Targeted as the new high volume Windows Server product, Enterprise Edition supports 4-8 processors, 32 GB of RAM, and up to 8-node clusters. A 64-bit version with different specifications is also available (see below). Enterprise Edition is a superset of Standard Edition, adding Metadirectory Services Support (MMS) and Terminal Services Session Directory features, and support for hot-add memory and Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA).

File System and Storage
Windows Server 2003 includes various improvements to the NTFS file system and storage subsystem. David Golds, the Group Program Manager for the Core File System Team, says that his favorite new feature is Volume Shadow Copies. Essentially a network-based System Restore feature, Volume Shadow Copies lets you access older versions of files on the network after they’ve been changed or deleted. “It’s the largest single bet in Windows Server 2003,” Golds said. “We create a permanent or temporary volume representing a snapshot of an existing volume at a certain point in time, and then freeze that point in time, and let you come back to it. It’s not arbitrary.” The Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) required for this feature represents the first time Microsoft has created a backup framework, one that can be extended by third parties.
Other file system and storage improvements include deep SAN support, Virtual Disk Service (VDS, for abstracting RAID systems), Automated System Recovery (ASR, which debuted in XP), command line disk defragging that now supports any cluster size (Windows 2000 supported only 4K clusters), a dramatically enhanced Check Disk (Microsoft reports over 1000 percent improvement), and dramatic improvements in the scalability of the NTFS file system.
Application Server
Despite the fact that Microsoft’s application server is one of the most often-used parts of Windows Server, it’s an ill-defined and misunderstood component. John Montgomery, the Group Product Manager of the Developer Platform and Evangelism Group, says that application server integration with Windows Server began in 1997, when the company shipped the NT 4.0 Option Pack. At the time, integrating an application server with the OS seemed foolish to certain analysts, but now everyone is doing it: Sun and HP both ship their app server products in the box with their UNIX OSes.
So what is the Windows Server 2003 application server, you might ask? Montgomery said that it’s a role, not a product. It provides the middle-tier application services that historically have been handled by COM+, Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ) and IIS. However, in Windows Server 2003, the application server has been expanded to include the .NET Framework and its support for ASP .NET, ADO .NET, and related technologies. Essentially, it’s that portion of the OS that lets Windows Server act as the middle tier of a multi-tier application and services infrastructure.
Windows Server 2003 ships with .NET Framework 1.1, SOAP 1.2, COM+ 1.5, and MSMQ 3.0 (which now supports SOAP messages).

Buy Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition – 54$