NT Webhosting

NT Webhosting

NT webhosting refers to webhosting service that provides support for Windows NT. NT stands for New Technology. In 1993, Microsoft released a new operating system called Windows NT 3.1. Windows NT 3.1 has two versions: NT Advanced Server and plain Windows NT. NT has a full 32-bit operating system. Windows NT webhosting allows you to enjoy the following features:

* NTFS (File system)

* RISC Support

* Support of up to 32 processors

* Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL)

* Object Manager

* Process Manager

* Virtual Memory Manger

* Local Procedure Call (LPC)

* I/O Manager

* Security Reference monitor

* Preemptive Multitasking

* Interprocess Communication (IPC)

Windows NT file system gives high fault tolerance and file-level security found in UNIX OSs. NTFS is a non FAT (File Allocation Table) file system which is unlike MS-DOS, although NT fully supports FAT.

NTFS: This refers to Windows NT File System.  This feature in NT webhosting provides a high fault tolerance and file-level security found only in UNIX OSs.   NTFS is a non FAT (File Allocation Table) file system unlike MS-DOS, although NT fully supports FAT.  It combines the best of two file system types, HPFS and FAT.   HPFS is a lazy-write file system, which means that file information is cached in memory, the drawback is in the event of a system failure, that information is lost, corrupting the file system.  FAT is a careful-write file system, which means that information is written to the disk immediately.  NTFS may cache the file, but it keeps a file log so that if the system crashes, the volume can be easily repaired. 

RISC Support:  RISC (reduced instruction set code) such as DEC's Alpha, MIPS, and the PowerPC, are fully supported along with CISC (Complex instruction set code) which are found in the more common x86 processors.

Support for up to 32 processors:   This means that tasks are distributed to two or more of the processors evenly.  When you use two or more processors, the multiprocessor Kernel is used in NT webhosting instead of NTOSKRNL.

The HAL:  The Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) is another feature in NT webhosting unique for each type of processor.  The HAL allows other layers to operate transparently without concern for the server's hardware.   Device drivers are written to communicate with the HAL.

Object Manager: It is a feature of NT webhosting that assigns object handles that are required for processes to access system objects, such as directory, file and port objects. 

Process Manager:  It is NT webhosting feature that are actually address spaces and threads, which run within those processes.  An application is a process; a service is also a process. 

Virtual Memory Manager:   This NT webhosting features handles the task of mapping memory to a pagefile whenever virtual memory, which is memory written to a file(s) on disk(s) called pagefile.sys. 

The Local Procedure Call (LPC): This NT webhosting facility is the expediter of client/server calls, from one thread to another, that reside on the same machine.

The I/O Manager:  NT webhosting feature that negotiates all I/O requests which include the file system, device drivers, and network drivers.

The Security Reference Monitor:   This NT webhosting feature intervenes and supplies the proper security information each time an object is accessed.

Preemptive Multitasking:  This is an NT webhosting feature introduced in version 3.5.  Preemptive multitasking in NT webhosting means that NT hands out slices of CPU time, even if a process take full control, other processes will still run. 

Interprocess Communication:  This NT webhosting feature handles exchanging messages between the client/server operating system processes. That is why Windows NT is referred to as a message-based system.