Acquisitions Editor: Tom Cirtin

Development Editor: Kim Wimpsett

Technical Editor: Jim Kelly

Production Editor: Christine O′Connor

Copy Editor: Kim Cofer

Production Manager: Tim Tate

Vice President and Executive Group Publisher: Richard Swadley

Vice President and Executive Publisher: Joseph B. Wikert

Vice President and Publisher: Neil Edde

Proofreader: Nancy Bell and Russ Mullen

Indexer: Ted Laux

Book designers: Maureen Forys, Happenstance Type-O-Rama and Judy Fung

Cover design: Ryan Sneed

Cover image: © Pete Gardner/Digital Vision/gettyimages

Copyright © 2008 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-0-470-24984-0

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Legal Department, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 10475 Crosspoint Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46256, (317) 572-3447, fax (317) 572-4355, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or Website is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or Website may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet Websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

For general information on our other products and services or to obtain technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at (800) 762-2974, outside the U.S. at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.

Minasi, Mark.

Mastering Windows Server 2008 networking foundations / Mark Minasi. -- 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-470-24984-0 (paper)

1. Computer networks. 2. Microsoft Windows server. I. Title.

TK5105.5.M5666 2008

005.4′476 — dc22

2008017696

TRADEMARKS: Wiley, the Wiley logo, and the Sybex logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates, in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. Windows Server is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

Dear Reader,

Thank you for choosing Mastering Windows Server 2008: Networking Foundations. This book is part of a family of premium quality Sybex books, all written by outstanding authors who combine practical experience with a gift for teaching.

Sybex was founded in 1976. More than thirty years later, we're still committed to producing consistently exceptional books. With each of our titles we're working hard to set a new standard for the industry. From the paper we print on, to the authors we work with, our goal is to bring you the best books available.

I hope you see all that reflected in these pages. I'd be very interested to hear your comments and get your feedback on how we're doing. Feel free to let me know what you think about this or any other Sybex book by sending me an email at nedde@wiley.com, or if you think you've found a technical error in this book, please visit http://sybex.custhelp.com. Customer feedback is critical to our efforts at Sybex.

To the newest members of the Minasi clan, my lovely young niece Aubrey and already-studly young nephew Joseph. I wish for you that by the time you need to use a computer then you won't need any of your uncle's books!

Acknowledgments

Most of us have heard of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance), a wise and concise overview of how people deal with loss. I find it strange, then, that no one has ever enumerated the five stages of book writing:

Excitement (“This is gonna be soooo cool, I can't wait to find some folks to write about this neat stuff with me!”)

Writing (“How am I ever going to get this stuff done on time?”)

Editorial (“Aaugh, how am I supposed to finish this new chapter and review the editorial changes on time?”)

Cleanup (“I thought I was finished, and now I have to write the introduction?”)

Satisfaction (“Golly, doesn't that look nice on the bookshelf … that was easy, let's do another one!”)

Author Peter DeVries explained this years ago with a wry summing-up: “I love being a writer—it's the paperwork I can't stand.” Well, with this final bit of text, I get to move from Cleanup to Satisfaction … so let me tell you about the other stages.

I was very fortunate to find a few co-authors to help put this book together. The co-author who contributed the most chapters was John Paul Mueller. I've worked with John before and love the fact that he's a meticulous guy—the examples in his chapters are not just illustrative, they work! I also could not have gotten this book done without my partner Rhonda Layfield. Rhonda's been in the computer business for twenty-something years and in that time she's accumulated a wide variety of experience—experience that she's used to put together the chapters on Windows storage (an all-new chapter), the NetBIOS chapter, and the DHCP chapter. Derek Melber is one of the three smartest guys I know when it comes to group policies (Darren Mar-Elia and Jeremy Moskowitz are the other two, and I've been fortunate to work with them both on other books) and so I was delighted when he agreed to write the group policies chapter in this book.

Once the chapters get written, they need editing and technical review and as always, the Wiley folks provided us an all-star lineup. James Kelly did the tech review for the book, as he has for my last few books, and offered no end of useful advice. Kim Wimpsett kept us all on schedule, gave every chapter an editing pass, and patiently answered my questions about formatting my text so that it worked within the Wiley standards. Kim Cofer and Christine O'Connor completed the edits and assembled the chapters into the nicely-laid-out chapters that you hold in your hand right now. Our publisher Neil Edde, an old friend of many years, ran interference for us whenever the book ran into a snag, something for which I cannot thank him enough.

