Installing and Configuring Hardware Devices

In an ideal world, if you wanted to install a new device in your server, you would simply power down the server, insert the new device, make sure it has power and signal cable attachments, and then power up the server. The new device would be ready immediately.

That is the goal of the people who design hardware architecture, and, actually, with modern hardware and modern operating systems, we're almost there. With a motherboard that meets the ACPI standard, Windows Server 2003 recognizes and configures all hardware that is built to the Plug and Play specification.