Installing
Windows 2000
Server
T
his chapter reviews the installation of Windows 2000
Server. It discusses a number of hardware configurations
and setup options, and reviews potential obstacles.
Installation and Configuration
Strategy
If you have read Chapter 4 and have done your homework, you
will now be ready to begin installing Windows 2000 in your lab.
You may be tempted, or you may have an urgent need, to go
directly to a working or production system, in a production
environment. Perhaps your DHCP server died, or a new DNS
server is needed urgently, and so on. Resist, or stick with what
you know. If you have an NT network and need to raise a new
service to fill an urgent need, stick with Windows NT.
On the other hand, if you are a seasoned administrator and
you know what you’re doing, you will probably have items like
a hardware checklist, remote or unattended installation, hot
standby, and so on, well taken care of. So only go directly to a
production system if you know what you are doing and the
production system is part of a conversion and rollout project.
For the most part, you should always raise servers in a lab.
Then you should burn them in (run them continually) for about
a week; hit them with work for at least another week. After that,
and if all test items check off, then ship or go live. But no two
environments are the same. Let’s look at the various installa-
tion and configuration situations and then go from there.
5
5

server meals. Microsoft has spent many millions on the installation and configura-
tion process. So, for the most part, Windows 2000 rises well for the power that it
wields. It is certainly a lot smoother and friendlier to install than any other server
operating system in existence (other than the machine you receive pre-installed
from the factory).
We have installed the operating system more times than you care to know and on
about ten different platforms with a variety of hardware from scrap piles to brand
names. We have also deliberately sabotaged our systems (like taking away drives,
drivers, memory, and certain system files) and tried a variety of recovery tech-
niques. What we have to report to you is as follows: If you experience any difficulty
installing Windows 2000 Server, you must be using very unconventional methods,
thrift store hardware, or not paying attention to details and recommended strategy.
Now sit back, close your eyes, and imagine you are in a class going through installa-
tion training. You’ll feel good thinking that you spent no more than the cost of a nice
dinner on this book, and did not have to mortgage your house for a five-day course.
Server Recipes
In evaluating the various needs in the enterprise, we classified our installation into
various recipes of server installation, which are discussed in the following sections.
Low-road or bare-bones system recipe
This option consists of using minimum hardware requirements to raise the server.
You can use a no-frills motherboard with one CPU, the minimum RAM (64MB), a sin-
gle IDE hard disk drive, a CD-ROM, a 1.4MB floppy disk drive, a standard network
card, and a mouse, keyboard, and monitor (MKM).
Note
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Chapter 5 ✦ Installing Windows 2000 Server
Microsoft now ships the Server OS and the upgrade version with a note that
128MB is recommended. However, the installation will still get the green light if
you only have 64MB.

Microsoft now uses the term application server to refer to a server running Terminal
Services, but a server can still host applications without terminal users. You may
want to install applications on servers for users who will load them into local mem-
ory at their workstations. The application is thus loaded across the network, but
the “footprint” and ensuing resource consumption is local to the user’s hardware.
Note
Tip
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You may also have applications that are server-based or server-oriented. These
may include database front-ends, communications software, processing-oriented
software, and network management applications. There may be hundreds of appli-
cations that are suited to server-side execution and that need no user interaction,
such as process control applications and data processing.
You could use the recipe for file and print servers; it will take some testing to raise
the ideal configuration for your purpose. Depending on the availability require-
ments, you might need to add RAID, hot-insert drive-bays, and so on, which are
discussed later in this chapter.
Terminal Services installation recipe
A terminal service application server is a whole new ball game. The WinFrame
licensing arrangement between Citrix Systems, Inc., and Microsoft (see Chapter 25)
was the origin of Terminal Services. Terminal server, under the Hydra project name,
first made its debut in Windows NT 4.0 in late 1997. It was then launched as a sepa-
rate NT 4.0 operating system called Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition (TSE).
Terminal server is no longer a separate product under Windows 2000 Server.
All servers come with Terminal Services built into the OS (see Chapter 1), and,
as described in Chapter 25, you either configure Terminal Services as a remote
Administration tool (which does not require licensing) or as an Application Server
service (which does require licensing). This computing model is known as thin-

