Cheap 2003 Enterprise?

Anyone know where I can get a legit version of 03 Enterprise for a decent price?

You're a student right? Any chance your school sells copies?

Heck, I get all the M$ stuff for free. **Just to make it clear it is TOTALLY legal, my school gives licenses at no cost**

Yea, but they only sell XP Pro and no Server editions

We run Enterprise in our class, but I doubt I can get license from them.

Hrmm, I looked around for places that sold with academic discounts, most seemed to be around $450-$600, but all seem out of stock.

Maybe email/call up these guys? An academic discount should able to whack loads off the price.

Btw, Microsoft has a 180 day trial of 2003 Enterprise that you can download from them for free. If you need it for short term testing, this might fit the bill too.

Do you have the link for the trial version?

That would be perfect for my situation cause I just need it to play around and maybe add one or two clients so I can stay ahead of the class. Speaking of clients, does trial version let you set up a domain and is it standard 25 clients like regular version?

Thanx again for the help

Here ya go.

The trials are totally unlocked, so yeah you should be able to add the full 25 clients...if you can find a need. But you have to activate within 14 days, and they expire within 180.

Sounds good

I just need 2 clients basically, one for the laptop and one for my comp downstairs so I can get the feel how to manage domain controller, make active directory...

Big Thanx

Np, glad I could help.

Just an added note, you can get Trial copies of nearly every recent MS product for a minor cost (shipping) on CD from MS, they are generally 120-180 eval copies, fully functional. In a non-production environment you can keep re-using it too. Great way to get involved in learning on OS w/o shelling out the $$ for one or using someone else's (or doing anything illegal )

*edit* "nearly all" meaning the server side stuff, like sql, windows server, etc.

Not really that cheap, I quess, but these are legit deals and there is a significant savings to be had.
http://www.discount-licensing.com/s.nl/sc.1/.f

Update;

MSDNAA has granted us with accounts which allow us to access many of the software used in corporate world (including Server 2003 Enterprise ) for free.

I'm like a kid at a candy shop, LOL

I'll be installing Server 2003 and x64 shortly

One question though: I'm not 100% sure on this but can I use my computer to be both Domain Controller and File Server?

FYI you don't need enterprise unless your clustering and I doubt you are. If your teacher is making you get it he is a moron.

Yes you can run a DC as a file server. If you need any help with Windows Server 2003 feel free to ask. I manage about 400 servers with it installed.

Ebola said:

FYI you don't need enterprise unless your clustering and I doubt you are. If your teacher is making you get it he is a moron.

Yes you can run a DC as a file server. If you need any help with Windows Server 2003 feel free to ask. I manage about 400 servers with it installed.

Click to expand...

Hahaha, he's not making us get it but now that I have access to Enterprise why not get it

But thanx for your offer, I'll keep that in mind as I sure will need help

While we are at it (even though I'm not doing it right now) I'll need help configuring DNS. We did it in class but he provided us with all information, like domain name, dns suffix...

How do I figure that stuff out by myself?

Trial and error. lol. I don't work too much with DNS but its not too hard.

In DNS Manager you can get run the wizard to get things going or you can do it manually. You can do it through server management as well.

You need to configure the SOA, NS, and Host A records. MX if you run Exchange

The Start of Authority (SOA) is the primary DNS server and it controls time to live, refresh intervals, and responsible persons.

The Name Server (NS) is typically also the same server. This translates domain names into IPs.

Host Address (Host A) records map domain names to IPs

Mail Exchange records (MX) are exclusive to Exchange

I'll try running a wizard first and see where it get's me, thanx again

The wizard wont help you out all that much learning dns, just give you a tiny perspective of what is available to you. A word of advice though, if you have access to CBT Nuggets, there's 4 dns videos on the 70-291 exam disc which are pretty good. I'm actually in the middle of learning dns right now for my 70-291 exam.

MX records are specific for Mail Servers....not just exchange.

I am pretty well versed in DNS and AD so I may be able to help as well.

Any domain to which you wish to host a mail server must have a Host (A) record and a MX (Mail eXchanger) record for the mail server. Say your mail server is named Mail1 and its IP address is 10.10.2.156. You would have to have an A record so that whenever anyone looked for 'Mail1' it would give them 10.10.2.156. Then you would create your MX record with a host of 'mail1' which points to mail1.domain.com.

That way when domain.com is queried as to whether it has a mail server it will find the mx record of mail1.domain.com...then it says ok cool I can deliver to this...but wait I need the IP now that I know the server name. So it takes the mail1 part and looks to see if there is an A record for it...it says oh cool there is...mail1's ip address is 10.10.2.156, I will send my mail to that address.

The wizard should get you going...when you install the DNS Server (which you can install by default with AD if you want DNS to be AD integrated which is a good idea) it will set up the SOA and NS records as well as an A record for that server. The SOA controls a lot of things including a increment number. If you have multiple DNS servers this is used for replication or zone transfers. Say you have 2 dns servers. Dns1 is authoritative, as well as DNS2. Say you add a MX record as I described above to DNS1, when you make the change the number will increment by 1. Depending on how your zone transfers are set up (if its AD integrated this doesnt really matter as it replicates with the directory) DNS2 will look at DNS1 and see that the SOA number is one higher than its SOA number....then it will know that something is newer over on DNS1 and initiate a Zone transfer. You can also set DNS1 to tell all the other DNS servers (it knows what they are by the NS records) that it is updated and that they need to be updated as well.

Im sure thats far more than you wanted to know but...hey...now you know

Appreciate your input guys

There is a delay with me getting server 03 since they seem to be having bad host that distributes ISO's to students, so I will need to go and pick up the CD myself sometimes next week along with XP Pro.

I will keep you updated.