The Microsoft Server Appliance Kit 3.0 includes a variety of tools for creating remotely administered, fixed-function server appliance products using the frameworks provided by the Microsoft Windows® Server 2003 family of operating systems. Using the Server Appliance Kit, you can:

Design hardware platforms that provide enhanced reliability and manageability for the server appliance. The Server Appliance Kit provides a hardware reference specification and a reliability framework that allows software on the server to monitor critical system resources and maintain the server state.

Develop software applications that provide additional functionality that builds on the Windows Server 2003 family of operating systems and the Server Appliance Kit platforms. Depending on the nature of these applications, end users can access these applications through a local user interface (UI) consisting of a small liquid crystal display (LCD) and keypad or a Web-based UI.

Create server-appliance master disk images that can be manufactured in quantity.