Finally, let me thank two other sources of help for this book. Without Microsoft to create Server 2008, we wouldn't have had anything to write—so thanks, Redmond, and thanks for letting us get a peek at Server 2008 before it was finished. More important than Microsoft's contribution, however, was the kind support of you folks—the readers. The only reason that I've been able to “love having been a writer” is because all of you keep buying my books—thank you very much!

Introduction

Hello and welcome to the Mastering Windows Server 2008 series and in particular to this volume, Mastering Windows Server 2008: Networking Foundations! Now, I know that many people don't read introductions, but I beg of you: please stay with me for at least this page or two … or you may waste your money. I say that because some of you reading this would be best served by skipping this book and going directly to the second book in the series, Mastering Windows Server 2008: Essential Technologies.

Don't Buy This Book If …

This is the 13th in a series of books about Windows Server that I've written since 1993, and as such, I'm lucky to have a group of loyal return readers for which I'm very grateful—and it's to you folks that I'm talking in this section. For a number of reasons I'll get to a bit later in this introduction, I've divided the Mastering Windows Server 2008 book into three books. This is the first book, and it's mainly aimed at those just joining us in Microsoft networking. In this book, we (“we” meaning my coauthors and I, that is—my veins, I fear, completely lack royal blood) show you things like how to put together two very basic Windows Server 2008 systems so that we can get some initial experience with NET USE-ing, the basics of the four ways you can control Windows, how Windows security works (logons, file permissions, passwords), what an IP address is, how to set up a DHCP server to provide those IP addresses, the difference between a DNS and a NetBIOS name, the ins and outs of storage in a Windows server, and an explanation in plain English about what a directory service is and why you'd set one up.

Note

To those of you who haven't ever before read one of my Server books: if any of those phrases sounded confusing, or if you've never heard of DHCP, DNS, or the like, then don't worry—you've got the right book. We'll make all of that stuff nice and easy.

That's not to say that this book offers no value for all readers of a previous volume. As you'll see if you stay with me for the rest of the introduction, over half of this book is either completely new chapters or extensively rewritten ones, and in any case I'm sure that a goodly number of return readers will find the review that they offer useful. I suspect, though, that most return readers might benefit more by moving directly to the second volume, Mastering Windows Server 2008: Essential Technologies. (Again, if you're unsure, then keep reading—you'll see chapter-by-chapter synopses of the other books in this series later in this introduction.) In any case, I can't stress enough that I would absolutely hate having someone buy a book of mine that didn't teach anything, especially not one of my loyal readers, which is partially why this introduction is as long as it is.

With that caveat out of the way, we're ready to answer the more important question: for whom did we write this book?

Do Buy This Book If…

My coauthors and I wrote this first volume mainly for people who seek to move from “network user” to “network administrator.” If …

You are currently familiar with Windows networking in the sense that you've been on a network as a user, surfed the Web, or used e-mail and want to start running networks rather than using them, or if

You are already smart on non-Microsoft networks and need the propaganda-free, no-sales-pitch scoop on Microsoft networking, or if

You've been stuck working as an administrator in some very specific corner of Microsoft networking (Web administration, user support, SQL administration) and want a broader understanding of the Microsoft networking landscape, then …

… you're in the right place. Again, welcome!

In this book, you'll start from a quick look at why people want to build Microsoft networks in the first place and move from there to understanding how to make a network work. You'll learn how to make a computer into a Windows server, and then understand how to control it. Along the way, you'll see firsthand how Microsoft networks are secured and how to create an intranet infrastructure. At that point, you'll have a network foundation in place and ready for the next book, which tackles the business of building on that foundation to create a useful network.

Like any long-used and successful piece of software, Windows Server is multi-faceted, complex, and complicated, and for a number of reasons. First of all, there are a lot of goodies that come with Windows Server software, and it's not immediately obvious what they do or why you'd want them. And then there are the things that don't make any sense at all until someone explains that yes, that module isn't all that desirable, but that it's a necessary evil for some reason, and the explanation usually involves understanding some unfortunate design decision made back in the mid-'90s that we're stuck with for reasons of backward compatibility. Finally, there are the parts of Windows Server 2008 that seem to have been included for just one reason: to make a few very, very large and important companies happy. The problem is, how to know what's useful, what's necessary, and what can be safely ignored? All you need is a native guide, and these three books seek to act in that role for you. Think of it this way: it is entirely possible to find a great glass of beer in France, and a delightful glass of wine in Britain, and I have, in both cases, but experience tells me that it's going to be a lot easier the other way around. Let my associates and me show you the easy way from user to administrator!

