This page started as a place to share links and other information arising out of the Windows 2003 Expert Workshop in Basingstoke. It's grown since then.
Here's what's on this page
So What's New in Windows Server 2003?
Active Directory Must Read Documents
Windows 2003 Add-ons to Look At
WMI and WMI Scripting
WSH in Windows Server 2003
Upgrading Windows 2003 Domains to Windows Server 2003
IIS 6.0
Acknowledgements
Windows Server is a big product - and there's a lot of new stuff. A starting point is the Reviewer's Guide. This is a 110-page guide which discusses most of the important improvements and new features in Windows Server 2003.
The Windows Server 2003 Technical Overviews page has links to a series of overview documents that examine the features of Windows 2003.
In discussing the Active Directory, there are a few key papers that every MCT should have read and should fully understand. These are:
Active Directory in Networks Segmented by Firewalls - as the title suggests.
Multiple Forest Considerations - a guide to what is required for multi-forest operations.
AD/AM - this white paper describes the Active Directory Application Mode facility.
There are a number of new features that will not ship on the Windows Server 2003 CD, but will be delivered to the web. These will be an important part of the product, and include:
Group Policy Management Console - an entirely better way to manage Group Policy. GPMC is outstanding!
Windows System Resource Manager - a way of controlling resources on high end systems.
Microsoft Audit Collection Service - collects the security logs from individual servers into a single SQL database for analysis.
AD/AM - a lightweight application directory. This is an alternative to Application Directory Partitions for applications to use and provides an alternative to 3rd party application directories such as iPlanet. A key feature of AD/AM is that each AD/AM directory can have it's own schema but can not contain Windows Security principals. This enables an application to use the full directory for user authentication, but to use its private directory for application information. A very cool concept, which opens the way for some interesting application usage.
Microsoft Meta Directory Service - MMS, particularly MMS 2003 is the glue that will bind AD/AM, full AD and other 3rd party directories together. According to the FAQ, MMS 2003 Standard Edition will ship 90 days after Windows Server 2003 is released. The FAQ does not mention a ship date for MMS 2003 Enterprise Edition. The Standard Edition will be a free web download, while the Enterprise Edition is priced at US$25k/CPU. ISVs and Developers will be able to get Enterprise Edition via MSDN Universal. Technet has a good article to describe the basic concepts and the architecture of MMS. This link points to MMS 2.2 material, while another link points to MMS 2003. MS also hosts a short MMS 2003 FAQ. An alternative to MMS is SimpleSync (from CPS-Systems). Curiously, the various web sites related to MMS prominently feature the MMS Product Manager (Jackson Shaw) and his email address jacksons@microsoft.com. This is a welcome change to the usual anonymity of some Microsoft managers!
WMI features heavily in Windows Server 2003 - there area a number of new and updated WMI providers. In addition, a group policy can now be filtered using WMI queries (which allows, for example, a policy to just apply to machines running SQL Server). WMI Scripting is just a way of accessing the providers and their underlying functions. - this is clearly an area that MCTs need more skills with, as WMI is an important feature of Windows 2003 Server.
MSDN also has a 3-part tutorial on WMI Scripting. Part 1 gives some background to WMI and it's architecture as well as an overview to WMI scripting. Part 2 looks in more detail at the Common Information Model (CIM) repository and CIM classes which can help you to unleash the full power of WMI scripting. Part 3 defines the WMI scripting library and looks at how you can manage resources with WMI.
A cool tool relating to WMI scripting is Script-o-Matic. This makes a really cool demo!
WSH 5.6 is included in Windows Server 2003. You can find more details in this article. Note this article discusses Beta 1 of WSH 5.6, so it's not totally up to date, although this will give you a good idea of the new features in WSH 5.6. And for more details on scripting see the Winguides scripting guide.
Andreas Luther and Arren Conner look at the detail behind upgrading Windows 2000 Domains to Windows Server 2003. The transcript has not been posted yet but the slides are. Worth looking at to understand both the upgrade issues, but more about how Windows Server 2003 works. Some related scripts are at the scripting downloads page.
The Internet Information System (IIIS) has been totally redesigned in Windows 2003. For basic information about IIS, see the TechNet article. Technet also has a nice article on the new request processing architecture.
This page was developed by Thomas Lee - it's his fault if there are mistakes here! I'll gladly give credit to anyone adding stuff here! Thanks to Dave Sayers (Microsoft) for providing some of the links above! And a great thank you to 'The Scripting Guys' - these guys make scripting rock! And thanks to Charles Marshall for finding typos in this page!
NB: This page will probably change continuously as new stuff is found!
Last Updated:
30-11-03 08:48 PM -0000
Copyright (C) PS Partnership 2003