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I am trying to disable any unnecessary services running on a Windows Server 2003 box. I would like to optimize this box as best I can.

Update

The primary purpose of the server is to operate a SQL Server database, a website, and a couple of Windows Forms application to handle some integrations.

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This question can't be answered unless you provide information on what roles you want this server to be comprised of. – Chris Marisic Sep 9 '09 at 19:11
The primary purpose of the server is to operate a SQL Server database, a website, and a couple of Windows Forms application to handle some integrations. – mattruma Sep 9 '09 at 19:13
A SQL Database, Disk I/O configuration as a rule of thumb off the top of my head. Here is a full Microsoft whitepaper msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd758814.aspx Application binaries - System Volume - RAID1 TempDB - Dedicated Volume - RAID1 or 10 Database - Dedicated Volume - RAID10 Log Files - Dedicated Volume - RAID10 Backups - Dedicated Volume - RAID0 – Nick O'Neil Sep 9 '09 at 19:17
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3 Answers

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Windows Server 2003 is pretty much secured and tightened on its own; one thing that puzzles me a lot is the Wireless Auto Configuration Service, enabled and starting automatically... wireless servers are quite unusual, I think.

If you don't have a wireless network card on your server (and I bet you don't have one), that's a service you can safely disable.

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Generally the defaults are optimized well enough as far as cpu and memory utilization goes, performance gains are reached by optimizing disk configuration depending on what the role of this server will be.

A quick google returned this result if you are still interested in disabling services. Scroll towards the bottom. http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

Best, Nick

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If you are set as to what the server will do and don't plan on changing it then you can run the Security Configuration Wizard (assuming sp1 already installed or higher). This is a great tool (carefully used) to lock down the server to just the services needed (in addition to other security measures if necessary like IPSEC).

For even more info on locking down a W2k3 server see here: http://www.cites.illinois.edu/security/by%5Fos/win2k3srv.html

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