What's in This Book

Somehow I suspect that me merely saying, “buy this book if you're new to the industry or want a broader perspective on Server,” may not provide sufficient incentive for you to decide to part with thirty bucks. So here's what you'll find inside Mastering Windows Server 2008: Network Foundations.

First, I needed to ensure that people of all technical levels could make use of this book, and so Chapter 1, “Why Network?,” starts us off from ground level by providing a quick background on Windows networking. It discusses the benefits of networks, their component hardware, software, and protocols, and some “baseline” concepts so you'll be ready for the rest of the book. In Chapter 2, “Building a Simple Network,” we temporarily skip the concepts and go straight to the skills, as we show you how to build two Windows Server 2008 systems, create a file share, access that file share, and more. I don't know about you, but I can learn things much more quickly if I can get my hands around them by playing with them, so we provide a step-by-step “cookbook” about creating these two servers. I think you'll find that having two working servers will make following the rest of the book easier, as you can always put the book aside and try out what you've been reading.

Chapter 3 fixes a problem that I've been meaning to fix in the Server books for quite some time: a need for more security focus. Once upon a time, security in networking was something of an afterthought: first get the network working, and then go secure it. But unfortunately that's 20th century thinking; the modern network administrator must understand and be thinking about security from Day One. That's why this book has this all-new chapter, “Security Concepts in Windows,” that explains how logons work; what a permission, right, and privilege are; and where they live in Windows. With a bit of hands-on and the “basic basics” out of the way, it's time to see how to install Windows Server 2008 in Chapter 4, “Installing Windows Server 2008: Basics.” This is actually the first of three chapters in this series that talk about Windows setup and deployment, as the same topic reappears in the second and third books in this series. The chapter in this first book tells you about the several different flavors of Server available, some advice on acquiring Server-friendly hardware, a guide to running Setup and then the initial setup process, and ends with a cook's tour of the literally dozens of aspects of Server 2008 that you can enable or disable.

Once the system's set up, it's time to meet its dashboard or, rather, dashboards. In the next four chapters, you'll meet the four big tools that administrators use to reconfigure and control Windows Server: its GUI, its command-line interface (CLI) tools, its “Registry” (the place where Windows keeps the settings), and its group policy settings (a sort of all-in-one-place location for several thousand Windows settings, levers, dials, and switches). Chapter 5, “Controlling Windows Server: MMC,” starts it off with coverage of the Microsoft Management Console, a graphical framework for small programs called “snap-ins” that can be mixed and matched to allow you to create your own administrative “cockpit,” and also includes some advice for those moving from the Windows 2000 or Server 2003 user interface to Server 2008's new desktop—as usual, Microsoft's rearranged the furniture a bit. Chapter 6, “Controlling Windows Server: The Command Line,” moves you from the GUI to the command line with an introduction to administration from the command line, a useful chapter that's a guaranteed cure for “C:\>”-sickness. (Get it, “seasickness?” You see, from the command line you sometimes just see “C:\>,” and … okay, not my best joke, I admit it.) Chapter 7, “Controlling Windows Server: The Windows Server 2008 Registry,” covers the Registry from tip to toe, starting from its structure and purpose and moving quickly to some straight-talk advice about its realities (“don't expect the meaning of different Registry settings to be consistent—there is no Registry Police!”) and from there to procedures to modify the Registry when necessary, backing it up, securing it, and understanding how its structure can cause many of the software incompatibilities that we run into when moving from older versions of Windows to Vista and Server 2008, and what you can do about it. Chapter 8, “Controlling Windows Server: Group Policy,” then offers a soup-to-nuts look at something called a “local group policy object,” a very, very useful tool for local server administration—and one that's undergone some significant changes over the local group policy objects in Server 2003.

With all of that out of the way, it's time to see how to do just enough basic server management to get us past the “beginner” stage to the “intermediate” level that we need in order to tackle the second book in the series. Chapter 9, “Windows Storage Concepts and Skills,” explores how to install, configure, and manage drives on Windows Server, as well as creating fault-tolerant stores, protecting them with volume shadows, and more. Chapter 10, “TCP/IP and IPv4 Networking Basics,” introduces you to TCP/IP, the language of the Internet. You can't get your computer onto the Internet or, for that matter, even your home's network, without knowing what a “subnet mask” and a “default gateway” are, and you'll learn that in this chapter. You'll also see how to troubleshoot a failed Internet connection and how to get it back up and running there as well.

