Question

Try to make it as simple as you can. Please provide the answers with some examples as fast as you can.

1-The technology that make up the core functionality of Windows Server 2012 include Active Directory, the Microsoft Server Manager, DHCP and IIS. Explain, in your own words, the nature and function of these technologies.

Answer:

2-Windows Server Core is a new installation option in Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter editions. The traditional Windows GUI is not available in Server Core. Initial configuration tasks, such as changing the server name and setting IP address information, must be done from command line. What is the command ? and What are the advantages of using Windows Server Core?

3-What role does DNS play in relation to Active Directory (AD)?

4-Briefly explain, in your own words, the nature and function of a domain, tree and forest in windows networking.

5-What term is used for transferring Active Directory information among domain controllers? Explain.

Answer 1

1. Answer

By using the Active Directory  Domain Services (AD DS) server role, you can create a scalable, secure, and manageable infrastructure for user and resource management, and provide support for directory-enabled applications such as Microsoft® Exchange Server.AD DS provides a distributed database that stores and manages information about network resources and application-specific data from directory-enabled applications. A server that is running AD DS is called a domain controller. Administrators can use AD DS to organize elements of a network, such as users, computers, and other devices, into a hierarchical containment structure. The hierarchical containment structure includes the Active Directory forest, domains in the forest, and organizational units (OUs) in each domain.

Server Manager is a management console in Windows Server that helps IT professionals provision and manage both local and remote Windows-based servers from their desktops, without requiring either physical access to servers, or the need to enable Remote Desktop protocol (rdP) connections to each server. Although Server Manager is available in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008, Server Manager was updated in Windows Server 2012 to support remote, multi-server management, and help increase the number of servers an administrator can manage

DHCP is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard designed to reduce the administration burden and complexity of configuring hosts on a TCP/IP-based network, such as a private intranet. Using the DHCP Server service, the process of configuring TCP/IP on DHCP clients is automatic.

Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 provide several enhancements to the DHCP Server service

Practical applications

DHCP in Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 provide the following:

1. Safe, easy and reliable: Valid configuration parameters for all clients on the network can be dynamically provided. DHCP clients renew their leased address allocation automatically in the background. With DHCP failover, a new feature in Windows Server 2012, DHCP servers can provide a highly resilient DHCP service that allows the DHCP client to extend the lease on its current IP address by contacting another DHCP server on the enterprise network.

2. Flexible assignment: DHCP supports a large and extensible set of client configuration parameters. With client reservations, it is possible to reserve a specific IP address for permanent use by a DHCP client. A new feature in Windows Server 2012 called policy based assignment allows for even greater flexibility.

3. DHCP integration with DNS enables DNS resource records to be dynamically updated for new computers and devices, or when IP addresses of existing devices change on the network.

Internet Information Services (IIS) 7 and later provide a request-processing architecture which includes:

• The Windows Process Activation Service (WAS), which enables sites to use protocols other than HTTP and HTTPS.
• A Web server engine that can be customized by adding or removing modules.
• Integrated request-processing pipelines from IIS and ASP.NET

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2. Answer

The Server Core option is a minimal installation option that is available when you are deploying the Standard or Datacenter edition of Windows Server. Server Core includes most but not all server roles. Server Core has a smaller disk footprint, and therefore a smaller attack surface due to a smaller code base.

When you install Windows Server, you install only the server roles that you choose - this helps reduce the overall footprint for Windows Server. However, the Server with Desktop Experience installation option still installs many services and other components that are often not needed for a particular usage scenario.

That's where Server Core comes into play: the Server Core installation eliminates any services and other features that are not essential for the support of certain commonly used server roles. For example, a Hyper-V server doesn't need a graphical user interface (GUI), because you can manage virtually all aspects of Hyper-V either from the command line using Windows PowerShell or remotely using the Hyper-V Manager.

When you finish installing Server Core on a system and sign in for the first time, you're in for a bit of a surprise. The main difference between the Server with Desktop Experience installation option and Server Core is that Server Core does not include the following GUI shell packages:

• Microsoft-Windows-Server-Shell-Package
• Microsoft-Windows-Server-Gui-Mgmt-Package
• Microsoft-Windows-Server-Gui-RSAT-Package
• Microsoft-Windows-Cortana-PAL-Desktop-Package

In other words, there is no desktop in Server Core, by design. While maintaining the capabilities required to support traditional business applications and role-based workloads, Server Core does not have a traditional desktop interface. Instead, Server Core is designed to be managed remotely through the command line, PowerShell, or a GUI tool (like RSAT or Windows Admin Center).

In addition to no UI, Server Core also differs from the Server with Desktop Experience in the following ways:

• Server Core does not have any accessibility tools
• No OOBE (out-of-box-experience) for setting up Server Core
• No audio support

Advantages of Server Core

The following table lists the benefits of Server Core.

ADVANTAGE OF SERVER CORE

Benefit	Description
Reduced servicing	Because Server Core installs only what is required for a manageable DHCP, File, DNS, Media Services, and Active Directory server, less servicing is required.
Reduced management	Because less is installed on a Server Core-based server, less management is required.
Reduced attack surface	Because there is less running on the server, there is less attack surface.
Less disk space required	Server Core requires about 3.4GB to install.

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3 Answer

Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) uses Domain Name System (DNS) name resolution services to make it possible for clients to locate domain controllers and for the domain controllers that host the directory service to communicate with each other.

AD DS enables easy integration of the Active Directory namespace into an existing DNS namespace. Features such as Active Directory-integrated DNS zones make it easier for you to deploy DNS by eliminating the need to set up secondary zones, and then configure zone transfers.

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4 Answer

• A domain is a group of objects, such as users or devices, that share the same AD database. Domains have a domain name system(DNS) structure.
• A tree is one or more domains grouped together. The tree structure uses a contiguous namespace to gather the collection of domains in a logical hierarchy. Trees can be viewed as trust relationships where a secure connection, or trust, is shared between two domains. Multiple domains can be trusted where one domain can trust a second, and the second domain can trust a third. Because of the hierarchical nature of this setup, the first domain can implicitly trust the third domain without needing explicit trust.
• A forest is a group of multiple trees. A forest consists of shared catalogs, directory schemas, application information and domain configurations. The schema defines an object's class and attributes in a forest. In addition, global catalog servers provide a listing of all the objects in a forest. According to Microsoft, the forest is Active Directory's security boundary.

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5. Answer

Replication

Active Directory replication ensures that the information or data between domain controllers remains updated and consistent. It is Active Directory replication that ensures that Active Directory information hosted by domain controllers is synchronized between every domain controller

In any organization, large or small, it is imperative that directory data is updated regularly and available for access to all users. For example, when an employee’s telephone number is modified, it must be communicated throughout the organization ensuring up-to-dateness of every domain controller.This is accomplished through a mechanism called replication. Simply put, replication is the process by which copies of directory data are created and maintained in several domain controllers

For example the change in employees telephone number. Here “telephone number” is one of the attributes that defines the object “employee”. When this attribute is modified, only the change in the attribute, that is the new telephone number, is replicated to all the domain controllers and not the entire object. Here comes the concept of Update Sequence Numbers(USN). When an object is created, by default a USN is assigned to them. Whenever a change is elicited these USNs are incremented making every other USN in other domain controllers go out of date for that object. To ensure that only the most recent changes are replicated, only the highest USN is stored and displayed. Thus changes are monitored and recorded with the help of USN in Active Directory