Microsoft's services vary enormously in their complexity. In this section I have deliberately chosen services such as DNS and DHCP which are quite tricky to setup. Each
service has step-by-step
tutorials to help you find the most important settings for Windows Services. With the exception of Volume Shadow Copy, you find these services on both Windows Server 2003 and 2000. However, the later
operating system usually has a few more sub-menus.
I designed this page to be a mini sitemap with pointers to the selected services.
Guy Recommends: A Free Trial of the Network Performance Monitor
(NPM)
Solarwinds'
Orion performance monitor
will help you discover what's happening on your network. This
utility will also guide you through troubleshooting; the dashboard will
indicate whether the root cause is a broken link, faulty equipment or
resource overload.
Perhaps the NPM's best feature is the way it suggests solutions to network
problems. Its
second best feature is the ability to monitor the health of individual VMWare
virtual machines. If you are interested in troubleshooting, and creating network maps, then I recommend that you take advantage of Solarwinds' offer.
Right from their early versions of Windows, Microsoft have implemented their operating system through a
series of services. The equivalent in DOS would have been TSR, or in other operating systems Daemon or Netware Loadable modules. Some names, such as WINS and SUS you immediately think of as services, whilst others
like Volume Shadow Copy or Alerter are just 'there' and you don't really think of them as operating services.
To get a full list of Windows Server 2003 services, launch the snap-in and examine the list.
Guy's Challenge - Download
this free device backup utility
(CatTools)
CatTools is a free program for backing up configuration settings on
hardware devices. Here is Guy's challenge. If you
download CatTools, then it will not only take care of backups, but
also it will show you something new about the hardware on you
network. I could give you a money back guarantee - but CatTools is
already free! Thus, I just make a techie to techie challenge, you
will learn more about your network if you:
Guy Recommends: Orion's NPM - Network Performance Monitor
Orion's performance monitor is designed for detecting network outages. NPM makes it easy to see what's working, and what needs your attention.
This utility guides you through creating network maps. It also helps troubleshooting by indicating whether the root cause is faulty equipment, or resource overload.
