I have been writing a GUI application for rsync on Windows and I have been deploying it to servers.
I have a problem because I use the .NET framework, and server does not have it installed, and the 3.5 framework requires the server to be rebooted after installation. This is not acceptable. Does 2.0 require this same behavior or can I avoid it? If not, is there a way to bypass the forced reboot?
You should complain about this to Microsoft on http://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio/.
As per my knowledge .NET 2 too requires a restart. You can install .NET with -norestart command but that does not mean .NET will not need restart. It will only delay the restart till you decide the machine can be restarted.
2.0 is really the thing that requires the reboot. 3.5 is just 2.0 with some things bolted on. You must reboot after installing, otherwise your installation may be incomplete. Can you schedule the installation and reboot to occur at a specific time, when the servers aren't utilized?
I handled a WinServer once, and we had the restart issue pop up often, especially after critical updates.
Most of the functionality of a server can be distributed among two or more servers, and if you set them up right, restarting one could be unnoticeable.
Rebooting depends on what's installed and running on the server. On clean gold (aka RTM) Win 2003 you shouldn't have reboot, while in a machine with lots of running software it's almost secure to do a reboot.