cards. In short, there is no bare-bones situation when it comes to Terminal Services
and application hosting. After all, if you were deploying to standard clients, they
would likely each be above 266MHz with 32MB or more of RAM.
At 32MB each, the recipe thus calls for the following total server RAM:
✦ Operating system = 128MB
✦ Five users @ 32MB each = 160MB
✦ Total RAM needed = 288MB
You will probably have a hard time adding 32MB modules into a modern mother-
board. Your configuration would thus be two 128MB modules and one 64MB mod-
ule, or a single 320MB or larger RAM module.
We have actually succeeded with less RAM, and you could count on a 300MHz
system with 128MB RAM and a couple of fast IDE drives to service three to five
users. But you should know that this will work only if you can guarantee that the
users keep no more than two apps open (say their e-mail and one work app, like a
database front-end). This latter “easier” configuration should be your bare-bones
recipe for Terminal Services (to give users a reasonable work environment).
We talk about which applications work well on Terminal Services in Chapter 25.
Role server installation recipe
Role servers are servers running services like DHCP, WINS, DNS, and Active
Directory. Your application and needs may vary widely, depending on the service
and how many subscribers it has. A small company might get away with a light-
weight configuration, like the small file and print server recipe offered earlier. In
other cases, you may require much more firepower, especially on medium to large
intranets. For the record, we’ve been running DHCP, WINS, and DNS on Windows NT
Professional on Pentium 200s with 128MB of RAM in each, servicing several thou-
sand users over a nationwide WAN for several years. But there is a lot more replica-
tion and dynamic configuration overhead with Windows 2000, and you might have
to shell out for a Pentium II or III machine.
Cross-
Reference

Small F&P 200-300 64+ IDE
App Server 300+ 64+ IDE/SCSI
Terminal Service 300+ 300+ SCSI-RAID
Role Server 266+ 96+ SCSI-RAID
BackOffice 300+ 128+ SCSI-RAID
Standby 300+ 128+ SCSI/IDE
Large 450+ 300+ SCSI-RAID
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Hardware
Choosing hardware is not a difficult exercise at all for Windows 2000 Server. There
is really not a lot that you will put into your system. The list of hardware we will dis-
cuss is as follows:
✦ Motherboards
✦ CPU
✦ Memory
✦ Hard disk drives
✦ HDD controllers
✦ Network interface cards (NICs)
The Hardware Compatibility List (HCL)
Before you go buying parts, review the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) in the
\support
folder on the Server CD, for your own peace of mind. If your part is not
listed, check out the HCL on the Microsoft Web site at
www.microsoft.com/hcl
.
You will probably find the HCL a little amusing because Windows 2000 has already
been available to the leading manufacturers for more than a year as of this writing,
and they have a ways to go before their products will be logo-compliant. Some pop-

