>>Yes, performance and I would guess stability. I have not seen any COM server crashes on Windows 2003 server due to resource or funky COM behavior as would sometimes happen on Windows 2000. Although Web connection can deal with those things internally, it's better to have a server environment where those things don't occur in the first place.
>
>I agree. That's a good point.
>
>>Another thing that is nice about IIS 6 is that you can now easily backup and restore the metabase including all sites and IIS settings. that wasn't possible prior to IIS 6....
>
>This is good news. It would avoid redoing all the installation procedures to define our Web site when doing a test server or when moving to a new server. Last week, I had to do our entire set of procedures for our Web sites twice.
>
>>I'm not a big fan of 'upgrading' especially servers because if you do that and something goes wrong you're screwed. I like to have both boxes side by side for upgrades get them both running, copy all the necessary stuff, then swap Ips and the new one's live. That way you can guarantee your uptime.
>
>Yes, I've been doing that approach for all upgrades we did so far. But, there is time when you have several servers and you need to upgrade as not all of them will be replaced by new servers.
>
>>Of course if you have expensive hardware this might not be an option, but these days souped up hardware is relatively cheap and it might be a good time to get the latest and greatest for best performance anyway.
>
>Well, we just did. Our last Thursday network infrastructure included a brand new server and, at least in Canada, it costs a lot to have those boxes around. :)

Well if the box is new and relatively clean an upgrade to Windows Server 2003 should be pretty straight forward. Just make sure that if you do go that route you have a plan B in place in case it doesn't work as smoothly as it should...