Windows 2000 (also referred to as Win2K) is a preemptive, interruptible, graphical and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. It is part of the Microsoft Windows NT line of operating systems and was released on February 17, 2000.
Four editions of Windows 2000 have been released: Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter Server.
Windows 2000 Professional was designed as the desktop operating system for businesses and power users. It is the basic unit of Windows 2000, and the most common. It offers greater security and stability than many of the previous Windows desktop operating systems. It supports up to two processors, and can address up to 4 GB of RAM.
Windows 2000 Server products share the same user interface with Windows 2000 Professional, but contain additional components for running infrastructure and application software. Furthermore, Windows 2000 introduced a DNS server which allows dynamic registration of IP addresses.
Windows 2000 Advanced Server is a variant of Windows 2000 Server operating system designed for medium-to-large businesses. It offers clustering infrastructure for high availability and scalability of applications and services, including main memory support of up to 8 gigabytes (GB) on Physical Address Extension (PAE) systems and the ability to do 8-way SMP. It has support for TCP/IP load balancing and enhanced two-node server clusters based on the Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) in the Windows NT Server 4.0 Enterprise Edition.
Windows 2000 Datacenter Server is a variant of the Windows 2000 Server that is designed for large businesses that move large quantities of confidential or sensitive data frequently via a central server. As with Advanced Server, it supports clustering, failover and load balancing.
System Requirements
Windows 2000 Professional:- 133 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible CPU
- 32 megabytes (MB) of RAM minimum (64MB recommended)
- 700 megabytes hard disk space (2GB recommended)
Windows 2000 Server:
- 133 MHz CPU
- 256 MB of RAM minimum
- 2 GB hard disk space
Windows 2000 Advanced Server:
- 133 MHz CPU
- 256 MB of RAM recommended minimum
- 2 GB hard disk space
All editions of Windows 2000 Server have the following services and functionality
- Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) support, facilitating dial-up and VPN connections, support for RADIUS authentication, network connection sharing, Network Address Translation, unicast and multicast routing schemes.
- DNS server, including support for Dynamic DNS. Active Directory relies heavily on DNS.
- IP Sec support and TCP/IP filtering
- Smart card support
- Microsoft Connection Manager Administration Kit (CMAK) and Connection Point Services
- Support for distributed file systems (DFS)
- Hierarchical Storage Management support including remote storage functionality, a service that runs in conjunction with NTFS that automatically transfers files that are not used for some period of time to less expensive storage media
- Fault tolerant volumes, namely it supports Mirrored and RAID-5
- Group policy (part of Active Directory)
- IntelliMirror, a collection of technologies for fine-grained management of Windows 2000 Professional desktops (Roaming profiles, MSMQ 2.0, Offline files (also known as Client Side Caching or CSC) , TAPI 3.0, COM+ and MTS application host, software installation, settings management).
- Integrated Windows Authentication (including Kerberos and SPNEGO authentication).
- MS-CHAP v2 protocol
- Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and Enterprise Certificate Authority support
- Terminal Services and support for the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)
- Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0
The Server editions include more features and components, including the Microsoft Distributed File System (DFS) , Active Directory support and fault tolerant storage.
Windows 2000 has now been superseded by newer Microsoft operating systems. Microsoft replaced Windows 2000 Server products with Windows Server 2003, and Windows 2000 Professional with Windows XP Professional. The Windows 2000 family of operating systems moved from mainstream support to the extended support phase on June 30, 2005