The next three chapters cover a topic that makes networks easier for users to use … but often tougher for administrators to fix. I'm talking here about network names, the things that let you visit my Web site by typing www.minasi.com (the Web site's name) rather than 70.165.73.5 (its network IP address). In a perfect world, this would be a really simple topic, but it's not, because Microsoft networks use two completely different kinds of names—sort of like what life would be for me if half of the world knew me as Mr. Minasi and the other half knew me as Mark but if neither half could understand that I could have any name other than the one that they knew me by. Chapter 11, “What's in a Name? Network Name Overview” explains how we got into this mess in the first place. Chapter 12, “Old Names: Understanding NetBIOS, WINS, and NetBIOS over TCP/IP,” explains how Microsoft networks used to do names—but can't quite seem to stop doing it—and how you can (and almost certainly must) make those names work on your network. Chapter 13, “New Names: How DNS Works,” explains the Domain Name System (DNS), the naming system that the Internet uses and that Microsoft is using more and more.

You learned about TCP/IP from a “how to use it just on my computer” standpoint in Chapter 10, but as a network administrator you need to deliver an IP address to everyone in your network and believe me, you don't want to have to walk around to every system on your network and give them an address. Modern networks simplify this with a sort of service called the “Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol” or “DHCP server.” If you've got an Internet router in your house, then it's currently serving in that role for your home network … but Windows Server can act as an industrial-strength DHCP server that can do way more things than that little Internet router can do, and you'll learn about that in Chapter 14, “Automatic IP Setup: DHCP Essentials.”

Everything that we'll have done up to that point is nice and useful, but here's the ugly truth: it's all just plumbing. I mean, don't get me wrong—plumbing is necessary and all, and when someone else's plumbing doesn't work, they'll usually be pretty willing to pay someone (like you, perhaps) decent money to fix the plumbing. But plumbing isn't all that interesting unless you've got something to attach to it—sinks, toilets, bathtubs, and the like. Get ready to meet our first big fixture, our first big “this is why we worked so hard to set up these servers” reason: Active Directory. AD is the main focus of the second book of the series, but I didn't want to end this first book without giving you a look at AD in Chapter 15, “Things to Come: A Peek at Active Directory”: what it does, why you want it, and what you can do with it. And with that, we'll be done with our examination of networking foundations … and ready to move to Windows' essential technologies in the second book of the series.

About the Series

If you've gotten this far, then I'm hoping that you've decided to stay and that you'll perhaps pick up another volume or two in this series. To that end, please permit me to introduce you to the basic ideas we kept in mind in creating the three books, and then I'll give you look ahead at the entire scope of the series.

Written from the Final Code, Not Betas

You may have noticed that these books didn't appear on the shelf on 27 February 2008, the date that Microsoft shipped Windows Server 2008. That's a break with tradition, as we normally try to get the book out at the same time as the product; what's different now?

There's always a problem with books delivered at the same time as a piece of software: to a certain extent, they're always wrong. Books like this take months and months to write and, after being written, publishers need another couple of months to edit, lay out, print, bind, and ship those books. If, therefore, we had created a “published at Server 2008 delivery date” book, then you wouldn't be reading a book about Server 2008; instead, you'd be reading a book about Server 2008, Beta 3—an incomplete product. Does it really matter whether a book about a product matches that product exactly? I believe so, as it can be disturbing to try to follow an example in a book only to find that the example doesn't work because some button's in the wrong place or some command doesn't work as advertised by the book. It's also sort of disquieting to examine a screen shot of some dialog box where that screen shot doesn't match what you're actually seeing on the screen. As a result, I asked the publisher to let us wait until the final product was finished before releasing the book, and they agreed.

Accuracy Is the Watchword

I believe that this will also serve a very important goal—the best accuracy that we can provide. When books are rushed to print, then things fall through the cracks. That becomes apparent when you try to follow a step-by-step exercise in some chapter in a book, only to find that the chapter's author apparently wrote the exercise from his memory of how the software works, rather than actually trying out. Accuracy has of course always been important in books, but I believe that it's more important now than ever—after all, if you, the reader, were willing to put up with inaccurate advice and explanations, then why would you buy a book when you can always just search the Internet. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) I'm not promising perfection, but we've tried to get it as right as possible. Furthermore, if there is an inaccuracy, I'll post information about it on my online forum at www.minasi.com/forum, which I'll get to later in this introduction.

The Command Line Is a Must!

