Microsoft Patches Windows Server 2003
Setting the stage for what it hopes will be a "breakout year" for its server operating systems, Microsoft this week announced it will ship the first Release Candidate of its Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Windows Server 2003 by year's end as well as a SDK (software development kit) for the High Performance Computing version of Windows Server in November.
Source: PC WorldAmidst the typical collection of bug and security fixes, a new feature in SP1 is the Security Configuration Wizard, designed to help administrators define or redefine a specific role for a server, or a collection of servers that all do the same thing. "This utility can allow you to go in on a policy basis and turn off protocols, services, and features at a much more granular level than you can today. The cool thing about the wizard is once you have configured a very specific role for a server, you can take that XML-based configuration and use policy or another distribution method to do it to hundreds of servers that fit that same role," says Samm DiStasio, a manager of Microsoft's Windows Server products. The other bug and security fixes in SP1 address many of the same problems that were addressed in the mammoth Windows XP Service Pack 2, although some of the security fixes in SP1 are tailored to address "server-specific functions," DiStasio says. In the preliminary testing Microsoft has done on SP1, DiStasio and other company officials say there have been marked performance gains including a 50 percent performance improvement in SSL workloads and a 17 percent gain in running 32-bit data base applications.
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