Network Corner Windows Server 2003 and your iSeries Environment Are you wondering if you can use Windows 2003 Server in your iSeries environment? We've found it to be stable and a bit faster than Windows Server 2000. Here's a few tips on getting started: Fear not - you don't need to install and configure Active Directories in order to use a Windows 2003 Server. You can join your Windows Domain or NDS tree in a Netware environment and then you can let the domain controller authenticate users and gain access to the resources on the 2003 Server. Local users can be added with different permissions and desktops without Active Directories as well. Client Access likes to have the Windows login name and iSeries user profile name the same. It's helpful if the passwords are the same as well. There are several things that don't always work when the user names are not the same. One is that the first time you start an iSeries session you will be prompted for your user name without an option to save it. Subsequent sessions will not prompt you but when you reboot it will ask again. Another problem is that if you share a printer on Netserver for your PC users they will not have access to them in all cases. They will have access denied even if *Public has all rights to the object on the iSeries. Windows 2003 security lockdown is Microsoft's reversal of previous Windows security design. Up until now, Windows servers gave everyone all rights to everything. You would end up removing rights rather than granting rights to establish security. Windows 2003 server is just the opposite. You need to set up roles for the server such as file and print sharing. You need to grant permission to users to use the protocols on the server to sign in. This is more in line with industry standard security philosophy. Windows 2003 server runs Client Access just fine and all of the features we've tested have worked well. As mentioned, it's faster than Windows 2000 and stability seems to be the same. If you need help implementing Microsoft Server, Linux or Novell in your environment call us at 616.451.2500 or e-mail info@arbsol.com.