Windows 2000 is a complex operating system and very different from Windows NT and earlier. This chapter introduces the product’s architecture and provides guidelines to begin creating your strategy to adopt and support it. | CHAPTER Introducing Windows 2000 Server Windows 2000 is a complex operating system and very different from Windows NT and earlier. This chapter introduces the product s architecture and provides guidelines to begin creating your strategy to adopt and support it. Welcome to Windows 2000 Server When Windows NT emerged in 1996 we wrote an article in a leading magazine describing the operating system in military terms. We called it the strike craft of operating systems. A strike craft is a small boat that packs a lot of punch and usually carries a few missiles on its back. But a strike craft is not a vessel you take to war with you. It does not have the ability to endure long journeys its so-called availability period is short. At the time Windows had just been awarded C2 security rating by the . government so the naval analogy seemed fitting. Over the years and several service packs later Windows NT moved up the ranks. By Service Pack 4 we compared it to a destroyer. But it was still a down-fleet vessel not the ship that would lead the fleet with the top guns. Windows 2000 changes all that. The operating system is more than just one ship it is the whole fleet aircraft carriers submarines destroyers gun-ships minesweepers and more. In fact Windows 2000 is the navy. Granted it has its shortcomings. In fact it is the first operating system ever to have shipped a service pack before its launch party. While the analogy to a warship seemed In This Chapter Windows 2000 Server Architecture Integrating Windows 2000 Server Windows ZAW and Total Cost of Ownership Windows 2000 Server Collateral Services 4 Part I Windows 2000 Server Architecture amusing to many over the years it is more applicable today than ever before. In the world of e-commerce and the Internet we are all on the battlefield. This is the world war of commerce and e-sabotage exploding onto the networks of the world. Over the past few decades only the big companies could afford the big iron .
