Imagine a huge enterprise that you have to manage, an enterprise where definition-wise there are proper sub-levels and roles defined for each employee, but view- and functionality-wise, all are same, all appear same.
An enterprise where you know you have a rights to control a certain n number of people and resources, but the design of the organisation does not permit that, it only allows the supreme lord, the master administrator to do everything.. Imagine the job for that administrator, having the sole responsibility of managing everybody.. What an inflexible architecture? But all this was the reality in the Windows server world before the advent of Microsoft Windows 2000.
Microsoft Windows 2000 ships in various flavours -
Microsoft Windows 2000 professional - A revamped version of Windows NT workstation. This would act as the desktop version of Windows which a normal user would use everyday for his e-mails, Word documents, browsing etc. Developers would also ideally use the professional version to do their coding stuff. The professional edition is the entry level version of Windows 2000. The most preferred feature addition would be the PnP (Plug n Play) capability, wherein users can just plug in their USB devices, which would be detected by the Windows system, thus doing away with the otherwise tedious jobs of ’’Add New Hardware’’.
The server family - The Windows 2000 server family consists of
Windows 2000 server - The entry level server version. This version can support upto 4 microprocessors to boost the server performance, thus powering the Internet servers, the e-mail servers, the database servers, the directory server etc. Faster response times are the norm today, thus better performance is desired. So, higher end servers are desired. This comes in the form of Windows 2000 Advanced Server, which supports clustering (viz. load balanced servers, wherein multiple machines share the load of incoming requests), and upto 8 microprocessors. The big mama of the server family is the Windows 2000 Datacenter server, which builds upon the above mentioned features and provides support for upto 32 microprocessors!!
Along with these enhanced architecture to take advantage of underlying hardware features, there have been dynamic improvements on the Windows design end as well. As I had previously given example of an unmanageable enterprise, it was because all the people and resources were at the same view and functional level. This was the design of Microsoft Windows NT. Thus, we could not define granule level roles for users in an enterprise by taking into consideration geographical boundaries, department wise team memberships etc.
Ex. If an enterprise is spread across many countries, it is difficult for a guy in country X to manage the every day activities of the team in country Y. Time lag differences, unscalable architecture etc would make this an inflexible architecture. Also, within the same branch, it would be difficult for just one man to manage an employee size of about 3000. What is required is breaking up of the man-power, and delegate responsibilities to some (N) number of people, who will report to you, while the remaining employees would be further divided to report to each of the (N) people. This makes for a manageable enterprise. This bring about a tree-based architecture, a levelled architecture. This is exactly how Windows 2000 has modelled itself.
Active Directory based domain architecture was introduced, which allows one to view the enterprise in a tree-based manner, and split the manpower into branches based on geographical and functional boundaries. This makes for faster responses, easier management and a very flexible enterprise design. Active Directory is based on the LDAP protocol, the same thing that is the goo behind those fast Google searches. Thus, Windows 2000 also allows us to find resources very quickly, as against the old design of Windows NT.
Increased security was also addressed in this release. The famed Kerberos protocol, found in the Unix environments, was introduced in Windows with this release. The advantage of this is that the passwords are never sent in their normal form over the network, they are always encrypted, so it is really difficult for someone hacking into the network to catch hold of your password.
Coming in 2004, this review would seem to be a little late to address the growing interest in the Microsoft range of server families, what with Microsoft Windows 2003 making its appearance last year (which built upon the features I just mentioned), and with the next version of Windows, codenamed Longhorn, in the pipeline. Longhorn, interestingly, promises to be a dynamic change from the traditional Windows architecture, right from the ways your files are stored to the look and feel of the Graphical User Interface.
In today’s world, where speed, security and easiness are the key money making buzzwords, Microsoft Windows 2000 does succeed in a large way to make the user experience on all those fronts a lot better. Of course, that does not make Microsoft the most well respected enterprise software maker in the world. We all know how they function.. But, in today’s cut throat competition age, power is the name of the game, simplicity is striven for, and style speaks.. And Windows 2000 combines a decent mix of all three.