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Special Considerations for Server Applications

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

The following sections provide information about server application compatibility.

Active Directory Considerations

Several changes in the implementation of Active Directory between Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 might affect your applications.

Anonymous LDAP operations

In earlier versions of Windows, Active Directory accepted anonymous client requests. With Windows Server 2003, only authenticated users can initiate a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) request against Windows Server 2003–based domain controllers. For more information about anonymous LDAP requests, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base link on the Web Resources page at https://www.microsoft.com/windows/reskits/webresources, and search for article number 326690 "Anonymous LDAP Operations to Active Directory Are Disabled on Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers."

Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 schema conflicts

The Microsoft® Exchange Server 2000 schema defines several attributes differently from those defined in RFC 2798, "Definition of the inetOrgPerson LDAP Object Class." The attributes — Secretary, labeledURI, and houseIdentifier — also are defined by the base schema. This deviation can cause problems when you upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows Server 2003. During the upgrade to Windows Server 2003, the ldapDisplayNames values for these attributes are renamed to permit the upgrade to succeed, causing duplicate names. This renaming does not cause problems with the functioning of Active Directory or the operating system, because the names are not used in this context. However, you might have an application that needs to access these values, which will be inaccessible.

This situation is not a problem if:

  • You add the Windows 2000 InetOrgPerson Kit to a Windows 2000 forest before you run the Windows Server 2003 adprep command.

  • You run the Windows Server 2003 adprep command in a Windows 2000 forest before you install Exchange Server 2000.

  • You add Exchange Server 2000 to an existing Windows Server 2003 forest.

However, you may encounter problems if:

  • You add the Exchange Server 2000 schema to a Windows 2000 forest before you add the InetOrgPerson class from the InetOrgPerson Kit.

  • You add the Exchange Server 2000 version of the InetOrgPerson class to a Windows 2000 forest before you run the Windows Server 2003 adprep /forestprep command.

  • A Windows 2000 domain controller that contains the Exchange Server 2000 definition of InetOrgPerson does not receive updates to Active Directory after you run InetOrgPerson-Fix.ldf from the Windows 2000 InetOrgPerson Kit.

For more information, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base link on the Web Resources page at https://www.microsoft.com/windows/reskits/webresources and search for article number 314649 "Windows Server 2003 ADPREP Command Causes Mangled Attributes in Windows 2000 Forests That Contain Exchange 2000 Servers," and 328661 "XADM: Running Exchange 2000 Setup with /Forestprep Switch Produces Error 0XC1037AE6."

Message Queuing

Several features of previous versions of Microsoft® Message Queuing (MSMQ) have been removed from MSMQ version 3.0, which ships with Windows Server 2003. In addition, one feature has been changed. Consequently, you might need to modify applications that rely on features that are no longer relevant or useful, or that have been superseded by other features.

Feature changes include:

  • The MSMQ Exchange connector is no longer supported in Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003. It continues to be available for Windows NT Server 4.0 and Windows 2000.

  • The Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX) protocol is not supported in MSMQ 3.0.

  • The MSMQ 3.0-dependent client supports only the MSMQ version 2.0 level of functionality. This means that new MSMQ 3.0 features, such as distribution lists, are not available to MSMQ 3.0-dependent clients. The alternative is to deploy DCOM-based solutions instead.

If your applications use any of these features, verify that they work with MSMQ 3.0.

For more information about applications and MSMQ, see the "Programming Best Practices with Microsoft Message Queuing Services (MSMQ)" white paper, available through the Message Queuing link on the Web Resources page at https://www.microsoft.com/windows/reskits/webresources.

Internet Information Services

Windows Server 2003 includes Internet Information Services (IIS) version 6.0. Changes made in IIS 6.0 might affect your Web applications unless you address the following configuration issues during the installation of Windows Server 2003:

  • IIS is not installed by default during a clean installation, except on the Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003, Web Edition, operating system. If you plan to run Web-based applications on other editions of the Windows Server 2003 operating system (Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003, Standard Edition; Windows® Server 2003 Enterprise Edition; or Windows® Server 2003, Datacenter Edition), you must install IIS.

  • Active Server Pages (ASP), ASP .NET, Server Extensions (installed and enabled) for the Microsoft® FrontPage® Server Extensions (installed and enabled), Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV), and all other Internet Server API (ISAPI) extensions and Common Gateway Interface (CGI) applications by default are not enabled when you enable the Application Server Role in Add/Remove Windows Components. You can install these by using Add/Remove Windows Components, and then enable them in the Web Service Extensions node in IIS Manager.

  • If you perform a clean installation of IIS 6.0, IIS 6.0 runs in worker process isolation mode by default. To take advantage of the new security, availability, and scalability features in IIS 6.0, IIS 6.0 must be running in worker process isolation mode. However, for compatibility purposes, you can change the application isolation mode to IIS 5.0 isolation mode if the application must run in the Inetinfo.exe process or Dllhost.exe process, or when the application uses ISAPI filters that perform raw data reads.

For more information about IIS and compatibility problems for Web applications, see "Migrating IIS Web Sites to IIS 6.0" in Deploying Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 of this kit (or see "Migrating IIS Web Sites to IIS 6.0" on the Web at https://www.microsoft.com/reskit).

Terminal Server

Because Terminal Server is available for multisession or multiuser use, and because display and keystroke information travels over the network, applications that have certain characteristics might perform poorly with Terminal Server. When planning to host applications with Terminal Server in your organization, establish a set of acceptable performance guidelines and determine through testing whether such applications run better on the user’s local computer or over your intranet. For more information about application compatibility with Windows Server 2003 Terminal Server, see "Hosting Applications with Terminal Server" in Planning Server Deployments of this kit.

For more information about server application compatibility, see the Server Roles: The Application Server link on the Web Resources page at https://www.microsoft.com/windows/reskits/webresources.