About a year and a half ago, I was visiting the Microsoft
campus in
What is R2 not?
The first thing that I want to say about R2 is that R2 is not a service pack. I have seen a few Web sites referring to R2 as Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2. This is not the case though. R2 is not a service pack, but rather a re-release of the Windows Server 2003 operating system. Although Microsoft has never done anything like this before, Microsoft's long term road map for Windows Server operating systems has them alternating between major releases (such as the original Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista Server) and minor releases such as R2. If Microsoft sticks with this roadmap, then in about two and a half years, we should be seeing an R2 release of Windows Vista Server.
Ok, so what is R2?
On the surface, R2 is a roll up of the original Windows Server 2003 code, Service Pack 1, and the various feature packs that have been released for Windows Server 2003. In fact, according to Microsoft, when Service Pack 2 is eventually released for Windows Server 2003, the service pack will be valid for both the original release of Windows Server 2003 and for R2.
If R2 is basically a rollup of Service Pack 1 and some feature packs, you might be wondering why anyone would bother upgrading to R2? Well, there are actually quite a few new features that we will see for the first time in R2. A lot of these features will eventually make their way into Windows Vista as well. According to Microsoft, if you believe that your organization would benefit from some of these new features, then you should upgrade to R2. If the new features don't really do anything to help your organization, then you are just as well off with Windows Server 2003. R2 is nothing more than a supplemented version of Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 after all.
New Features in R2
R2 contains dozens of features, some major and some minor. For the purposes of this article, I am going to talk primarily about the major features and ignore most of the minor improvements. An example of a minor feature is a revised Microsoft Management Console that eliminates the need to right click.
Active Directory Federation Service
Probably the one component of R2 that has received the most press is the Active Directory Federation Service. Quite frankly, Active Directory Federation Service is a huge topic, and there is no way that I can possibly do it justice within this article. What I can tell you though is that Active Directory Federation Service extends the Active Directory to the Web.
We have all seen Web applications that are linked to a backend SQL database or to some other secure backend resource. In the past, if you wanted to make these types of resources available through a Web application in a secure manner, you had to either create Active Directory accounts for everyone who was going to be using the application, or you had to build some kind of proprietary authentication mechanism into the application.
Either way, you had to manage accounts for everyone who was going to use the resource. This is fine if the people who need access work for your company. However, if you have suppliers or partner organizations that need to provide access to a large number of their own employees, then management can quickly become a nightmare. You will likely find yourself creating and managing accounts for people who don't even work for your company.
This is where the Active Directory Federation Service comes in. The Active Directory Federation Service allows you to extend an external trust to a Web application. This means that if you have a supplier who needs access to your Web application, you can create a simple trust relationship with your supplier and then shift the burden of managing the external accounts to your supplier.
Improved interoperability with UNIX and Linux
If you have UNIX or Linux machines in your organization, then you will probably really benefit from improvements in the way that Windows is able to interact with UNIX and Linux networks. Specifically, there are three new Services for UNIX components.
The first of these new components is called Subsystem for Unix Based Applications, or SUA for short. This sounds like a mouthful, but SUA is an extremely handy component. It allows you to compile UNIX / Linux applications natively on a Windows Server without the need for an emulator!
Another long overdue component is the Microsoft Services for Network File System (MSNFS). MSNFS allows UNIX / Linux clients to use NFS to connect to shares on a Windows Server. Granted, UNIX / Linux users can already do this through SAMBA, but the nice thing about MSNFS is that it is native to Windows and it eliminates the need for SAMBA.
The third component is Identity Management for UNIX (IDMU). IDMU allows an R2 based domain controller to spoof a UNIX Network Information Service (NIS) server. This allows a Windows domain controller to authenticate UNIX / LINUX clients.
Quota management
When Microsoft released Windows 2000 Server, they introduced quotas for the first time. Unfortunately, quotas could only be applied at the volume level though and Windows 2000 relied solely on file ownership for quota calculation. Needless to say, quotas had a lot of shortcomings in Windows 2000 Server, but it was a step in the right direction. The problem is that when Microsoft released Windows Server 2003, they really didn't do much to improve upon the existing quota functionality.
All that has changed in R2. In R2, the quota management system gets a major overhaul. In R2, quotas can be applied at the folder level, not just at the volume level. Furthermore, you can do things like apply a quota across a set of folders. You can even structure the quota so that Windows does not allow a folder to grow beyond a certain size, regardless of who owns the files within the folder.
