Overview of Windows Server 2003 – Web Edition

by Daniel Petri - January 8, 2009
Printer Friendly Version

Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Web Edition is a part of the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 family. It is an easy-to-deploy, easy-to-manage server operating system that is optimized to be a complete Web hosting package.

FREE Network Management Software for IT Pros & Sys Admins

Spiceworks provides 100% Free Network Management Software to IT Pros to monitor everything on their network including MS Exchange Server health, network bandwidth, and Windows performance.

There are no tricks or fine print with Spiceworks – their network management software is completely free including support and upgrades and features a wide range of useful IT management functionality.

Download Now - IT's Free, Forever!

Windows Server 2003, Web Edition includes the following features:

Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0, which provides a robust architecture for building and publishing secure Web applications. IIS is a software services that support Web site creation, configuration, and management, along with other Internet functions. Internet Information Services include Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).
Revolutionary Microsoft ASP.NET, for deploying Web services and applications rapidly
Remotely administered management, with an easy-to-use, task-driven, internationalized Web user interface (UI). This means that it's possible to manage one computer by an administrator working at another computer that is connected to the first computer across a network.
Remote Desktop for Administration, which provides remote access to the desktop of any computer running a product in the Windows Server 2003 family.
Web Interface for Remote Administration, for configuring and managing a server from a remote client, including creating and deleting Web sites, configuring network settings, setting disk quotas, managing local user accounts, and restarting the Web server.
Flexibility to use Microsoft Management Console (MMC) and scripting, using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) for detailed control and management. MMC is a framework for hosting administrative tools called snap-ins. A console might contain tools, folders or other containers, World Wide Web pages, and other administrative items. These items are displayed in the left pane of the console, called a console tree. A console has one or more windows that can provide views of the console tree. The main MMC window provides commands and tools for authoring consoles. The authoring features of MMC and the console tree itself might be hidden when a console is in User Mode. WMI is a management infrastructure in Windows that supports monitoring and controlling system resources through a common set of interfaces and provides a logically organized, consistent model of Windows operation, configuration, and status.
Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV), so that users can easily publish, manage, and share information over the Web. WebDAV is an application protocol related to Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 1.1 that allows clients to transparently publish and manage resources on the World Wide Web.
Additional wizards to make it easier for administrators to set up and manage secure authentication and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security.
Improved CPU throttling, which helps organizations to allocate CPU resources on a per-site basis
Scalability through Network Load Balancing. Network Load Balancing is a Windows network component that uses a distributed algorithm to load-balance Internet Protocol (IP) traffic across a number of hosts, helping to enhance the scalability and availability of mission-critical, IP-based services, such as Terminal Services, Web services, virtual private networking, and streaming media. It also provides high availability by detecting host failures and automatically redistributing traffic to the surviving hosts.
Reliability and security improvements for the entire Windows Server 2003 family.

Because Windows Server 2003, Web Edition is optimized for Web serving and hosting, the following features are not included:

Also see » A Case Study of 3M

Server clusters
Terminal Server (Note that Remote Desktop for Administration is available).
File Server for Macintosh and Print Server for Macintosh.
Infrared (IR) support.
Printer and fax sharing.
Internet Authentication Service (IAS)
Remote Storage
Remote Installation Services (RIS)
Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) services.
Windows Media Services

A server running Windows Server 2003, Web Edition cannot be established as a domain controller, and it cannot be configured as a host for other server applications, such as Certificate Services, Microsoft Exchange Server, or Microsoft SQL Server.

Virtual private network (VPN) connections are limited to one per media type: local area network (LAN), remote access (dial-up), and direct cable connection. Server Message Block (SMB) connections are limited to 10 simultaneous connections.

Notes: The feature limitations in this topic apply only to computers running the Windows Server 2003, Web Edition operating system. If you enable Web services, such as IIS, on a computer running Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition or Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, the feature limitations in this topic do not apply.