 2 as a "standard" service pack release containing previously released security updates, hotfixes, and reliability and performance improvements. In addition, Service Pack 2 contains
Microsoft Management Console 3.0, Windows Deployment Services (which replaces
Remote Installation Services), support for
WPA2, and improvements to
IPsec and MSConfig. Service Pack 2 also adds ''Windows Server 2003 Scalable Networking Pack'' (SNP), which allows hardware acceleration for processing network packets, thereby enabling faster throughput. SNP was previously available as an out-of-band update for Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1.
Windows Server 2003 R2
Windows Server 2003 R2 is an updated release of Windows Server 2003. It was released to manufacturing on December 6, 2005 for IA-32 and x64 platforms, but not for
IA-64.
It was succeeded by
Windows Server 2008.
New features of Windows Server 2003 R2 include:
*
.NET Framework 2.0, which replaces the
.NET Framework 1.0 included with the standard releases
*
Active Directory Federation Services, a single sign-on solution for Active Directory Services
*
Microsoft Management Console version 3.0. Additionally, several new snap-ins are included:
** Print Management Console, for managing
print servers
** File Server Resource Manager, for managing
disk quotas on
file servers
** Storage Manager for SANs, for managing
LUNs
* A new version of
Distributed File System
A clustered file system (CFS) is a file system which is shared by being simultaneously Mount (computing), mounted on multiple Server (computing), servers. There are several approaches to computer cluster, clustering, most of which do not emplo ...
that includes remote differential compression technology
*
Microsoft Virtual Server
Microsoft Virtual Server was a virtualization solution that facilitated the creation of virtual machines on the Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 operating systems. Originally developed by Connectix, it was acquired by Microsoft pri ...
2005, a
hypervisor and the precursor to
Hyper-V
*
Windows Services for UNIX, a UNIX environment for Windows
Windows Server 2003 R2 was distributed in two
CDs, one containing a copy of Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 included and another containing a host of optionally-installed new features needed for Windows Server 2003 R2 installation, similar to that of
Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95.
Support lifecycle
On July 13, 2010, Windows Server 2003's mainstream support expired and the extended support phase began. During the extended support phase, Microsoft continued to provide security updates; however, free technical support, warranty claims, and design changes are no longer being offered.
Extended support lasted until July 14, 2015.
Mainstream support for Small Business Server edition ended on April 12, 2011 and extended support ended on April 12, 2016. Mainstream support for Storage Server edition ended on October 11, 2011 and extended support ended on October 9, 2016.
Although Windows Server 2003 is unsupported, Microsoft released an emergency security patch in May 2017 for the OS as well as other unsupported versions of Windows (including
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
,
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...
and
Windows 7
Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...
RTM without a service pack), to address a vulnerability that was being leveraged by the
WannaCry ransomware attack.
In 2020, Microsoft announced that it would disable the Windows Update service for SHA-1 endpoints for older Windows versions. Since Windows Server 2003 did not get an update for SHA-2, Windows Update Services are no longer available on the OS as of late July 2020. As of March 2024, many of the old updates for Windows Server 2003 are available on the
Microsoft Update Catalog. A third-party tool named Legacy Update allows previously-released updates for Windows Server 2003 to be installed from the Update Catalog.
Source code leak
On September 23, 2020, the
Windows XP Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2003 source code was leaked onto the
imageboard 4chan by an unknown user. Anonymous users managed to compile the Windows Server 2003 source code, as well as a Twitter user who posted videos of the process on YouTube proving that the code was genuine, but
was removed from the platform on copyright grounds by Microsoft. The leak was incomplete as it was missing the
Winlogon source code and some other components. The original leak itself was spread using
magnet links and torrent files whose payload originally included Server 2003 and XP source code and which was later updated by additional files among which were previous leaks of Microsoft products, its patents, media about
conspiracy theories
A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources:
*
...
about
Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...
by
anti-vaccination movements and an assortment of PDF files on different topics.
Microsoft issued a statement stating that it was investigating the leaks.
On April 2, 2025, a user managed to build
ntoskrnl.exe
using
Clang
Clang () is a compiler front end for the programming languages C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, and the software frameworks OpenMP, OpenCL, RenderScript, CUDA, SYCL, and HIP. It acts as a drop-in replacement for the GNU Compiler ...
and
LLD for the first time, rather than Microsoft's
MSVC compiler.
See also
*
BlueKeep (security vulnerability)
*
Comparison of Microsoft Windows versions
*
Comparison of operating systems
*
History of Microsoft Windows
*
List of operating systems
*
Microsoft Servers
References
External links
Windows Server 2003on Microsoft TechNet
Windows Server 2003 Downloadson Microsoft TechNet
Windows Server Performance Team Blog
Kernel comparison with Linux 2.6by David Solomon,
Mark Russinovich, and Andreas Polze
{{Authority control
2003 software
Products and services discontinued in 2015
2003
IA-32 operating systems
X86-64 operating systems
Microsoft Windows