The Channel - The Servers are up!

The Servers are up!

Written by Michael Lovell

Friday, 21 November 2008

The Windows 2003 servers that is.

Forests, trees, domains, organisational units, users, (god-like) administrators and their server group policies. These terms have been our focus point for this week, once we had committed to memory all the differences between the various editions available for Server 2003.

This week we explored the world of Server 2003 by creating and developing our own fictitious small companies (consisting of two 2003 Servers and 15 employees in 3 different locations with their own XP Pro machines). We used virtual machines on a virtual network to accomplish this task of simulating these created companies. We started with a fresh install of Server 2003 and XP Pro and then built our companies from the ground up by creating and assigning users to groups, then creating and editing group policies.

We had fun setting up and editing our own special mmc for our virtual helpdesk department to use to help the virtual users with common helpdesk queries ( such as resetting passwords, adding new users or assigning them to groups) – all without giving the helpdesk operators administrator rights.

We also learnt how to create automatic scripts to run whenever a computer starts, a user logs on or off, or during shutdown, as well as many other nifty little tools that will be invaluable when we are real server administrators.

It’s been a lot to take in, much reading and study to make sure it all stays in my head for many years to come, but it sure has been an interesting journey through a week-in-the-life-of-a-server-administrator and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. That’s a wrap for this week! - we still have much to go next week in part two of the server 2003 course, so I’ll catch you then!

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