Motherboards come in a variety of sizes and shapes. The essential components of a
server motherboard are as follows:
✦ Mother form factor: Motherboards come in several sizes: AT (the form factor
of most server boards), ATX, BabyATX, and MicroATX. BabyATX and MicroATX
are aimed at the home and have fewer slots than you would want for a server
motherboard. Go with AT or ATX.
✦ Slots: Slots come in three standards: ISA (the older and slower slots), PCI
(which caters to faster data transfer rates), and AGP (Advanced Graphics
Port), which is more suited to graphics components (not becoming of a
server). Most motherboards include all three of the slot types. Since AGP is
for a graphics interface card, there is usually only one AGP slot. Choose a
motherboard that gives you about two ISA slots and four to five PCI slots.
✦ RAM slots: The RAM slots include SIMMs and DIMMs. SIMM slots are the older
72-pin slots, and the modules have to be mounted in pairs. DIMM memory is
much faster. DIMM modules come in 168-pin slots, and the memory can be
mounted as single modules. You can put more DIMM RAM in a server than
SIMM, which is important for future expansion.
✦ CPU Sockets: The CPU sockets include Socket 7, Slot 1, and 370/PPGA. Socket 7
is the older Pentium Pro-type socket, which is inserted like a pancake into the
motherboard sockets. Slot 1 CPUs are for the new Pentium II and III CPUs, which
are inserted into a single slot and protrude away from the motherboard. Slot
370 CPUs are cheaper than Slot 1 CPUs and are for the Intel Celeron PPGA CPUs.
One of the top motherboards in the United States is SuperMicro, which supplies
many leading brands. You can buy SuperMicro boards at
Motherboards.com
, which
sells several other leading brands, including Soyo. Soyo is gaining market share and
is becoming very popular with places like Best Buy and CompUSA. Another mother-
board maker that has become popular is Tekram (
www.tekram.com

* Addressing: Many drives or devices can be chained on a single cable. You
can currently address up to 15 SCSI devices with the Ultra SCSI standard.
✦ Support: There is more supporting technology available for SCSI that is
targeted to server solutions. These include high-end RAID controllers, hot
insert hardware, storage silos, and drive array enclosures.
In addition to SCSI, a new standard is beginning to take hold and is showing amaz-
ing promise. It is called Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop or FC-AL. FC-AL drives are
connected by coax cable. The drives are incredibly fast, and you can currently
address up to 126 of them, as opposed to 15 under SCSI. Table 5-2 lists the differ-
ences between FC-AL and SCSI.
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Table 5-2
SCSI versus FC-AL
Specification SCSI FC-AL
Cable distances 1.5-3 meters 30 meters between devices
Data rates 5MB per second 200MB per second
Addressing 15 devices 126 devices
Array support Parity Hot insert support with no special controller,
dual porting, CRC for integrity
In addition to the differences listed in Table 5-2, FC-AL is extremely tidy in compari-
son to SCSI; the devices have a single port for a coaxial connection, and no other
configuration is required. SCSI, on the other hand, requires ribbon cable, jumpers,
and terminators.
The downside of using FC-AL is that they are a little more expensive than SCSI
drives and have not been extensively tested with Windows 2000 (nor have the large
SCSI drivers, for that matter). Both standards in large capacity are worth experi-
menting with; after all, hard disk prices are dropping everyday. At the current rate,
a 96GB HDD is expected to cost about $300 by 2002.

interface card (NIC) and spend hundreds of dollars trying to get it to work, or you
can spend $75 to $100 and have it installed and bound in less than five minutes.
Stick with the brand name cards like 3Com and Madge. Most of 3Com’s products
have been tested compatible with Windows 2000. There is zero setup effort with
any of the latest 3Com NICs, and as long as you install any of 3Com’s 900 series
(such as the 3C905), you won’t have any hassle.
Plug and Play
Plug and Play (PnP) has arrived on Windows 2000 Server. This technology makes
installing devices far less painful than was the case on Windows NT, which did not
support PnP. For the most part, the operating system will be able to detect your
new components and automatically configure them for operation. You may only
have to provide addressing or name configuration. We will look at PnP and the
Device Manager in the Post Installation section later in this chapter.
Getting Ready to Install
Before installation, you should prepare a checklist detailing what you are going to
install and the items you need to have handy. The following checklists cover sev-
eral types of installation.
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Standalone Servers
Standalone servers do not connect to any domain, but rather to a workgroup. You
can create a workgroup from one standalone server or join the server to another
workgroup, Windows for Workgroups-style. You can also join a domain post installa-
tion. For a standalone server, you need the following items:
✦ Workgroup name
✦ An administrator’s password
✦ Network protocols
✦ IP address
✦ DNS IP addresses and host names