A long time ago, I was asked to be on a panel of “industry experts” at some conference. We took Q&A from the audience, and someone asked me why I thought the Windows Server products were beating the pants off the Novell server products, which were excellent in their own right and were the unquestioned king of the server market as recently as the mid-'90s. My answer went something like, “The thing that NT Server [the name of Windows Server prior to the year 2000] has that Novell doesn't is the GUI. If you can figure out how to play Solitaire, then you're halfway to being an NT administrator.” Okay, I was mostly looking for a laugh there, but in truth I think that Server's early GUI-centric nature made for an easier learning curve and contributed strongly to Windows Server's rapidly outpacing Novell, market share-wise.

I've always thought, however, that while GUIs are good for accomplishing things you only do occasionally, in the end analysis you can get a lot of tasks done more quickly with a command-line tool than a GUI tool, so I've always tried to learn both the GUI and CLI way to get things done, and I've always tried to teach my students and clients both ways, and since 1997 I've been writing a monthly column about command-line tools in Windows IT Pro magazine. Well, I guess I sort of got lucky, as Server 2008 includes a version of itself that runs basically without a GUI, a version called Server Core. It has a very, very minimal GUI, meaning that anyone running a Server Core system had better be pretty good with the CLI. To that end, my coauthors and I have attempted to offer both the GUI and CLI ways to get things done in these books, and I hope you find that useful.

Why Three Books? We, Um, Outgrew the Binding

So why did we break Mastering Windows Server 2008 into three books? Two reasons: size and a better “fit” for those who've purchased an earlier Mastering Windows Server book.

I'm told that the machines that bind printed pages into a book have a semi-standard maximum size of about 3 and some inches. Mastering Windows Server 2003 could apparently just fit that restriction, but adding a few more pages would have made it “unbindable.” In addition, I've heard from many readers that while they liked the 2003 book, hauling around an eight-pound book was like having to carry a second laptop, and did I know that sitting the book in one's lap raised welts? Honest, I heard you folks, and besides, I had to add coverage of plenty of neat things that arrived after Server 2003's April 2003 debut. Mastering Windows Server 2003's unwieldy nature and a need to cover a lot more of all that added up to one thing: the day of the single-volume Mastering Windows Server book was over.

Return Readers Will See More “New” Stuff … but No Deltas

As long as I had to divide Mastering Windows Server 2008 into a few books, I decided to remedy a concern voiced by a small number of return buyers who felt that they shouldn't see any material repeated from previous books. For example, a couple of readers who first purchased my Mastering Windows NT Server 4.0 book in 1997 and learned the fundamentals of TCP/IP in that book and later purchased my Mastering Windows 2000 Server book in 2001 objected to the fact that the basic “this is how IPv4 works” chapter hadn't changed very much and angrily wondered why I was “recycling” so much material. The answer is this: first-time readers of any Windows networking book need to know how TCP/IP works, but TCP/IP just doesn't change all that much from one version of Windows to another. It would, then, be crazy for me to waste time trying to write a whole new TCP/IP chapter that says pretty much the same things as the old one, just to word it differently from the previous book's coverage. TCP/IP is, of course, just one example—with the exception of the change from NT 4 to Windows 2000, we've never seen a new version of Windows Server that's more than about 20 percent different from its predecessor, and so of course every Mastering book on Windows Server will have large sections of text that have been revised from the previous version rather than completely rewritten.

Of course, an obvious answer would be to turn out two versions of every edition of Mastering Windows Server. One would be the “complete” version, and one the “delta” version, which covered only the changes in the operating system. I would truly love to produce both versions of each edition of the book, but the fact is that there's simply no money in it. I tried it in the update to Mastering Windows Server 2003 in 2006's Mastering Windows Server 2003 Upgrade Edition for SP1 and R2. It covered only the very large variety of changes that 2003's SP1 brought, as well as the changes that the interim “R2” version of Server 2003 delivered. The result was a smaller 700 page book that offered just the new stuff, instead of a revised edition of Mastering Windows Server 2003 … and it didn't sell worth a darn, unfortunately. Other book series that have tried delta books have run into similar troubles, so I wasn't all that surprised—but it was worth the experiment anyway.

I can, however, reduce the amount of “I've seen this before” for return readers by putting much of the basic stuff in a separate volume—this one. That's one benefit of separate volumes, and I hope the returning readers find if of value.

