Unlike Windows Vista, which introduced a large number of new features, Windows 7 was intended to be a more focused, incremental upgrade to the Windows line, with the goal of being compatible with applications and hardware with which Windows Vista was already compatible.[8] Presentations given by Microsoft in 2008 focused on multi-touch support, a redesigned Windows shell with a new taskbar, referred to as the Superbar, a home networking system called HomeGroup,[9] and performance improvements. Some standard applications that have been included with prior releases of Microsoft Windows, including Windows Calendar, Windows Mail, Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Photo Gallery, are not included in Windows 7;[10][11] most are instead offered separately at no charge as part of the Windows Live Essentials suite.[12]
Windows 7 includes a number of new features, such as advances in touch and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processors,[13][14][15][16] improved boot performance, DirectAccess, and kernel improvements. Windows 7 adds support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors (Heterogeneous Multi-adapter), a new version of Windows Media Center,[17] a Gadget for Windows Media Center, improved media features, the XPS Essentials Pack and Windows PowerShell being included, and a redesigned Calculator with multiline capabilities including Programmer and Statistics modes along with unit conversion for length, weight, temperature, and several others. Many new items have been added to the Control Panel, including ClearType Text Tuner, Display Color Calibration Wizard, Gadgets, Recovery, Troubleshooting, Workspaces Center, Location and Other Sensors, Credential Manager, Biometric Devices, System Icons, and Display.[18] Windows Security Center has been renamed to Windows Action Center (Windows Health Center and Windows Solution Center in earlier builds), which encompasses both security and maintenance of the computer. Readyboost on 32bit editions now supports up to 256 gigabytes of extra allocation. The default setting for User Account Control in Windows 7 has been criticized for allowing untrusted software to be launched with elevated privileges without a prompt by exploiting a trusted application.[19] Microsoft's Windows kernel engineer Mark Russinovich acknowledged the problem, but noted that malware can also compromise a system when users agree to a prompt.[20] Windows 7 also supports images in RAW image format through the addition of Windows Imaging Component-enabled image decoders, which enables raw image thumbnails, previewing and metadata display in Windows Explorer, plus full-size viewing and slideshows in Windows Photo Viewer and Windows Media Center.[21]
The taskbar has seen the biggest visual changes, where the Quick Launch toolbar has been replaced with the ability to pin applications to the taskbar. Buttons for pinned applications are integrated with the task buttons. These buttons also enable the Jump Lists feature to allow easy access to common tasks.[22] The revamped taskbar also allows the reordering of taskbar buttons. To the far right of the system clock is a small rectangular button that serves as the Show desktop icon. This button is part of the new feature in Windows 7 called Aero Peek. Hovering over this button makes all visible windows transparent for a quick look at the desktop.[23] In touch-enabled displays such as touch screens, tablet PCs, etc., this button is slightly wider to accommodate being pressed with a finger.[24] Clicking this button minimizes all windows, and clicking it a second time restores them. Additionally, there is a feature named Aero Snap, that automatically maximizes a window when it is dragged to the top of the screen.[25] Dragging windows to the left/right edges of the screen allows users to snap documents or files on either side of the screen for comparison between windows, such that the windows vertically take up half the screen. When a user moves windows that were maximized using Aero Snap, the system restores their previous state automatically. This functionality is also accomplished with keyboard shortcuts. Unlike in Windows Vista, window borders and the taskbar do not turn opaque when a window is maximized with Windows Aero applied. Instead, they remain translucent.
For developers, Windows 7 includes a new networking API with support for building SOAP-based web services in native code (as opposed to .NET-based WCF web services),[26] new features to shorten application install times, reduced UAC prompts, simplified development of installation packages,[27] and improved globalization support through a new Extended Linguistic Services API.[28] At WinHEC 2008 Microsoft announced that color depths of 30-bit and 48-bit would be supported in Windows 7 along with the wide color gamut scRGB (which for HDMI 1.3 can be converted and output as xvYCC). The video modes supported in Windows 7 are 16-bit sRGB, 24-bit sRGB, 30-bit sRGB, 30-bit with extended color gamut sRGB, and 48-bit scRGB.[29][30] Microsoft has also implemented better support for solid-state drives,[31] including the new TRIM command, and Windows 7 is able to identify a solid-state drive uniquely. Microsoft is planning to support USB 3.0 in a subsequent patch, support not being included in the initial release due to delays in the finalization of the standard.[32]
Internet Spades, Internet Backgammon and Internet Checkers, which were removed from Windows Vista, were restored in Windows 7. Windows 7 includes Internet Explorer 8 and Windows Media Player 12.
