Anyone using MS Server 2000 or 2003 as their default operating system?

[Feline]

I test students for computer literacy. Up until now, this has meant that I load a number of files onto the student’s workstation (or somewhere on the network where the students can get at them). After the student has completed, I download their files and check to see whether they have done what they are supposed to have done.
I am now having to move to Computer Based Testing in a networked environment, in which my laptop will become the server, and the students will be clients.
I do know that I can’t use XP Home for this (because it only supports peer-to-peer networking) and am therefore faced with upgrading to XP Professional – which will allow me up to ten concurrent network connections (ie. nine students + my laptop which uses one connection itself).
To test more than nine students at a time, I will need to install MS Server 2000 or 2003 – which should cope with the number of students I need to test at a given time (normally between 25 – 30 students concurrently, but in a couple of cases I may need to cope with up to 120 concurrent students).
My laptop is currently running XP Home, so that obviously needs to be upgraded.
As I see it, I could partition the hard disk into two partitions, and run XP Professional in one partition, and MS Server in the other partition.
But I am wondering what would be the implications of simply replacing XP home with MS Server 2000 or 2003 and not bother with XP Professional at all. Would this mean I would be unable to run MS Office? Might I have problems with drivers for such things as printers on MS Server?
If there’s anyone out there with some experience of MS Server I really would appreciate some advice (including a view of whether Server 2000 is easier to use/configure than Server 2003). And, and needless to say, I have to sort this out and make a decision yesterday

[Bahn-Jeaux]

I have just installed win server2003 and am currently checking it out on my home network.
Firstly, 2003 comes with a high degree of built in security and if you also intend to use it for home use etc, you might find you need to do some tweaking.
Win 2000 is easier to use by far but how long MS will continue to support it is a different matter.
I struggled to find supported drivers for some older bits of kit with win 2k but 2003 installed and everything was up and running straight away with only one driver upgrade required which was instantly fixed with an online update.
As an aside, out of curiosity, I installed this on my oldest PC, a P3 450 with 128 meg Ram and a 6 Gig HDD just to see what the outcome would be.
Its running sweet as a nut up to now.

If you want to give it a go but relax some of the security features, have a read here.
http://win2k3.msfn.org/

[BOFH]

The most painless solution, if your laptop is beefy enough, is to use VMWare to host the stuff you are doing for work. If it makes no difference to you, W2K server is leaner.

If it is simply a matter of receiving files you could request your students to ftp them from, and then back to you - which (I believe) is available natively under XP Pro, or Home with appropriate software. Enumerate directories for them (paying close attention to permissioning) and write some code to give them the ftp put script and there you are.

BOFH

[Feline]

Thanks B-J - that's a very useful link - looks like I should be able to get it to do more or less what I need.

And thanks for suggestion BOFH - but problem is that the testing software I will be using runs with MS Server and I suspect it's gonna be an almost impossible mission to get it to run with VMware - but thanks for the suggestion!

[Oxeagle]

Hi There,
Something else you may want to consider is your laptop's inbuilt ethernet card. For my day job I help run a 250 computer network (although normally only around 100-150 of them are active at any one time) using a server with a paired network adapters (2x 1 Gigabit), and recently we had a problem where only one of the network adapters refused to function, so we were stuck with just 1Gbps and because of that the network performance was degraded quite badly. I assume that your laptop has a 1Gbps ethernet card? If so you should be alright with upto 50 clients simultaneously connected, but any more and you will start experiencing serious lag.

As for the version of MS Server to go for, well I use Server 2000 on my network and it works great but unfortunately I don't have any experience with 2003 so I can't offer a comparison. If this is your own laptop I would suggest creating two seperate partitions and having Windows XP in one and whichever version of MS Server in the other. As for having Office installed, that isn't a problem it will work fine with Server 2000 although seeing as you are using a laptop as the server its not advisable to have any applications open that will use up CPU time and RAM, as you'll need all you can get!

Hope this helps