Meet the Second and Third Books in the Series

While this book will work just fine for someone just looking for a the basics of Microsoft networking, the three books together are designed to constitute a sort of soup-to-nuts course in planning, installing, maintaining, and troubleshooting networks based on Windows Server 2008. Here is, then, a quick overview on what you'll see in the second and third books, Mastering Windows Server 2008: Essential Technologies and Mastering Windows Server 2008: Enterprise Technologies or, as its friends know them, Books 2 and 3.

Mastering Windows Server 2008: Essential Technologies

Book 2 aims to help people who already know earlier versions of Windows Server and those who've just finished Mastering Windows Server 2008: Networking Foundations to work with what I think are the everyone-needs-to-know technologies and concepts, the things that networks large and small need to know.

The book starts off with an overview of what's new in Server 2008 and then returns in Chapter 2 to the topic of 2008's Setup program. But this time, we show you how to set up a hands-off setup via an answer file, and what you'll need to add that first 2008 server to your existing Windows Server 2003–based network. Then it's time in Chapter 3 to meet the newest member of the Server family, a sleek, trimmed-down, lean-and-mean version called Server Core. You'll do most of your Server Core administration from the command line … so you'll save days by learning the particular command-line tools you'll need to run a Core system. (As a matter of fact, you'll find that all three books share the trait that wherever possible you'll learn not only the GUI method of getting something accomplished, you'll learn the command-line method as well.)

In Chapter 4, we move from the TCP/IP basics covered in Mastering Windows Server 2008: Networking Foundations to a look at what's new in 2008's networking code. Chapter 5 returns us to the topic of DNS for two reasons: to learn what new features 2008 brings to DNS and some step-by-step instructions to set up a DNS infrastructure that'll make your network Active Directory–ready.

With the last of AD's foundation laid, it's time in Chapter 6 to actually build an Active Directory, showing you how to implement the simplest—and most common by far—Active Directory implementation, called a “one domain, one site forest.” Now that you've got an Active Directory, it needs users, so Chapter 7 explains the care and feeding of 2008-based user accounts, always with an eye to getting your work done in the least time. Then we return to the topic that we previously spent four chapters on in Mastering Windows Server 2008: Networking Foundations—control—as you'll learn how to expand and multiply the power of group policies with domain-based group policies in Chapter 8. Our examination of how to control AD continues in Chapter 9, where you'll learn how to divide up the work by creating administrative accounts with fine-grained control of those powers via something called “Active Directory delegation.”

The earliest function of any local area network is file and printer sharing, and so Chapters 10 through 12 take you step-by-step through several aspects of those topics and in particular taking veteran Windows Server administrators through a potentially troublesome migration tool. Every Active Directory needs machines called “domain controllers” to run the AD, and every DC needs a special shared folder called SYSVOL. Server 2008 completely changes SYSVOL, requiring a migration that, well, can be a little tricky … unless you read Chapter 11.

That room where the company keeps the servers can get pretty hot and noisy, so most of us admin types like remote administration tools, the topic of the Chapter 13. After that, you'll see how to connect various kinds of Windows clients to your new Active Directory domain in Chapter 14. Then it's time in Chapter 15 to set up Microsoft's Web server, the completely rebuilt-from-the-ground-up Internet Information Server 7.0. Finally, you'll see how to monitor your system's health and performance in Chapter 16, and the last chapter shows 2008's new Active Directory maintenance and recovery tools.

Mastering Windows Server 2008: Enterprise Technologies

Once you've worked your way through Mastering Windows Server 2008: Essential Technologies, you'll be well on the way to a good knowledge of the parts of Windows Server 2008 that virtually every Windows network will include (as far as I can see, anyway). Microsoft's made Windows Server into a fairly “big tent” in that it comes with a large number of other networking tools beyond what I think most networkers would consider the “essential” stuff. I think of those technologies as the “enterprise” tools and, again, you're not likely to come across all of them in any one organization, but I'm pretty sure you'll see differing combinations of some of them in virtually every organization.

You may have noticed a sort of narrative thread, a “story line” in the first two books: the first book lays the foundation, and the second raises your network's house, so to speak. They're each sort of like a novel in that reading their chapters out of order usually won't work well. In contrast, you'll see that Mastering Windows Server 2008: Enterprise Technologies is less of a “novel” and more a collection of “short stories,” coverage of topics like (to continue the house metaphor) putting in an extra bathroom, extending the garage, finishing the basement, and the like.