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Users are also able to disable many more Windows components than was possible in Windows Vista. New additions to this list of components include Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows Search, and the Windows Gadget Platform.[33] Windows 7 includes 13 additional sound schemes, titled Afternoon, Calligraphy, Characters, Cityscape, Delta, Festival, Garden, Heritage, Landscape, Quirky, Raga, Savanna, and Sonata.[34] A new version of Microsoft Virtual PC, newly renamed as Windows Virtual PC was made available for Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions.[35] It allows multiple Windows environments, including Windows XP Mode, to run on the same machine. Windows XP Mode runs Windows XP in a virtual machine and redirects displayed applications running in Windows XP to the Windows 7 desktop.[36] Furthermore, Windows 7 supports the mounting of a virtual hard disk (VHD) as a normal data storage, and the bootloader delivered with Windows 7 can boot the Windows system from a VHD; however, this ability is only available in the Enterprise and Ultimate editions.[37] The Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) of Windows 7 is also enhanced to support real-time multimedia application including video playback and 3D games, thus allowing use of DirectX 10 in remote desktop environments.[38] The three application limit, previously present in the Windows Vista Starter Edition, has been removed from Windows 7.[39]
New and updated features
See also: Features new to Windows XP
- Internet Information Services (IIS) v6.0 - A significantly improved[clarification needed] version of IIS.
- Increased default security over previous versions, due to the built-in firewall and having most services disabled by default.[citation needed]
- Significant improvements[clarification needed] to Message Queuing.
- Manage Your Server - a role management administrative tool that allows an administrator to choose what functionality the server should provide.
- Improvements to Active Directory, such as the ability to deactivate classes from the schema, or to run multiple instances of the directory server (ADAM)
- Improvements to Group Policy handling and administration[clarification needed]
- Provides a backup system to restore lost files[which?]
- Improved disk management, including the ability to back up from shadows of files, allowing the backup of open files.
- Improved scripting and command line tools[clarification needed], which are part of Microsoft's initiative to bring a complete command shell to the next version of Windows.[citation needed]
- Support for a hardware-based "watchdog timer", which can restart the server if the operating system does not respond within a certain amount of time.[3]
Main article: Windows Small Business Server
SBS includes Windows Server and additional technologies aimed at providing a small business with a complete technology solution. The technologies are integrated to enable small business with targeted solutions such as the Remote Web Workplace, and offer management benefits such as integrated setup, enhanced monitoring, a unified management console, and remote access.The Standard Edition of SBS includes Windows SharePoint Services for collaboration, Microsoft Exchange server for e-mail, Fax Server, and Active Directory for user management. The product also provides a basic firewall, DHCP server and NAT router using either two network cards or one network card in addition to a hardware router.
The Premium Edition of SBS includes the features of the Standard edition plus Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2004.
SBS has its own type of Client Access License (CAL) that is different and costs slightly more[citation needed] than CALs for the other editions of Windows Server 2003. However, the SBS CAL encompasses the user CALs for Windows Server, Exchange Server, SQL Server, and ISA Server, and hence is less expensive than buying all other CALs individually.
SBS server has the following design limitations, mainly affecting Active Directory:[5]
- Only one computer in a domain can be running Windows Server 2003 for Small Business Server.
- Windows Server 2003 for Small Business Server must be the root of the Active Directory forest.
- Windows Server 2003 for Small Business Server cannot trust any other domains.
- Windows Server 2003 for Small Business Server is limited to 75 users or devices depending on which type of CAL.
- Windows Server 2003 for Small Business Server is limited to a maximum of 4GB of RAM (Random Access Memory).
- A Windows Server 2003 for Small Business Server domain cannot have any child domains.
