Many server hosting companies are offering Windows Server 2003 these days at attractive prices.  If you use Tomcat and are thinking of using Windows Server 2003, you should be aware that IIS 6 will have to be reconfigured to run in IIS 5.0 Isolation Mode which is a major sacrifice in terms of performance, stability, and manageability.

While Apache Tomcat team seems to be satisfied with this workaround, I am not.  So I am holding off on moving to Windows Server 2003.  I suppose I can fix this problem myself, but knowing that this sort of short hacks can easily lead to a year long stream of bug reports, I won't.

If you really need to run Tomcat on Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0, here are some resources hosted by Adam Krouskop (HTTPS access only):

• Setting Up IIS 6.0 To Work with Tomcat
• Tomcat And Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS)
• How to Install and Configure Tomcat and IIS to Work Together on Windows 2003 Server