Microsoft Exam  70-290 – Server Environment

Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment.  Study Guide

4. Managing and Maintaining a Server Environment

 

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Printers

Clients download printer driver from the print server when they first connect to a shared printer.  Printers are always published in Active Directory. You can use AD sites and subnets to configure the Location property of the subnet object.  The trick is to match this with the Location attribute on the printer.

Learn these printer permissions: Print, Manage Documents (Creator Owner, Administrators, Print Operators, Server Operators), Manage Printers (Administrators, Print Operators, Server Operators), Special Permissions; sometimes there appears a Power Users group. By default, the ‘Print’ permission is assigned to the Everyone group.

Printer Priorities are a wonderful idea, what you do is configure multiple logical printers all pointing to a single printing device.  Two advantages of multiple instances are a range of priorities and variety of time of day when the printers operate. Go to the Advanced tab to adjust these properties.

Printer pooling is the reverse idea, lots of physical printers with one queue.  Configure printer pool from the Ports tab of printer properties. 

To configure spooler events logging and locate spooler folder, open Server Properties from the File menu in Printers And Faxes folder (choose Advanced tab). Spooler registers its errors in System log.

Tip:On high-volume print server you should move spooler folder to a partition other than the system or boot partition.

To configure auditing for printer, open printer Properties dialog box, click Security and then Advanced, choose Auditing and set the appropriate options; then you must enable Audit Object Access policy in GPO.

Internet Printing

Internet Printing is a component of IIS you can install to provide access to printers through web (http://server01/printers/ or http://server01/printersharename/).

In IIS administration the Web Service Extensions node is important for enabling particular services. There are two types of printers: locally attached and network attached.

SUS (System Update Services)

There seem a high proportion of questions about this new system for managing hotfixes and patches.SUS server runs on Windows 2000 Server with SP2 or Server 2003.

You should consider installing SUS on a dedicated server without any other IIS applications to avoid problems with IIS Lockout. 6 GB is recommended by MS for SUS content folder.The SUS partition and the system partition must be formatted as NTFS.

The client component of SUS is Windows Automatic Updates (Windows 2000 with SP3, Windows XP with SP1, Server 2003).

You must be a local administrator on the SUS server to administer and configure SUS. You may need to add SUS server to Local Intranet trusted site list.

The Automatic Updates client is configured to automatically download updates and then prompt the user to install them. Service Packs can be deployed automatically using GPO (use UNC format in Package path and Assigned mode).

Download of the updates can be automatic or with notification, installation can be with notification (only Administrators are notified) or scheduled (only Administrators can delay or cause earlier installation).

With GPO (Windows Update) you can set behaviours of Automatic Updates, reschedule options for updates installations, set options for machine restart to complete update installation, redirect Automatic Updates to a server running SUS.

You can monitor SUS and Automatic Updates using logs: Synchronization Log, Approval Log, Windows Update Log (Window Update.log in Windows folder), Wutrack.bin (client interaction with SUS; analyzed by programs not humans).

Synchronization messages can be viewed in the System log.If no new updates appear after synchronization go to the Monitor Server and click Refresh.

If you receive a message that synchronization service is not running properly, you must restart SUS Synchronization Service.If you cannot connect to the administration site or if clients cannot connect to the SUS server, restart IIS (WWW Publishing Service).

If Automatic Updates clients do not appear to be receiving updates properly, check registry keys.

Event Viewer

Each machine has anEvent Viewer which records events in either the Application, System, or Security log. Domain Controllers also contain additional logs: Directory Service and File Replication Service.

DNS Servers also contain additional log: DNS Server.

Events types: Information, Warning, Error, Success audit, Failure audit.

You can set GPO to shutdown computer if it is unable to write to the Security log with audit information.

Performance Monitor

Performance monitor and System monitor are used to detect bottlenecks, always monitor the ‘big four’ counters.   Memory, Processor, Disk and Network.  The best idea is to collect information in logs, look out for the different types, for example SQL Format. You can use Relog command-line utility to export counters to SQL Server database.

Performance Monitor (perfmon) is a powerful program found in all Windows servers from NT to Server 2003.  I think of Performance Monitor as more of a toolbox than a single gadget. 

The main reasons for Performance Monitoring

  • Detecting network bottlenecks.
  • Identifying server performance problems.
  • Planning the capacity of your servers and subnets.
  • Setting alerts so that you can nip trouble in the bud.
  • Creating baselines when activity is low.
  • Understanding the effect of your workload on resources.
  • Understanding what components are actually doing.  (Is the Disk mainly reading or writing?)
  • Knowledge is power.  Set an alert when resources are running low.  (Memory: Available bytes less than 10 MB)

Key Counters

Memory: Available bytes

The more available memory the faster the server can respond.   As long as the trace indicates more than 10GB of free memory, then I conclude that the server has sufficient RAM.

Processor: % Processor Time

An overloaded processor has a distinctive and unmistakeable performance monitor profile.  The % Processor Time trace looks like a curtain hanging down from an imaginary ceiling.  See Diagram 1.

Text books quote thresholds of between 70 – 85 percent for % Processor Time, the key point is that the counter is continuously high.  It is normal for the trace to show a sharp increase when any program executes; you can safely ignore spikes.

PhysicalDisk

PhysicalDisk: Avg. Read Queue Length  Should be less than  2
PhysicalDisk: Avg. Write Queue Length  Should be less than 2
PhysicalDisk: % Disk Time  more than 50% indicates a bottleneck

Network

Bottlenecks occur if the % Network Utilization exceed 35%

Wmic is a command-line tool to enter WMI.To administer WMI run wmimgmt.msc using Run�

You can use Logman command-line utility to collect (and schedule collection) performance counters on local and remote computers.

Licencing

To administer licensing you have to install and start License Logging service.

There are two tools you can use to administer licenses: Licensing (local) tool in Control Panel and Licensing tool in Administrative Tools (for entire site).

You can also view licenses using AD Sites And Services.To manage effectively license tracking and compliance use license groups.

AdminPak.msi

Can be installed from the %systemroot%\system32 folder. Administration Tools Pack of Server 2000 is supported by Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional with SP1.

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Train Signal have an excellent Windows Server 2008 course.  You get over 70 hrs instruction with Ed Liberman and Ben "Coach" Culbertson.  Try their step-by-step videos and master Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Admin.

The package includes the Transcender exams, which are the key to gaining the coverted Microsoft Certified IT Professional certification.  However, the course also builds practical experience so that you can manage your network effectively once you complete the course.

Watch a Demo of Train Signal’s MCITP course

 

You need to configure the Software Update Service which command do you use? http://server/
susadmin/
(nothing)
susme/
printers/
susconfig/

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