- Terminal Services only operates in remote administration mode on the server running SBS 2003, and only two simultaneous RDP sessions are allowed. (Change from SBS 2000 policy)[6]
- To remove the limits from SBS server and upgrade from Small Business Server to regular Windows Server, Exchange Server, SQL and ISA server versions there is a Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 Transition Pack.[7]
[edit] Web Edition
Windows Server 2003, Web Edition is mainly for building and hosting Web applications, Web pages, and XML web services[citation needed]. It is designed to be used primarily as an IIS 6.0 Web server [8] and provides a platform for rapidly[clarification needed] developing and deploying XML Web services[citation needed] and applications that use ASP.NET technology, a key part of the .NET Framework. Terminal Services is not included on Web Edition. However, Remote Desktop for Administration is available.. Only 10 concurrent file-sharing connections are allowed at any moment.[citation needed] It is not possible to install Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange software in this edition without installing Service Pack 1.[citation needed] Despite supporting XML Web services and ASP.NET, UDDI cannot be deployed on Windows Server 2003 Web Edition.[citation needed] The .NET Framework version 2.0 is not included with Windows Server 2003, Web Edition, but can be installed as a separate update from Windows Update.[citation needed]
[edit] Standard Edition
Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition is aimed towards small to medium sized businesses.[clarification needed] Standard Edition supports file and printer sharing, offers secure Internet connectivity[clarification needed], and allows centralized desktop application deployment.[clarification needed] The initial release of Windows Server 2003 was available solely for 32-bit processors; a 64-bit version supporting the x86-64 architecture (AMD64 and EM64T, called collectively x64 by Microsoft) was released in April 2005.[9] The 32-bit version will run on up to 4 processors and up to 4 GB RAM; the 64-bit version is capable of addressing up to 32 GB of RAM and also supports Non-Uniform Memory Access. The 32-bit version is available for verified students to download free of charge as part of Microsoft's DreamSpark program.[edit] Enterprise Edition
Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition is aimed towards medium to large businesses. It is a full-function server operating system that supports up to 8 processors and provides enterprise-class features such as eight-node clustering using Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) software and support for up to 64 GB of memory through PAE (added with the /PAE boot string). Enterprise Edition also comes in 64-bit versions for the Itanium and x64 architectures. The 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition are capable of addressing up to 1 TB of memory. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions support Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA). It also provides the ability to hot-add supported hardware. Enterprise Edition is also required to issue custom certificate templates.[edit] Datacenter Edition
Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition is designed[10] for infrastructures demanding high security and reliability. Windows Server 2003 is available for x86, Itanium, and x86-64 processors. It supports a maximum of up to 32 processors on 32-bit or 64 processors on 64-bit hardware. 32-bit architecture also limits memory addressability to 64 GB,[11] while the 64-bit versions support up to 1 TB. Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, also allows limiting processor and memory usage on a per-application basis.[citation needed]Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition also supports Non-Uniform Memory Access.[citation needed] If supported by the system, Windows, with help from the system firmware will make use of NUMA kernel awareness, which is indicated by the presence of a firmware generatel ACPI Static Resource Affinity Table (SRAT) that defines the NUMA topology of the system. Windows then uses this table to optimize memory accesses, and provide NUMA awareness to applications, thereby increasing the efficiency of thread scheduling and memory management.
Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition has better support for Storage Area Networks (SANs).[clarification needed] It features a service which uses Windows sockets to emulate TCP/IP communication over native SAN service providers[citation needed], thereby allowing a SAN to be accessed over any TCP/IP channel.[citation needed] With this, any application that can communicate over TCP/IP can use a SAN, without any modification to the application.[citation needed]
Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition also supports 8-node clustering. Clustering increases availability and fault tolerance of server installations by distributing and replicating the service among many servers. This edition supports clustering with each cluster having its own dedicated storage, or with all cluster nodes connected to a common storage area network (SAN). The SAN can be running[clarification needed] on a Windows or non-Windows operating system and may be connected to other computers as well.
