Introduction

Welcome to this book on Windows Server 2012 R2. All of the enhancements and new features that this latest release of Microsoft’s flagship enterprise operating system offers have definitely raised the bar for future versions of Windows Server. To give you an insight into how much extra you get with 2012 R2, you only have to look at the original Windows Server 2012 release that reached general availability in September 2012. Shortly after that version hit the shelves, Sybex got this group of authors together to write a book on it, but just as we were coming to the final edits of our chapters, Microsoft announced that Windows Server 2012 R2 was to be released in October 2013—that’s just over 12 months since the original version of Server 2012. In that short period of time, the amount of new functionality that was packed into Server 2012 R2 meant that we literally had to rewrite nearly half of the original Server 2012 book!

The team of authors who have worked on this book have an abundance of experience designing, deploying, managing, and troubleshooting Windows Server in large-scale enterprise environments, and we’re really excited to tell you all about this version of the product.

If you’re new to Windows Server, then this book will strive to give you the knowledge you require to go out and start working with it straight away. If you’re an experienced administrator or consultant and are already familiar with it, then don’t worry; we definitely have loads of new information in here for you to learn to help keep you ahead of the pack.

Who Should Read This Book?

Like every other book in the Mastering Windows Server series, we’ve aimed this book at people who need to know how to install, configure, maintain, and troubleshoot a Windows Server environment. We assume that you already have at least a basic understanding of standard TCP/IP networking and that you have a basic working level of comfort with previous versions of the Windows GUI and Microsoft Management Console (MMC) in particular.

As complex as software products are becoming, no one can be an expert on all of them. If you are like most administrators, you have time to learn only enough about a product so that you can manage it effectively. However, there is probably a lot more that you could be doing with any one product. This book will get you up to speed quickly and then help you through some of the more arcane topics.

Not every administrator will have the same type of infrastructure to work with. What works well in a large corporation does not always work for small companies. What works well for small companies may not scale well for large organizations. Microsoft has attempted to address the differences among companies and deliver a product that can be implemented quickly for a small company yet will still scale well for large organizations. No matter which scenario fits you, you will want to learn how this product will work for you.

What’s Inside?

Chapter 1 starts out with an overview of what’s new in Windows Server 2012 R2 (let’s henceforth abbreviate that to “Server 2012 R2”), and Chapter 2 shows you how to install it on your servers and how to begin to integrate it with your existing network, if you have one.

Veterans of Windows networking will expect Server 2012 R2 to look like other versions of Windows does, with a desktop, a Start menu, and a host of graphically based tools, but as you will quickly learn, there’s a whole new GUI to get to grips with. Chapter 3 gets you started on Server Core, and we recommend that you spend time learning it. Chapter 4 looks at the networking enhancements in Server 2012 R2, and Chapter 5 introduces you to some new functionality around IPAM and DHCP Failover. Chapter 6 walks you through DNS, answering the question, “How do I build a DNS infrastructure that is both secure and crafted to serve an Active Directory best?”

Speaking of AD, Chapter 7 is the first chapter to address that essential Windows Server technology, with an explanation of how to build the most common, and simplest, type of Active Directory: one that contains just one domain and just one location. Even if you’re going to build huge, globe-spanning ADs, this first look provides a necessary foundation, so don’t skip it. Then, once you have your AD up, you’ll need to create and manage user accounts, and Chapter 8 shows you how. Once you have a working AD in place, then it’s time to get some payback from all your design and setup work, and the tool for that is Group Policy. The good news is that Group Policy is a great way to control 10 or 10,000 machines and user accounts centrally; the bad news is that Group Policy can be a mite complex—but Chapter 9 helps on that score. The fourth AD-related chapter, Chapter 10, covers Active Directory Federation Services, which is a way to provide single sign-on access to your resources across organizational boundaries.

In Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 you get an introduction to shared storage and clustering, which are the pillar components of delivering a highly available IT infrastructure back to the business, along with an introduction to the new “SANish” capabilities of Server 2012 R2 using Storage Spaces.

Chapter 13 through Chapter 15 give you a three-part series on sharing files and folders in Windows Server by initially covering the basics of sharing folders and files and using Windows’s security to control who can get to particular files. You will then be walked through Dynamic Access Control, which is a new way of controlling and auditing your file share access. Many servers serve not only files but shared printers as well, and Chapter 16 shows you how to accomplish this with Server 2012 R2.

Following that, Chapter 17 shows you how to maintain and control your servers remotely using a number of built-in technologies, including Remote Desktop. By now, you have some working servers (which is nice) but no clients to use those services (which makes the whole thing sort of pointless), so Chapter 18 shows you how to hook up the various varieties of Windows created in the past decade to a Windows Server 2012 R2 network. What’s that, you say? You’ve got a Mac? No problem, you’ll learn how to connect that up too.

Chapter 19 gets you up and running with one of Windows’s most complex Server add-ons, Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS), better known as the web server. You’ll learn how to get IIS running, how to set up a simple website, and how to find your way around the IIS management tools built into Server 2012 R2.

Chapter 20 discusses how a Server 2012 R2 system can facilitate IP routing, which may sound like an odd topic until you consider that you need to understand a bit of IP routing on a Windows Server before you can tackle Chapter 21, which shows you how to use your Server 2012 R2 system to set up a virtual private network. In Chapter 21, you will also learn about the really cool DirectAccess functionality that comes out of the box with Server 2012 R2.

Now it’s time to return to Active Directory and take on some more advanced AD topics with four chapters. Chapter 22 shows you how to add multi-location awareness to your AD with a look at sites, site links, and subnets, AD-style. And if you have multiple sites, then you may have some sites that you might be a bit uneasy about installing a domain controller into—which is why we have read-only domain controllers (RODCs); learn about them in Chapter 23. After that, it’s time to consider when you’d need to complicate your AD a bit by adding one, two, or a hundred more domains to it, in Chapter 24. Mergers, acquisitions, or just plain-old reorganizations may require you to reshape your AD in a manner that’s not all that easy, unless you learn about domain migrations, SID histories, and trust relationships—as you will in Chapter 25. Continuing the Active Directory theme, Chapter 26 dives deep into advanced user account management and support.

You might have already read that Hyper-V is a pretty big thing in Windows Server 2012 R2, so we can’t call the book complete without a couple of chapters on that topic—step forward Chapters 27 and 28. Even if you don’t do virtualization, give these two chapters a look, because they will help you understand the technology and issues in server virtualization, which is a must-know field.

In Chapter 29, we will walk you through installing, using, and administering Remote Desktop Services, which will help you to design and deliver an optimal remote access and application publishing solution to your organization.

Up to this point, you’ll have a lot of time invested in getting your server up and running, so to wrap up the final sections of the book you’ll be ready for Chapters 30 through 32—monitoring your system’s performance, patching it, and backing it up.

The Mastering Series

The Mastering series from Sybex provides outstanding instruction for readers with intermediate and advanced skills, in the form of top-notch training and development for those already working in their field and clear, serious education for those aspiring to become pros. Every Mastering book includes:

• Real-World Scenarios, ranging from case studies to interviews that show how the tool, technique, or knowledge presented is applied in actual practice.
• Skill-based instruction, with chapters organized around real tasks rather than abstract concepts or subjects.
• Self-review test questions, so you can be certain you’re...