Windows Server 2008 – Planning Naming Conventions, Networking, on recommendations
Up until this point in your administration career, you’ve probably spent most of your time utilizing the technological aspects of Windows Server 2008. As you’ve probably read somewhere (either in another book in this series, on Microsoft’s website, or in another one of your IT resources), succeeding at this exam is going to take a dramatic change from what you’ve gotten used to. That?s because the Microsoft Exam concentrates on the idea of design. In other words, it’s about how to create a network structure from the ground up.
Thus, the beginning of this book is going to concentrate on one of the fundamental features of design: planning.
Planning is the process of realizing the needs of your network, the features that your organization will require, and the physical limitations placed on your environment, such as distance, office size, or even walls. Realistically, in the modern IT workplace, planning for an entire enterprise usually requires more than just one person. You can bet that most Fortune 500 companies make a lot of their decisions based on recommendations from a board or panel of administrators, each with their own individual experience, beliefs, and opinions. This makes a lot of sense, because when you’re working with a lot of smart and experienced people on a collaborative project, you can usually create the best solution if you work together as a team, rather than doing everything by yourself.
This said, it’s important for this exam (and for the real world) that you understand the overall concepts of design and most of the typical trends in the industry. To help with this, in the beginning of this chapter, I’ll cover some of the basic concepts of design. I will then quickly move into what technologies are available with Windows Server 2008 and what tools you as an administrator have at your disposal. I’ll end this chapter with a quick roundup of what I have covered, along with some good tips and suggestions for design.
The first and most basic task in all designs is to determine a structure called an admin-
istrative model. Administrative models are conceptual logical topologies that mirror an organization?s IT administration structure. In general, one of three administrative models is usually deployed:
Please note this chapter includes some content that will not be on your A+ Exams?specif -ically, the discussion of the administrative hierarchy. This content, which is from MCSE exam 70-297, is covered in much more detail in Sybex?s MCSE Windows Server 2003 Active Directory and Network Structure Infrastructure Design Study Guide . However, I’ll cover each of these models and their corresponding roles in an organization. Doing this will not only help you understand the concepts of design but will also lay the groundwork for later chapters that discuss much more complicated structures.
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