As with the first two books, we again open on the topic of deployment, this time in Chapter 1 moving beyond the question of rolling out one server and continuing to coverage of Microsoft's more extensive technologies for rolling out systems by the truckload in a chapter that includes Microsoft's new imaging tools and their unifying software, Windows Deployment Services. In Chapter 2, you'll learn about a technology that's of limited interest by itself but that acts as a foundation for several of the topics covered later—certificate services and public key infrastructure (PKI). Chapter 3 returns to TCP/IP fundamentals, but this time to demystify IP version 6, the new networking software that Microsoft enables by default on all Vista and Server 2008 systems. If you've been shutting off IPv6 as a matter of course in your modern Windows systems, then this chapter may change your mind. Chapter 4 continues IP coverage with details about how to build an IP infrastructure, including using a Window Server system as an “Internet traffic cop”—an “IP router,” and you'll learn how to divide your network into “subnets.” You'll need to understand Windows-based IP routing and subnetting as a prerequisite for the next two chapters.

Chapter 5 shows you how to use a Windows Server computer to allow you to access your organization's intranet from home or on the road, with coverage of Windows-based virtual private networking (VPN) technologies. Knowing about IP routing and Windows-based VPNs prepares you for one of 2008's really big all-new technologies, Network Access Protection (NAP). One way that malware gets into your network is when someone with a laptop computer accidentally installs some malware on the laptop and then brings it into your organization. Modern networks, however, can stop the malware at the door through a “quarantining” system that refuses to give a computer an address on the network until that computer's been through a sort of “health check.” Again, it is one of the few truly new-to-2008 pieces of Server 2008 and you can read all about it in Chapter 6.

In Chapters 7–11, we return to the topics of Active Directory and file shares. Chapter 7 expands on the basic AD structure that we discussed in Essential Technologies with a discussion of running ADs in organizations with multiple locations and branch offices. Chapter 8 introduces another one of Server 2008's all-new features, the notion of a Read-Only Domain Controller, or RODC. Microsoft originally created RODCs to address the problem of putting a DC—a server that contains user passwords and thus must be secured properly—into an insecure location like many branch offices. But now that RODCs are available, it's easy to see a number of other uses for them, as you'll see in Chapter 8. All of this talk of branch offices is then the jumping-off point for a new form of file server designed with branch offices in mind, “DFS Namespaces.” They first appeared in a sort of incomplete form in Server 2003 R2, but they really take off in Server 2008, as you'll learn in Chapter 9. Chapter 10 discusses the whys and hows of creating a multi-domain forest, and Chapter 11 explains how to merge and migrate existing Active Directories, as you might do if your organization merges with another, or changes its name. It's one of the uglier tasks we can ever face as AD managers, but Chapter 11 shows you the most direct ways to get it done.

Chapter 12 discusses an aspect of Server that's been around for about ten years, but that gets a major overhaul and improvement—Windows Terminal Services. There's so much new about Terminal Services that this chapter is a must-read for anyone using this valuable tool! Chapters 13 and 14 help out enterprises with non-Windows clients, explaining how to attach Macintoshes and Linux systems to Windows networks as easily and effectively as possible.

Chapters 15 and 16 discuss setting up FTP and e-mail servers on Server 2008 (and here “e-mail servers” does not mean Exchange, Microsoft's premier e-mail server product, but rather simpler Internet e-mail systems). The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is one of the oldest and still most-used ways to exchange files over the Internet, and Windows Server has always included an FTP server … but nobody ever really liked it. It always sort of felt like an afterthought, something that Microsoft did because someone forced them to do. With Windows Server 2008, however, we get a brand-new and quite nice bit of FTP server software, as you'll see in Chapter 15. Chapter 16 looks at Microsoft's implementation of the workhorse e-mail standards that handle every byte of Internet e-mail, the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). (Server 2003 also included a module called the Post Office Protocol [POP3], which meant that Server 2003 had a complete [if bare-bones] e-mail server right in the box, but unfortunately that's no longer true in Server 2008.)

More and more Windows components need to store reasonably large and complex databases and the standard way to access databases has become the Structured Query Language or SQL. Several parts of Windows Server can't function without a database server present, and so Microsoft includes a basic version of their SQL Server engine in Server 2008. Called “Windows Internal Database,” this server service, once added, requires a bit of care and feeding, as well as introduces new security requirements. Chapter 17 explains those issues, as well as offering a set of “cookbooks” on how to manage this SQL database engine.

The more software you have on your computer, the more potential bugs you've got on that computer, and so all the more patches you've got to apply. But keeping up with patching is becoming a part-time job … which is why Microsoft includes an entire service to do that, the Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). Chapter 18 shows you what WSUS does, how to set it up, and how to manage it.

