Specialized Windows Server Editions

As with Windows client, Microsoft has created a number of specialized editions of Windows Server to exploit new market niches, particularly niches where the standard Windows Server product’s price or footprint would impede its competitiveness. Licenses for these products are sold exclusively to PC and device manufacturers through specialized channels. However, software updates for some of these products are available through the company’s regular channels to enable organizations and individuals to update systems already in the field. Updates for some of these editions ship on their own timetable, separate from updates for the core Windows OS.

Major specialized Windows Server editions include the following:

Windows Storage Server. This is an edition of Windows Server 2003 specialized for network-attached storage (NAS) devices, which are scalable, high-availability file servers with additional features to simplify backup, reorganization of disk space, and other management tasks. NAS devices running Windows Storage Server (called Windows Powered NAS devices) have proven attractive, particularly at the low end of the market, because of relatively low hardware costs and high compatibility with Windows services such as Active Directory. The latest version, Windows Storage Server 2003, is based on Windows Server 2003 and inherits a number of new features from that product, such as the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), which lets customers quickly make shadow copies of disk volumes being used by applications while only briefly pausing the applications. The latest version also supports the iSCSI protocol, which enables servers and NAS devices to communicate with disk arrays and other storage devices over standard Internet protocols and high-speed Ethernet, rather than over expensive specialized storage network technologies such as Fibre Channel.