Another new feature is the AutoQuota function. AutoQuota is primarily intended for the user's home folders. The idea is that you can set an automatic quota at the top level folder, and the quota will then apply to each individual user's folder. You can even set threshold values at which the size of a user's folder will trigger a nasty E-mail warning message or an administrative alert.
Although not technically quota related, Microsoft provides us with yet another way to keep hard disks from filling up in R2. You can now restrict folder content by file type. For example, imagine that in the past you have had problems with users storing their collection of MP3 files on your servers. In R2, you can actually configure Windows so that MP3 files are forbidden in certain folders. The only problem is that the technology is based solely on file extension, and it won't stop a savvy user from renaming the file extension. However, if a user goes through the trouble of renaming a file extension, then the user has taken premeditated steps to circumvent a corporate policy, and you have a good chance of being able to take action against that user if that's the course of action that you want to take.
As if all of these improvements in quota management (and file system management in general) aren't enough, R2 features a really nice collection of reports. You can generate reports showing file sizes, file owners, most frequently used files, least frequently used files, duplicate files, and just about anything else that you can imagine.
SAN and NAS
SAN and NAS technologies weren't nearly as common when Windows Server 2003 was initially released as they are today. In an effort to prevent Windows Server from becoming dated, Microsoft has built some additional SAN and NAS capabilities into R2.
Assuming that your vendor supports it (most should eventually), you will be able to add R2 to any NAS Server that's running Windows Storage Server 2003. By doing so, you can extend R2's quota management features to your NAS devices.
Microsoft has also implemented SAN management into R2. Assuming that your SAN solution supports the Windows Virtual Disk Service, you will be able to use a built in snap-in for Microsoft Management Console to manage a SAN. You will be able to use this snap-in to get a full view of your storage system. Additionally, you can assign and unassign, create, and extend logical unit numbers as needed.
Distributed File System
Windows has supported Distributed File Systems for many years now. The original idea behind a distributed file system was that you could group multiple network shares beneath a single share point so that you can make it easier for users to locate network resources. DFS also supports data replication, and is useful for implementing fault tolerance and load balancing.
In my opinion, DFS is one of the best features in Windows Server 2003. I personally use DFS religiously. As great as the existing DFS service is, Microsoft has made it even better in R2.
The first thing that Microsoft did to improve DFS is to completely revise the Distributed File System management console. The old console worked flawlessly, but it could be a little confusing for newbies, and it didn't scale very well to enterprise class DFS trees. The new Distributed File System management console is designed to be easier to use and more scalable.
The new console is nice, but it's minor in the scope of other improvements that have been made to DFS. One of the best improvements has to do with efficiency. As I mentioned before, a DFS tree can contain links to shares on many different servers. Furthermore, when you create a DFS replica, you can have replicas of your data spread across even more servers.
The way that DFS currently works is that when a user accesses a DFS virtual root, they are taken to a pre-assigned replica in a round robin fashion. In R2 this changes though. Now, when a user accesses a DFS virtual root, Windows looks at the user's Active Directory site, and routes the user to a DFS replica that is in the user's current site if possible. The previous version of DFS did not take site information into account.
There have also been huge improvements in the way that DFS replication works. Previously, DFS relied on the NT File Replication Service (NTFRS). Unfortunately, NTFRS wasn't really practical in large organizations though. It tends to have trouble keeping pace when large files or large numbers of files are replicated. If replication falls too far behind, NTFRS has been known to fail catastrophically, forcing replicas to be completely rebuilt.
In R2, the DFS file replication engine has been completely redesigned. It now handles large files and large numbers of files with no problems. Although I have not been able to confirm it with Microsoft, I have heard that the new file replication engine is designed so that when a file is modified, only the bytes that have been modified are replicated rather than DFS having to replicate the entire file. This goes a long way toward improving DFS's efficiency.
Acquiring R2
Currently, R2 is still in the Release Candidate stages of testing. Once R2 is released however, anyone who buys a copy of Windows Server 2003 will automatically get R2. If you are a Microsoft Premier or a Software Assurance Customer, then you should automatically receive R2.
For those who purchased Windows Server 2003 through standard retail sources or through a volume license agreement, there is going to be an upgrade charge for R2. At the present time I do not have pricing information though. What I can tell you is that you won't have to buy any additional client access licenses nor will you have to upgrade your existing client access licenses when you upgrade to R2.
