Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Service Pack 2 is included in Microsoft Windows°Server™°2003 operating system, Code Name "R2," Beta 2. This updated version of Windows SharePoint Services includes the following feature enhancements:
Support for IP-bound virtual servers
Support for advanced extranet configurations
Kerberos enabled by default
Windows SharePoint Services running on ASP.NET 2.0 (Whidbey)
Windows SharePoint Services support for Windows x64 editions
Support for IP-bound virtual servers
Previous releases of Windows SharePoint Services did not support assigning a static IP address to an IIS virtual server extended with Windows SharePoint Services. Instead, it was required that you used host headers and configured all virtual servers with an IP address setting of All Unassigned. This limitation, as described in KB article Q830342, prevented being able to host multiple SSL-enabled virtual servers on one Web server. In Service Pack 2, this limitation has been removed, and Windows SharePoint Services now supports assigning a static IP address to a virtual server extended with Windows SharePoint Services. Windows SharePoint Services Service Pack 2 will not support IP-bound virtual servers if it was deployed in scalable hosting mode, as described in the Server Farm with Multiple Hostnames Deployment topic of the Windows SharePoint Services Administrator’s Guide. IP-bound virtual server support is only available when Windows SharePoint Services Service Pack 2 is deployed in non-scalable hosting mode.
Support for advanced extranet configurations
Windows SharePoint Services generates some hyperlinks in its Web pages and e-mail messages using absolute URLs. Earlier releases of Windows SharePoint Services generated those absolute URLs using the protocol scheme, host, and port of the Web request that SharePoint received or the URL used to originally create the site. This prevented Windows SharePoint Services from supporting certain advanced extranet configurations where a reverse proxy server is deployed in front of the SharePoint server.
Kerberos enabled by default
Kerberos authentication is now enabled by default when you install Windows SharePoint Services, Service Pack 2, by using the Typical Installation option. The Typical Installation option installs Windows SharePoint Services with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (Windows) (WMSDE) on one computer.
In addition, when you install Windows SharePoint Services new options let you choose either NTLM authentication or Kerberos authentication when you create the SharePoint Central Administration virtual server and extend content virtual servers. Earlier releases of Windows SharePoint Services defaulted to NTLM authentication for all installation options, which caused problems if there were other applications on the virtual server that required Kerberos authentication or if you were deploying Web Parts that needed to access resources that were not on the server computer. This limitation, as described in KB article Q832769, required manual steps to enable Kerberos. (When reading Q832769, keep in mind that it describes enabling Kerberos authentication for existing deployments of Windows SharePoint Services RTM and for Windows SharePoint Services SP1.)
The ability to choose either Kerberos authentication or NTLM authentication is available in both the SharePoint Central Administration and the stsadm.exe command-line utility when you create the SharePoint Central Administration virtual server, extend a virtual server, or extend a virtual server and map it to an existing virtual server. For the stsadm.exe command line, there is a new optional parameter: exclusivelyusentlm. If this parameter is not specified, then the virtual server is not modified and retains its original authentication configuration which by default is Kerberos-enabled.
Although Kerberos authentication is now offered in the Windows SharePoint Services interface, you should consider carefully whether or not to use Kerberos authentication. If you are setting up a typical installation with WMSDE, Kerberos authentication is enabled by default and no other configuration is required because Windows SharePoint Services is running under the context of Network Service, which is already configured correctly for Kerberos authentication. However, if you are installing by using the Server Farm option, with Windows SharePoint Services running as a domain account and using a remote server running SQL Server, you must configure the domain account as a Service Principal Name (SPN) if you want to use Kerberos.
Windows SharePoint Services running ASP.NET 2.0 (Whidbey)
Starting with Service Pack 2, you can now run Windows SharePoint Services with ASP.NET 2.0 (code named Whidbey). Additionally, you can run ASP.NET 1.0 and ASP.NET 2.0 at the same time and on different virtual servers running Windows SharePoint Services. Windows SharePoint Services provides the same feature functionality when running on ASP.NET 2.0 as it does when running on ASP.NET 1.0. Windows SharePoint Services’ support for ASP.NET 2.0 does not include integration with the new ASP.NET 2.0 Web part framework. This means that if you deploy a Web part built in ASP.NET 2.0 to Windows SharePoint Server, this Web part will function as a Web form control. Before deploying on ASP.NET 2.0 review the additional information below about configuring Windows SharePoint Services to run on ASP.NET 2.0
Windows SharePoint Services support for Windows 64 bit editions
To run Windows SharePoint Services for Windows 64 bit editions, Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) must be configured to run in 32-bit emulation mode.