لطفا منتظر باشید ...
How This Book Is Organized
Whichever way you choose to use this book, you will probably first want to
familiarize yourself with the contents, so here's a
brief synopsis of each chapter and what you'll find:
Chapter 1, General Administration
Think of this chapter as the removable top drawer of your
toolboxusually cluttered, but containing your favorite,
indispensable tools. The topics in this chapter include ways of
hacking the Run As command, collecting event log information, running
commands, extending your environment, shutting down processes,
renaming mapped drives, and more. You'll also learn
how to disable file encryption if you don't need or
want it, collect configuration settings from remote machines, use
automatic logon where it's safe to do so, and make
it easier for users to access Remote Assistance when they need to.
We'll also list some of our favorite third-party
tools and a terrific online resource for Microsoft management
technologies.
Chapter 2, Active Directory
Most of the time, when you're administering Active
Directory, you'll find the GUI tools are easy to use
but ill suited for complex or repetitive tasks.
That's where scripts come in, and this chapter
includes scripts that leverage ADSI and WMI to make your life easier.
These scripts can be used to perform tasks such as searching for old
computer accounts, creating organizational units (OUs), delegating
authority over OUs, and displaying information about objects stored
in Active Directory.
Chapter 3, User Management
A large part of day-to-day administration of an Active Directory
environment is managing users and their accounts. The usual way of
doing this is by using the GUI, but when it comes to organizations
with hundreds or even thousands of users, this approach can be
frustrating. This chapter is mostly about alternativesways of
doing things faster using scripts. You'll find
scripts for displaying information about users, finding specific
users on your network, changing user passwords, unlocking user
accounts, getting a list of disabled accounts, displaying which
groups a user belongs to, and more. If you're
familiar with VBScript, you can also customize these scripts further
to meet the specific needs of your own networking environment.
Chapter 4, Networking Services
Under the hood of Windows are the core networking services and
components that enable systems to communicate across a network. These
components include services such as Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol (DHCP), Domain Name System (DNS), Windows Internet Name
Service (WINS), and other services that run on top of TCP/IP.
Configuring these services can be complex, and it can be hard to
pinpoint the problem when things go wrong. This chapter is about
managing such services and other networking components.
You'll learn how to use a script to manage services
on remote computers, how to ensure DHCP server availability so your
clients can communicate, how DNS aging and scavenging work and can be
configured, how to troubleshoot common DNS problems when Active
Directory is deployed, how to perform complicated network
configuration tasks using scripts and from the command line, and
several other important tasks.
Chapter 5, File and Print
File and print is the traditional bread and butter of networking, and
while it's gradually being overtaken by more
advanced document-management solutions, not many companies are
planning on retiring their file servers anytime soon. Managing shared
folders and printers also makes up a major component of an
administrator's daily routine, and a high proportion
of calls to help desk as well. So it's worth
examining some new ways of doing old tasks, such as mapping drives or
configuring default printers, as well as some ways to perform tasks
that are not easy using standard Windows tools, including mapping the
structure of a directory or determining who has a certain file open
on the network. That's what this chapter is
aboutdoing old tasks in new ways and making complex tasks
simple.
Chapter 6, IIS
Internet Information Services (IIS) is one of the more popular
features of Windows server platforms. Whether you're
running IIS 5 (Windows 2000 Server) or IIS 6 (Windows Server 2003),
the ability to hack the metabase (the place where IIS stores its
configuration settings) lets you do things that are impossible to do
using the standard GUI tool for managing IISnamely, Internet
Services Manager. Before you start hacking the metabase, however, you
better be sure you've backed it up properly and know
your way around inside it. Several hacks in this chapter deal with
these topics, including how to restore the metabase when you have no
working backup. Also included are tips on hiding the metabase from
attackers to make it more secure, managing different aspects of IIS
by using scripts, and allowing other HTTP services, such as the
Apache web server, to run on Windows and coexist with IIS.
Chapter 7, Deployment
Administering Windows-based networks begins with deployment, and the
focus of this chapter is on how to manage the installation (and
uninstallation) of Windows 2000/XP/2003 and its individual
components. In particular, the first several articles deal with
Remote Installation Services (RIS) and Sysprep, two powerful but
complex tools for installing Windows images on large numbers of
machines. Other articles deal with removing unneeded components
manually from the command line and during unattended setup, and
creating a network boot disk for unattended installation of Windows.
These tips and tools are designed to make the job of deploying
Windows easier, so you can get on with the day-to-day job of
configuring, maintaining, and troubleshooting systems on your
network.
Chapter 8, Security
Probably no aspect of the system administrator's job
is more important these days than security, and this is especially so
with systems running Windows. The ever-increasing threats of viruses,
worms, Trojans, and other exploits means administrators have to spend
time and energy learning how to protect their
company's networks against the wiles of malicious
hackers on the Internet. This chapter looks at some of the ways you
can protect your network from these threats. It includes coverage of
best practices in virus protection, protecting Administrator
accounts, securing backups, protecting domain controllers, and
finding machines with automatic logon enabled. A security FAQ and a
review of security tools you can download from
Microsoft's web site round out this chapter and help
you build an arsenal of best practices and tools that can help keep
your network secure.
Chapter 9, Patch Management
Patch management is a way of life for system administrators nowadays.
With the proliferation of Internet worms and other threats, new
patches are being released for Windows platforms on an almost weekly
basis. It takes time and energy to test these patches and deploy them
on production systems, and occasionally something goes wrong and a
patch designed to correct one problem actually creates another. The
first key to effective patch management is proper business practices:
test, deploy, and verify. The second key is proper tools; Windows
platforms come with several built-in tools, while others can be
obtained from Microsoft's web site and third-party
vendors. The third key is knowledgeknowing how
patch-management tools work and how to troubleshoot them when things
go wrong. The hacks in this chapter touch on all three keys to
effective patch management and help enlarge your understanding and
skills in this crucial area of a system
administrator's job description.
Chapter 10, Backup and Recovery
Finally, this chapter looks at the backup process and examines how to
back up specific entities, such as your System State, certificate
authority (CA) information, Encrypting File System (EFS) keys, and
Distributed File System (DFS) namespace. We also look at how to back
up something as simple as an individual file from the command line,
to something as complicated as an entire system using the new
Automated System Recover (ASR) feature of Windows Server 2003. Also
included is a script that can be used to collect disaster recovery
files and event logs from remote Windows 2000 servers. We also map
out procedures you can try to recover a failed system, short of
restoring everything from backup, navigating through a maze of
options like Safe Mode, Emergency Repair, Last Known Good
Configuration, and the Recovery Console. Finally, we mention a few
services you can call on when your worst nightmare happens and you
need to recover your business data from a failed disk that has no
backup.
