98-365 – Microsoft MTA Windows Server 2008 – Server Installation

1. What to expect in this section

Hi, in our first section dedicated to service, we’re going to talk about additions and installation options. We’re also going to install our first Windows Server 2008; there is a lecture dedicated to Hyper virtualization.

2. Boot up process

boot-up process. You buy a new server, you put it on your desk, and then it boots up. It’s very important to understand what happens. We’ll cover a lot of things that you can see on the screen at the moment. There are some differences. When we think about Windows 7, 2000, and 812, Windows 7 and 8, I will talk about all these things. I want to start with the first thing that you can see. It’s POS power put to the test. It’s really important. It happens every time you turn on a device.

Like a laptop, a computer, a server, even a phone, something like that happens. Its purpose is to ensure that everything around me is in order. Is Ram okay? Is my fan working the way it should? What about my CPU? Is it okay? Graphics card? Is it okay when something goes wrong? Okay, that’s fine. Yeah, that’s good. Okay, yeah, that’s fine. And unless something happens here, you will not be allowed to move down. That makes sense. You’re not allowed to load an operating system if there is a huge problem with your graphics card. What I mean by that is not like, oh, a driver is missing.

No, that’s not the stage. We’re talking about bias. The first screen that you can see when you turn on a PC says, “It’s just okay; this graphics card is dead.” It’s not responding at all. It means that, well, you will not see anything on the screen. That was a bad example. You know what I mean? Okay, Ram is a better example. Or maybe one slot is broken. A slot is broken. You put some RAM in it and then the Power ON surf test kicked in, and it said, “Okay, something is wrong with this RAM or slot; I’m not sure.” I will not allow you to boot up.

When we look at the boot loader and boot files, the main difference is that the nTLD and all of the files you see here were replaced by the Windows Boot Manager in Windows Seven 2008 and Windows Seven 12. Boot. Boot manager. MGR. It’s a small piece of software that’s loaded from the volume boot code, and it will help your operating system to start. And at the end, Boot Manager will load a file. windload exe. In most cases, it’s just that Microsoft decided to replace it or improve it because there were a lot of issues with NTLDR. If you Google it, you will see that NTLDR is missing. You will see a black screen with a message like that. And then there are some ways you can recover from a situation like that. Then we go to kernel routing. That’s the call of your operating system.

We start some services, and then we check our database. Sam is the security account manager. It’s a database that is available on your server, and it keeps user account and security information. That’s how it works. When you think of a pclab save mode, you think of booting up a server. Okay, save mode. It is a special mode. You access it when you reboot a server. Then you keep pressing F8, and you will see an advanced boot options screen. The save mode is really good if you want to troubleshoot things like drivers. Maybe you have a virus on your computer or something happened to your nick guard that you can’t fix. It’s good to boot up a device in safe mode because it will use a limited number of drivers and files. It will allow you to troubleshoot access to your server or your computer. Because sometimes if there is a problem with a driver, Windows can crash, and thanks to safe mode, you can access it and sort it out.

A very popular option is safe mode with networking. Especially if you want to recover from a situation where you have a virus or a Trojan on your device, Thanks to that, you have a limited number of drivers. However, you have access to the Internet. It means you can, for instance, update your antivirus or download an application from the Internet. That is a good thing. You can also schedule safe mode. It means that you can reboot a PC, and it will go into safe mode as well.

In most cases, it is used for troubleshooting when you have a problem with your server. That’s what I wanted to describe in this section of the boot-up process; I showed you some applications, software, and procedures that are in use. We talked about the save mode as well. If you’ve never seen it before, try rebooting your PC while continuing to press F8. Make sure that you can see that in action. See what’s available. If something goes wrong, you say, “Oh yeah, I know how to access it.” I’m okay to do that. In our next lecture, we’ll continue our discussion. We’ll talk about hardware and device drivers. Thank you very much.

3. Understanding Device Drivers

Drivers and services I’m pretty sure you’ve seen the Device Manager before. It is a place where you go if you want to check a driver’s license. You want to make sure that your graphics card is in place. We’re going to talk about drivers and services. says In this lecture, let’s try and open the Device Manager first, and we can see that in action. There are many different ways you can access the Device Manager. Of course, the easiest one is just to type “Device Manager,” and you can access it that way. We have the device manager in place, and it is a great example because there is a device that unfortunately was not recognized by the server and Windows complaints, well, I couldn’t find the driver, okay? So that is a good example. Sometimes you will have to put a CD, DVD, or USB stick in and upload a driver because there isn’t one available in Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10.

The easiest way to do that is, of course, to go online; you know your sound card and your system board. You browse, you download the correct driver, and it should be pretty easy. You update the driver, then you say, “Browse my computer.” You point to where this driver is, and Windows will take it from there. Let’s check that something is okay and up and running. Let’s take a look at the CD and DVD.

That’s what you want to see. If you want to see some details, you can see that the driver was provided by Microsoft and created many years ago. You can see some details if you’re interested. And you can disable or roll back the driver. For instance, if you update the driver and it fails, you can roll it back. You can disable this device or remove that driver. That’s what’s available from drivers here.

