Customers running certain, legacy versions of Microsoft’s popular e-mail and messaging server Exchange will be unable to install their software on Windows Server 2003.
To continue using the popular Exchange Server 5.5 in a Windows Server 2003 environment, customers must install Exchange on the aging Windows NT or Windows 2000 operating systems.
Those customers running the later Exchange Server 2000 must install the software on Windows 2000 with Service Pack (SP) 3 installed, before their copies of Exchange can co-exist in a Windows Server 2003 environment Microsoft said.
The stumbling block appears with Windows Server 2003’s use of updated versions of Microsoft’s directory server, Active Directory, and Internet Information Service (IIS) for internet-based protocol services.
Exchange 5.5 pre-dates Active Directory while Microsoft has re-engineered IIS 6.0 in Windows Server 2003. IIS 6.0 isolates applications in their own memory space and disables the Internet Server Applications Programming Interfaces (ISAPI) in an attempt to lock-out viruses.
A Microsoft white paper claims that with approximately 350 code changes in Windows Server 2003 that affected Exchange, Microsoft determined it would better benefit our customers to focus development efforts on Exchange 2003 [codenamed Titanium] rather than updating either versions of Exchange.
Windows Server 2003 was launched in a world-wide event last Thursday, with company chief executive officer Steve Ballmer promising that the operating system lets customers do more with less in a financially challenging climate. That message is currently being backed up with a TV, web and print advertising campaign.
Part of Ballmer’s contention rests on the concept of server consolidation. Ballmer believes scalability and performance improvements to the operating system, which he claims are proven via a series of TPC-C benchmarks, permit customers to realistically undertake server consolidation based on Windows Server 2003.
Exchange Server 5.5, though, remains a popular platform among many customers who resisted the jump to Exchange Server 2000. Competitor Oracle Corp is even targeting Exchange 5.5 customers with its own collaborative suite, launched last year. Server consolidation for Exchange 5.5 and 2000 customers on Windows Server 2003 will likely prove impossible owing to the technical and code differences in question. Such customers will, instead, be forced to maintain servers running increasingly outdated copies of Windows in-order to maintain legacy Exchange infrastructures.
Source: Computerwire
