A reference for Designing Servers and Peripherals for the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server Family of Operating Systems Intel Corporation and Microsoft Corporation Publication Date—June 30, 2000


Designing Systems for Windows 2000 Server



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Designing Systems for Windows 2000 Server


The requirements and recommendations in this guide are defined in relation to classes of server systems and components used with the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server operating system.

Windows 2000 Server is a preemptive, multitasking operating system that includes security and networking services as fundamental components of the base operating system. Windows 2000 Server also supports high-performance computing by providing kernel support for computers that have symmetric multiprocessor configurations.

Under Windows 2000 Server, Plug and Play and power management capabilities are made available for ACPI-compliant server systems. Other major hardware initiatives for Windows 2000 include the following:


  • Support for bus and device classes such as USB, IEEE 1394, Human Interface Device (HID) class, and Fibre Channel.

  • Support for Microsoft Cluster Server and up to four nodes in a Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) cluster in Windows 2000 Datacenter Server.

  • Online volume management, hierarchical storage management (HSM), Removable Storage Manager, and improvements in backup and recovery support.

  • Support for Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) and WMI as part of the Zero Administration initiative for Windows, reducing hardware ownership costs.

  • Support for I2O architecture.

  • Support for System Area Networking.

  • Support for large physical memory (more than 4 GB).

  • Support for Windows 2000 Server running on IA-64 systems. Note that only the 64-bit version of Windows 2000 and later versions will be supported by Microsoft on IA-64 systems. In other words, 32-bit versions of Windows will not be supported on IA-64 systems by Microsoft.

For information about Windows 2000 Server features and capabilities, see http://www.microsoft.com/Windows2000/guide/server/.


ACPI and OnNow Design


Windows 2000 Server includes support for ACPI, which supports operating system–based power management and Plug and Play system–configuration capabilities. This guide summarizes some of the system and device capabilities for hardware used with Windows 2000.

The goal of the OnNow design initiative is to ensure that all system components work together to enable robust and reliable system configuration and power management. The operating system and applications work together intelligently to deliver effective power management. All devices connected to the system or added by the user participate in the device power-management scheme.

The OnNow design initiative includes requirements for the operating system, applications, device drivers, and hardware in order to deliver transparent power management and improve integration of components. The changes include:


  • Enhanced core operating system functionality for power management.

  • A system interface for operating system–directed power management and Plug and Play. The ACPI design also provides future extensibility and improved system integration.

  • Windows Driver Model (WDM), which supports power management and Plug and Play, and provides a common set of I/O services and binary-compatible device drivers among Windows 98 and Windows 2000 for targeted device classes (audio, input, video, and still imaging) and bus classes (for example, USB and IEEE 1394).

  • Device and bus hardware power management interfaces and state definitions.

  • An application architecture that allows applications to integrate into power management of the system.

The ACPI specification defines a flexible and abstract hardware interface that enables a wide variety of server systems to implement power and thermal management functions while meeting the cost and feature requirements of the target market. ACPI also provides device configuration and generic system-event mechanisms for Plug and Play, unifying the power management interface with the Plug and Play interface.

The ACPI implementation is independent of the processor architecture and enables the operating system to direct power management throughout the system.

For more information about ACPI and the OnNow design initiative, see the OnNow web site at http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/onnow.htm.


IA-32 vs. IA-64 Design


Windows 2000 is designed to run on platforms with processors that use the Intel Architecture instruction set, including:

  • IA-32 platforms, such as Intel Pentium, Intel Pentium with MMX technology, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium II Xeon and Pentium III Xeon, or compatible processors.

  • IA-64 platforms, such as Intel Itanium or compatible processors.

This section summarizes design issues for IA-32 versus IA-64 systems that meet the requirements in this guide.


ACPI 1.0b vs. ACPI 2.0


In this version of the Hardware Design Guide, ACPI version 1.0b is the version of the ACPI specification that addresses related requirements for IA-32 systems. It also serves as a key component of PCI hot plug implementations in all systems that can be natively supported by Windows.

ACPI version 2.0 will address requirements for both IA-32 and IA-64 systems. In this version of the Hardware Design Guide, ACPI Version 2.0 is required for all IA-64 systems, because it is the first version of the ACPI specification that addresses the specific requirements for IA 64 systems with regard to ACPI firmware, hardware, and motherboard support. In particular, the ACPI 2.0 specification defines expanded interfaces to support IA-64, with extended Table definitions and new ACPI Source Language (ASL) and ACPI Machine Language (AML) 64-bit functions.


Boot and Firmware Support: BIOS vs. EFI


Firmware issues. In this design guide, firmware boot support for IA-32 is assumed to be BIOS based (as Windows EFI support for IA-32 systems has not yet been defined).

Firmware support for IA-64 systems must comply with the Extensible Firmware Interface Specification, Version 1.0 (EFI 1.0) or later. BIOS-based boot is not supported and will not work with 64-bit Windows.

In addition, in this guideline, PXE_BC (remote/network boot), SERIAL_IO, and SIMPLE_NETWORK protocols as defined in the EFI specification are required for EFI systems.

Other boot support. IA-32 systems must support standard BIOS mechanisms for determining the boot drive and must support Int 13h. IA-64 systems provide a globally unique identifier (GUID) Partition Table (GPT) partitioned hard drive for boot, compliant with the EFI specification.



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