It should work just fine for basic AD stuff. On a company I've worked we had a skt. 478 P4 + 512MB RAM as a Win 2K Server for ~60 workstations. I'd make a lab (VM) If you need to set up some GPOs, though.

If your hardware support and you can spare the extra HDD, try setting up a RAID. As a friend always says: "You can't trust a server that don't have HDD and PSU redundancy" 😀

Allthough my education includes setting up an webserver, and programming ASP.NET with multilayered object oriented C# backend, using SQL driven servers. To get an dynamic website.... I actually feel way better at home, setting up Linux as a server. You know.... Samba and domain server and stuff.

I would for once, not recommend FTP at any time on any system.
Way too insecure. Do a simple fileserver instead. You know. Like a NAS server.
Domain controller is just a domain controller and is good to have windows for.

well right now I use filezilla and my ports are not 20 and 21, they are very diffrent, and i block all non local traffic to it anyway, I'm just wondering if windows server could do better.

Right now filezilla server is set like this

the following ip addresses are not allowed to connect = * (aka all ips)

exclude the following ips = 192.168.1.0/24

since I moved I'm not to worried about my local network, as its secure, wifi is operating from a second router assigning 192.168.2.1 address's and both connect to the main home modem/router combo ATT provided. So my internal network is secure.

If security is a must I'd suggest taking a look at other options since 2k3 support is ending middle July (14 or 15th). Been on a LAN-only alleviates some of this.

When using plain old ftp, the password is send in plain text.
That's one major security issue there.
Use secure-ftp or ftp-secure.

Or just use any other encrypted transfer solution's out there.
Just avoid ftp and never ever use it.

Snayperskaya wrote:

If security is a must I'd suggest taking a look at other options since 2k3 support is ending middle July (14 or 15th). Been on a LAN-only alleviates some of this.

Debian as an alternative perhaps? Unless pockets are deep for the newest Win server.
Security is a must here as I understand it. As an domain server is wanted.

Normally I prefer using linux for servers, but if you have a Win2003 license, might as well have some fun with it. It doesn't sound like you're exposing it's services to the outside world. If you are then be a lot more careful. I have no idea what works with Win8.1 clients.

For file serving performance on the LAN, the key issue is going to be whether that P4 board supports any high speed I/O. If everything is running on a basic 32-bit 33MHz PCI bus then performance will be constrained by that. The most ideal is to have the GbE and SATA controllers on separate high speed PCI-X buses. If the board doesn't support that, an 865P/875P or E7210 with onboard GbE will do pretty well, since their onboard gigabit link is not sharing the PCI bus. I tested an 875P as a file server once and it was much faster in that role than an nForce2 board, surely because of the PCI constraints on the latter.

it would be using my ABIT IC7-G which is 875p

Server 2003 is falling out of support in June, so no more security patches. If you want to use it, do so in an isolated network. For a server, I'd go for a BSD or Windows Server 2008R2/2012R2, at the very least as guests. Nowadays, I use ESXi to run several systems at once on one server.

For file transfer, FTP must die. It is a craptacular protocol, badly obsoleted by SFTP and WebDAV. For Windows environments, you should be using native file sharing and for UNIX, NFS.

I wouldn't run a server on a P4. They're inefficient and most bar some Cedar Mills don't support virtualization. Go build/find a whitebox, a NUC, or a cheapo OEM server. (The TS140 and HP MicroServers are great values.)

candle_86 wrote:

So recently acquired a copy of Server 2003, i made sure it came with a legal COA as well. So I'm wondering what do yall think about using it on my Pentium 4 that sits idle to setup a domain controller/ftp client on. And can server 2003 domains function properly on windows 8.1 computers?

i run server 2008 r1 on a dual pentium 4 xeon server. i used it as my games / teamspeak server fora while, now it server as a back up.

My own server is 2008, I forget why I had to upgrade from 2003, but there was a reason. Anyway it runs just fine on a dual 3.8ghz P4 xeon with 16gb of ram. I use it mostly for remote access, a basic webpage, and file server. TOTAL overkill, but it's all good. Electricity is stupid cheap where I live.

When I set up an Linux server. I usually install open-ssh server on that box.

Raspberry Pi (especially RPi 2) is great for a small home server. It's cheap, fairly powerfull and its power consumption is very low.

If I'm reading correctly the servers only for internal file storage use? In this case it's fine. Yes NAS boxes, Linux servers, etc may be better suited for the task but not as much fun.
If it was a company's server with a dozen PCs connecting to it then your hardware wouldn't be up to the task, but if its only a home setup its more then enough. remember first generation 2003 servers were using P3 based hardware. Win 8.1 plays happily on a 2003 AD level, you will loose some group policy functions, again not an issue for a home network.

If it is been used as a file server, I would definitely recommend setting up a RAID 1 which apparently the board supports? This may be a bit tricky but if you can set it up under XP you'll be ok as really they are the same OS under the hood.

You could always install it but don't activate it, see how you like it for the 30 days and it wont have cost a thing.

I've always had a DC on my network, I find Windows behaves better.

well the big thing id like is it to also support windows 98 on domain

2K3 supports that, and is a good operating system.

So far as I remember, supporting 98 involved some option in one of the wizards, I don't remember what it was, but I seem to think it was pretty self explanatory... Which is probably why I don't remember it well, because it never caused me enough of an issue to make any impact on me.

AFAIK by default 98 should be able to access 2003 shares just fine. If not then just modify the NTLM settings in gpedit.

yea i was more commenting i needed 98 support which is why i snagged server 2k3, I could have gotten server 2008 for 20 dollars more, not 2008 R2, original 2008 but windows 98 domain support is rather lacking for it. My biggest concern now is that I'm about to be married, and will have a very curious 5 year old running around, and I want to secure the 98 machine the best i can, and a domain seems logical to do that, as well as allowing logins on every machine for the family instead of creating user accounts on my desktop, my laptop, her laptop, and her daughters desktop for all of us, joining it to one domain seems simpler 🤣.

And before you ask, her laptop, kids desktop, my laptop are all running windows 7 Pro, my desktop runs 8.1 pro, my XP box is running XP pro, and of course 98 🤣.

You can't really secure 98, it barely has any concept of security. Setting up a Lanman/NT style domain is a bit silly if you can just edit group policies locally. If you /really/ want to do this, do it with something period appropriate or Linux. (Samba works fine for file sharing after enabling Lanman auth, and you can probably set up an NT4-style domain.)