Short
description:
Microsoft
is experienced corporation – we know that customer wants to get the highest
results possible and work to provide capabilities for successful goals
achieving. The functional rating requirement is increasing with the surprising
speed. So it’s really important for a
server to be powerful, flexible and reliable –so is Windows Server 2003, it can
easily keep on changing depending on IT needs it meets over time and it’s not
even necessary to take the system offline to increase the capacity. So Windows
Server 2003 really helps you to save your money within your organization.
Features:
Reliability
is above all.
Microsoft
created the most reliable system it could and it is Windows Server 2003 R2
Enterprise Edition. It has achieved
99.99 percent uptime and it is such an insignificant time per year – just less
than one hour downtime- and this all just Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2
Enterprise Edition. So you can be sure
that your customers are able to access your enterprise’s servers always! There are some features that improve its
reliability:
Server
groups
Just in
Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition you can add extra levels of
availability to critical services! It is more reliable when you work with
several servers than with a single one.
If some error happens to one server and all the information is erased,
it just restores in other server in the cluster. The aim of the Windows Server 2003 creators
was to prevent the fails thus making it more reliable. While the failure of one server brings a
complete shutdown of your information and data, the other servers will get it
and save it so you can fix all the errors.
Although it
is necessary to remember that making structure changes, allowing other servers
to pick up the loads for failed servers might cause another downtime. Often
downtimes which were planned are the reason of the unplanned downtimes
especially with the high excess and flexibility systems. This challenge is lead by server clusters
which allow the data to be brought from servers but at the same time still be
working. Servers which are in the group
are able to be improved and reloaded while other clusters will work, so it will
make the shutdown less prolonged. Server
grouping became much better since the last versions and now it allows the
creating of more multiple clusters and more kinds of them and also clusters
which are geographically dispersed.
Enlargement
of the clusters.
Microsoft
Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition allows holding the maximum of the 8
nodes in a cluster (and before it were just 2 of them). So now it has more
capabilities of deploying applications on a server cluster. Those applications
which support several instances are able to run more instances across more
nodes and numerous applications can be used on the same server cluster holding
more capability and management of the way applications are arranged when a node
fails or is turned off for maintenance. With the increasing of cluster capacity
it is possible now to manage better the most important applications and you
don’t have to worry either the system goes down or not while updating or
fixing.
Majority Node Set (MNS)
Clusters
When you
form more than three nodes in the cluster you can put it on an optional quorum
resource mechanism provided by Windows Server 2003 R2 which doesn’t necessarily
need a disk on a shared bus for it. This advantage was worked out by Microsoft
for advanced implementations such as geographically dispersed clusters and low
price or appliance-like high availability determinations. If you use this extra
quorum resource, the quorum will stay independent of any other storage
solutions in multi-site clusters. Moreover, it makes the low cost solutions
impossible that use data objection and mirroring ways to make all the
information available across numerous nodes.
The realization of MNS clusters gives you many advantages:
-
Storage
Abstraction – MNS clusters set the storage system free for controlling data
objection between many sites in the most fitted manner, with no worry of shared
quorum disk and it is possible to support a single virtual cluster at the same
time.
-
No Sharing of the Disks – MNS clusters give a life for ways that need
strictly firm cluster characteristics but they do not need shared disks like
clusters where the application provides the data being firm between nodes (e.g. database log shipping and file replication for relatively static
data) or clusters that hold inconstant data but with the necessary of supplying
a firm state.
-
Improved profusion – In
last versions of the systems if it happens that shared disk is broken in any
way the entire group of clusters will shut down. Anyhow, now it is prevented –
if one node is broken the whole system will not go offline.
Geographically Disbursed
Clusters
There are multiple reasons why enterprise tries to support different geographical
areas. For instance, the business may
allow for its client the access of location or it might want to supply disaster
tolerance if some disaster happens in a particular location. By the help of
Geographically Disbursed Clusters, numerous storage orders are situated with at
least one at each site. So as it is
described before, by using server clustering nodes which are on one site are
connected with the nodes on another site in another place so if one site shuts
down suddenly the other one takes the control over that one’s data. By adding the majority node set quorum to a
disbursed cluster, it avoids the possibility of a logical single point of
failure for clusters which are ranged on numerous sites.
Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and
Shadow Copy Restore
Volume Shadow Copy
Service (VSS) it is a common tool for making a momentarily copies of
information on a capacity. Usually they are called “snapshots”. The purpose of VSS consists of giving the
effective, strong, and helpful instrument for protecting an significant
information on which applications are based without extra time from restarting
the system.
Support of multi-processors
-
You
are able to have up to 8
CPU
-
733MHz
or higher
Memory
- Min: 128 MB
- Max: 64 GB for x86 computers, 1TB for x64
computers
Free Disk Space
-
1.5
GB for x86-based, 2.0 GB for x64-based
-
4
GB (for over a network installation.)
Peripheral Devices
- DVD or CD-ROM
- VGA or higher-resolution
