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Windows Server Administration 70-646 – Chapter 1 – Lesson 1

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My exam studying didn’t go so well last weekend, so I pushed the exam out until the end of February as I try to be more realistic. This long weekend, I did manage to start doing a little reading. As I said in a earlier post, the book I am using to study is the Microsoft Press book, Windows Server Administration Self Paced Training kit.

As I am reading the book, I am summarizing key points as this helps me to remember what I have read, and I will post my summaries to my blog, one chapter per week, with lesson’s spread throughout the week. Remember, this is only a highlight of the book and I am not trying to rewrite the book on this blog.

Chapter 1 – Lesson 1: Planning Windows Server 2008 Installation and Upgrade

This week, we start at the beginning, Chapter 1 – Lesson 1. This lesson covers the basic points on Windows 2008 which are:

  • System Requirements
  • Editions
  • Server Core
  • Upgrade Path
  • BitLocker

System Requirements

The minimum system requirements are 1 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM and 15 GB of hard disk space. Recommended are 2 GHz processor, 2 GB RAM and 40 GB of hard disk space.

Editions

Considerable information is presented on the various versions of Windows Server 2008. There is Web, Standard, Enterprise and Data Center, each available are 32bit and 64bit and that Core editions are available for each. There is also an Itanium edition as well.

  • Standard Edition – network load balancing supported, failover clustering is not supported. 32bit – supports 4 GB of RAM and 4 processors in SMP configuration. 64bit – supports 32 GB of RAM and 4 processors in SMP configuration.
  • Enterprise Edition – supports network failover and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). 32bit – supports 64 GB of RAM and 8 processors in SMP configuration. 64bit – supports 2 TB of RAM and 8 processors in SMP configuration.
  • Datacenter Edition – supports failover clustering and ADFS. Unlimited virtual image rights. 32bit – supports 64 GB of RAM and 32 processors in SMP configuration. 64bit – supports 2 TB of RAM and 64 processors in SMP configuration.
  • Web Edition – domain services not supported, network load balancing supported. As the name implies, meant for web servers. 32bit – supports 4 GB of RAM and 4 processors in SMP configuration. 64bit – supports 32 GB of RAM and 4 processors in SMP configuration.
  • Itanium Edition – limited number of roles supported. Requires Itanium 2 processor. Supports 2 TB of RAM and 64 processors in SMP configuration.

Server Core

Benefits of Server Core:

  • Reduced Attack Surface
  • Lower Hardware Requirements

You will need to learn how to join a machine to the domain and some of the other basic commands you will need to know for server core. Check out Pierre’s post titled  My Core box. How to turn a near obsolete PC in a Lab Domain Controller for a description of how to get a machine up and going running Server Core. The book also mentions ocsetup.exe to install roles and oclist.exe to see what roles are available.

Upgrading From Windows Server 2003

This section covers upgrading. You can upgrade from Windows Server 2003. To upgrade from Windows Server 2000 you will need to upgrade 2003 first. The book doesn’t mention Windows NT 4 Server, so neither will I.  You can only upgrade to the same processor edition, i.e., 64 bit to 64 bit, not 32 bit to 64 bit. Also you can’t upgrade to a core installation and most editions can only upgrade to the same edition. The exception is Windows Server 2003 Standard. You can upgrade to Windows Server 2008 Standard or Enterprise. Upgrades must be initiated by starting the installation from within Windows Server 2003.

BitLocker

Windows Server 2008 now contains BitLocker. BitLocker protects the server data through volume encryption and also provided integrity-checking. A system administrator must disable BitLocker during maintenance windows. To support BitLocker, prior to installing Windows Server 2008, a partition of 1.5 GB in size must created and, formatted and made the system partition prior to creating a larger partition. Also available are BitLocker group policies and the book lists some of them. Be sure to also know the difference between BitLocker and Encrypting File System. Finally, the last part covers turning off BitLocker.

That’s the extent of the material covered in Lesson 1. Lesson 2 covers Automated Server Deployment.

*Disclaimer:

My notes in helping me prepare for the 70-646 Exam, PRO: Windows Server 2008, Server Administrator are just those, notes and I am trying to help highlight what is covered in the book, not replicate it. If you want to pass the exam, you will need more than just these notes to pass. I suggest you get a good book and get familiar with the product. The expectation is that you have about one year of experience with Windows 2008 Server (your mileage may vary) when writing this exam. The book I am using for my preparation and where I am drawing the information for these notes is the Microsoft Press book, MCITP Exam Prep 70-646: Windows Server Administration; ISBN: 0735625107.

Exam 70-646 – Preparations for My Next Exam

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I am preparing to start studying for my next Microsoft exam. The exam I am working on will be 70-646, PRO: Windows Server 2008, Server Administrator. In my preparations, I am going to use the MCITP Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-646): Windows Server 2008 Administratorexam preparation book to study for the exam. I bought this book last fall from Amazon.ca, as with the OWSUG study groups, we always used the MS Press books and found them to be the best resource for subject material when preparing for the exam. I also find that its definitely less expensive to get my books from the online stores versus a physical brick and mortar store.

When I read the books, I find that writing out brief points about what is covered in each section helps me remember what I read. I will take my notes and put them up on my blog; probably post dating them so it works out that 2 chapters a week get posted to the site. My plan is to write the exam next Thursday, but I may move that date out another week if I don’t get a chance to get a good solid study in over this weekend.

Microsoft Certification Online Study Groups

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I am going to be working on two more Microsoft Exams. One is 70-646, Windows Server Administration and the other is 70-236, Configuring Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Both are technologies I use at my job and I want to get certified on.

My plans for the 646 is to write the exam sometime before the end of October. That being said, if it looks too ambitious then I might push it out to November. The Exchange certification I plan to work on with a friend in Ottawa to help keep me focused. The plan for him and I is to try and meet once a week via Microsoft LiveMeeting and discuss the chapters that we were to cover for that week. When we are done, we will try the exam. I imagine we will be early February or March before we tackle the exam.

For both of these exams, I will be posting to my blog a recommended schedule, a quick review of the weekly content and a question of the week. Look for me to have a plan together for the 646 exam first (probably next week) and then once I have the details finalized, the plan for 236. My intention with the LiveMeeting’s on exchange is to open them up to anyone who is interested in following along. To follow along with either of these sessions, you will need the Microsoft Press Study Guides for the respective material. Unfortunately, I don’t have any copies of the book to give away, your best bet is to do like I did and order the book through Amazon. Ordering online saved me about $20.00 versus buying it in a store and I had the books in two days.

Here is the link to each of the books:

70-646, Windows Server Administration

70-236, Configuring Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

If you are interested in working on these exams, we’ll be creating forums for each of the exams at the OWSUG site where questions can be asked. Look for more information about 70-646 next week.