[edit] Windows Compute Cluster Server
Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 (CCS), released in June 2006, is designed for high-end applications that require high performance computing clusters. It is designed to be deployed on numerous computers to be clustered together to achieve supercomputing speeds. Each Compute Cluster Server network comprises at least one controlling head node and subordinate processing nodes that carry out most of the work.[citation needed]Compute Cluster Server uses the Microsoft Messaging Passing Interface v2 (MS-MPI) to communicate between the processing nodes on the cluster network.[citation needed] It ties nodes together with a powerful inter-process communication mechanism which can be complex because of communications between hundreds or even thousands of processors working in parallel.[citation needed]
The application programming interface consists of over 160 functions.[citation needed] A job launcher enables users to execute jobs to be executed in the computing cluster. MS MPI was designed to be compatible with the reference open source MPI2 specification which is widely used in High-performance computing (HPC). With some exceptions because of security considerations, MS MPI covers the complete set of MPI2 functionality as implemented in MPICH2, except for the planned future features of dynamic process spawn and publishing.[citation needed]
[edit] Windows Storage Server
Windows Storage Server 2003, a part of the Windows Server 2003 series, is a specialized server operating system for Network Attached Storage (NAS). Launched in 2003[clarification needed] at Storage Decisions in Chicago, it is optimized for use in file and print sharing and also in Storage Area Network (SAN) scenarios. It is only available through Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Unlike other Windows Server 2003 editions that provide file and printer sharing functionality, Windows Storage Server 2003 does not require any Client access licenses.Windows Storage Server 2003 NAS equipment can be headless, which means that they are without any monitors, keyboards or mice, and are administered remotely. Such devices are plugged into any existing IP network and the storage capacity is available to all users. Windows Storage Server 2003 can use RAID arrays to provide data redundancy, fault-tolerance and high performance. Multiple such NAS servers can be clustered to appear as a single device. This allows for very high performance as well as allowing the service to remain up even if one of the servers goes down.[clarification needed][citation needed]
Windows Storage Server 2003 can also be used to create a Storage Area Network, in which the data is transferred in terms of chunks rather than files, thus providing more granularity to the data that can be transferred.[citation needed] This provides higher performance to database and transaction processing applications. Windows Storage Server 2003 also allows NAS devices to be connected to a SAN.[citation needed]
Windows Storage Server 2003 R2, as a follow-up to Windows Storage Server 2003, adds file-server performance optimization, Single Instance Storage (SIS), and index-based search. Single instance storage (SIS) scans storage volumes for duplicate files, and moves the duplicate files to the common SIS store. The file on the volume is replaced with a link to the file. This substitution reduces the amount of storage space required, by as much as 70%.[12]
Windows Storage Server R2 provides an index-based, full-text search based on the indexing engine already built into Windows server.[12] The updated search engine speeds up indexed searches on network shares. Storage Server R2 also provides filters for searching many standard file formats, such as .zip, AutoCAD, XML, MP3, and .pdf, and all Microsoft Office file formats.
Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 includes built in support for Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server, and adds a Storage Management snap-in for the Microsoft Management Console. It can be used to manage storage volumes centrally, including DFS shares, on servers running Windows Storage Server R2.
Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 can be used as an iSCSI target with standard and enterprise editions of Windows Storage Server 2003 R2, incorporating WinTarget iSCSI technology which Microsoft acquired in 2006 by from StringBean software.[13][14] This will be an add-on feature available for purchase through OEM partners as an iSCSI feature pack, or is included in some versions of WSS as configured by OEMs.
Windows Storage Server 2003 can be promoted to function as a domain controller; however, this edition is not licensed to run directory services. It can be joined to an existing domain as a member server.[15]
[edit] Features
- Distributed File System (DFS): DFS allows multiple network shares to be aggregated as a virtual file system.
- Support for SAN and iSCSI: Computers can connect to a Storage Server over the LAN, and there is no need for a separate fibre channel network. Thus a Storage Area Network can be created over the LAN itself. iSCSI uses the SCSI protocol to transfer data as a block of bytes, rather than as a file. This increases performance of the Storage network in some scenarios, such as using a database server.
- Virtual Disc Service: It allows NAS devices, RAID devices and SAN shares to be exposed and managed as if they were normal hard drives.
- JBOD systems: JBOD (Just a bunch of discs) systems, by using VDS, can manage a group of individual storage devices as a single unit. There is no need for the storage units to be of the same make and model.
- Software and Hardware RAID: Windows Storage Server 2003 has intrinsic support for hardware implementation of RAID. In case hardware support is not available, it can use software enabled RAID. In that case, all processing is done by the OS.
- Multi Path IO (MPIO): It provides an alternate connection to IO devices in case the primary path is down.