Microsoft tells us that file servers are a mere thing of the past, and that a Web application of theirs is an even better idea—an application called Windows SharePoint Services. SharePoint's been around for a while but it keeps getting better. It lets you share documents as file shares do, but with the added benefit of a Web interface, an easy way to not just share files but collaborate with others, share calendars, and tons of other things. SharePoint's more than just a Web app, it's an, um, way of life as far as I can see, and Chapter 19 covers it.

Enterprise Technologies continues with Chapter 20, where we return to the matter of user account management with some practical advice on how to use roaming profiles, group policies, and logon scripts to simplify things for users—which simplifies things for us administrators. Finally, it wraps up with a start-to-finish explanation of Server's new “Hyper-V” virtualization tool, something that Microsoft's put into Server with the intention of taking over the ever-growing “server virtualization” market. If you're not yet using virtualization to its fullest or if you'd like to see how to get the most out of 2008's server virtualization platform then you won't want to miss this chapter. And with that, the Mastering Windows Server 2008 series is done … until Windows Server 2008 R2 appears in a couple of years, that is!

Stay in Touch and Learn More

I surely hope that this book and its companions answer all of your questions … but if you need more information, want to ask a question, have a suggestion for future editions or—oh, this is the painful part—you found an error in the book (eek!), then we're easy to get in touch with. You can find me at help@minasi.com, and I promise—I always answer my e-mail, even if it's just to say, “Um, I'm sorry, but I have no idea, but such-and-such guy might.”

Also, I host an online community of several thousand members via my online technical help forum at http://www.minasi.com/forum. We've been running since 2002 and we're very fortunate to have some very smart members who are quite helpful on a wide variety of topics. Come on down, ask a question, join a discussion, or offer some of your expertise. Our prime directive at the forum is, “Be nice!”—no newbie flaming allowed.

Finally, I'm always learning new things and I just can't wait to tell you about them, so I put together a free technical newsletter every month or so. You can find out about them in any of three ways. First, I've got an RSS feed at http://www.minasi.com/rss.xml that'll tell you when I create a new newsletter, as well as seminars that I offer and the occasional news about my Web site. Second, you can sign up for e-mail alerts, short text e-mails that tell you when a newsletter is available; go to http://www.minasi.com/nwsreg.htm to sign up. If you're skittish about giving people your e-mail address, then I surely understand—but, as my privacy policy states, I've been collecting e-mail addresses for the newsletter since 1999, and I've never spammed anyone, I've never sold the list, and I never will. Third, you can read my newsletters at any time by visiting http://www.minasi.com/nwstoc.htm. And if you forget any of those URLs, then don't worry—just remember the home page at http://www.minasi.com, and you'll be able to navigate from there to any of those locations.

Again, welcome to Mastering Windows Server 2008: Networking Foundations. I hope you like it!

Chapter 1

Why Network?

If you're reading this book, then you have an interest in Microsoft networking. For some people, networking sounds like a scary topic, but it really isn't. Getting a network running doesn't need to be hard, and this chapter explains many of the reasons why you want to set up a network when you have multiple machines to use. Windows Server 2008 makes networking considerably easier than ever, in fact, so you'll find that you do less work than ever before to get a network up and running.

In this chapter, we'll give you a bit of history on Server 2008 and then take a very high-altitude look at why we're using Microsoft's networking software in the first place. This is not intended to prepare you for a test on networking essentials, nor is it a complete book on Windows past and present. What I'm trying to accomplish in this chapter is to answer these questions:

Why should you care about all of this networking stuff, anyway?

What do you need to create a simple network?

Why does Microsoft's networking software approach networking the way that it does?

What's the Point of Networks and Networking?

In a way, this chapter is penance for my youthful misdeeds.

When I was in the seventh grade, I had a math teacher named Mr. Schtazle. Seventh-grade math was a kind of potpourri of mathematical topics—I recall one chapter that took pains to drill into our heads the difference between precision and accuracy—and I'd plague the poor man at the beginning of every chapter by asking him, “How will we use this?”—a slightly more-polite version of “Why do we care?” Well, nowadays I find that when I'm teaching a room full of people about Windows Server, got to be careful to answer the question “Why do you care?” even if it isn't asked. Because if I don't answer that, then many people in the room will leave the class with a pretty good notion of to accomplish a bunch of tasks but not a really good feel for they'd do the tasks in the first place. And you know what? Answering the “Why do I care?” question can be pretty rough some times.

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!