Now, let’s talk about services again; it’s a small programme that operates in the background. In most cases, it is started with Windows and then runs in the background every time you boot up your PC. You work with your PC. The quickest way to get to it is to go to Start, type “services,” and you’ll be there. After this option, I like to use a real server and show you everything because it’s really boring and makes no sense to go through slides in this lecture. I want to keep it alive. Okay, we have a list of services. Let’s see if we can find something that makes sense. For instance, DHCP DHCP is responsible for giving out IP addresses. It is enabled on that server. And we’ve got four main options. We can ask for this service to be started automatically and disabled. We decide when to start. Here. This one says, “Well, I will be patient.” I will wait and start this service later on. It is recommended if you want other services to be ready before you start.

That one is not a very popular option. You will not see a lot of services because there is always a chance they can fail. Still, it is something that you can use. Of course, what you can do if you just want to start it is right-click, and here you can start or stop. Yes. So for all tasks, you can start and stop. Right click. All tasks must start and stop. There is an option to restart a service as well. It means it will be stopped and started for you. The good thing is that you will see the description every time you click on a service. It’s a good thing. It means you can read what’s available.

The easiest way to learn is to just go through all these options, see what’s available, and spend some time reading about these services and what they do. Because one day you might need a service, and then you’ll be surprised. What is that? Why isn’t it working? Then you know how to approach it. I’m confident you’ve heard of Plug and Play. Some people say it’s plug-and-play. when you connect a new device. It’s a great piece of technology. Thanks to that, you don’t have to worry about things that much. I remember 1520 years ago, when it was a big problem. There were some hardware issues and conflicts—problems with sound cards and graphics cards. I remember this guy. A lot of issues with interrupt requests today. It’s not a problem. There will be few problems because Plug and Play will handle almost all settings for you.

All you have to do is provide a driver, and Windows will take it from there. The final topic I’d like to cover in this section is driver signing. It is really important to get a signed driver that was downloaded from a place that you trust. There is a tool from Microsoft that allows you to verify and find all unsigned drivers. Of course, it applies to all devices and everything that you have on your server and on your PC. Make sure that you download a driver from a page that you trust.

And if Windows complains about this driver, try and get another copy to verify. Make sure that it’s okay because it might be unstable. Crash your server. There might be a virus Trojan inside. Be very careful when running this tool. You go to “Start,” and here you type “Signature, Verify,” and you can start the scanning process. In the next video, we’re going to talk about installation and installation options. We will try to start from scratch. Let’s say you bought a new server and a new license. You want to put that on your server.

4. Installation Options

Options for Server Installation It is time to make a very important decision, or even decisions. I’m not sure if you remember from our previous lectures that I mentioned that there is an option to go for a special version of Windows Server 2008. That is called the server core option. It means you will get, yes, a command-line interface. And that’s how you manage your server. This is something that you will have to decide when you start the installation process for Windows Server 2008. I’m going to show you that in a moment. Here we go. I have a virtual PC running. I am opening that instance now. It will load the image that I mounted. A video devoted to VirtualPC, VMware, and installation can be found here. I just want to show you the core options that Microsoft has prepared for you. And it will be the first question you’re going to get during the installation. You will not see a lot of questions.

I’m not sure if you remember. especially Windows XP. Windows 2003. You received a lot of questions during the installation. That is not the case with Windows Server 2000 or Windows 812. Now, it’s just pretty simple. You say, “Okay, I want this and that.” You sort out your hard drive, then click next. And in most cases, you are done. And now the first question you’re going to ask is, okay, what do you want me to do? and one of the options will be the server core. Here we go. Please keep in mind that we have several core installations for Standard Enterprise and Data Center. Of course, you have to go for the aversion that you have a license for. I said that you did not get a lot of questions during the installation of Windows Server. That’s fine. Imagine the following situation: You have 50 servers to deploy; okay, 50 servers. And now you have to customize them. A client asked for very specific things to be enabled or disabled on that server. What that means is that you have to watch every single installation.

Click okay, go for the Core Installation option, go for the Data Center version, and then okay, create two partitions, use that hard drive, do this or that, and you have to do that 50 times. It’s not possible. What’s more, you will make a lot of mistakes. It’s not a good idea. That’s why. What you can do, you can create. For instance, one of the options is to create an answer file. It’s a small XML file, something that you can find on the Internet as well. This is a very popular format that you can find in many places. And you’ll find a few answers inside. You save a file in this manner. In most cases, you can say that. It all depends. It can be on a USB drive, or it can be on the same image as your operating system. And then Microsoft Windows Server will say, “Oh, there is an answer file.” Cool. So I don’t have to ask this question. Oh, you asked for this? Okay, let’s apply it. You don’t like that feature? Okay, let’s disable it.

You will not see any questions. It can be really quiet. I think that’s the name—a quiet installation. It’s just something that will be done in the background. You don’t have to worry about anything. You just create an answer file, and you can do that 50 times without any problems. To summarize, we have two options: an attended or unattended installation. There is a chance that you will have to update your firmware and flash your bias. What we mean by that is that every time you get a new operating system, there is a chance that you will have to upgrade, for instance, the firmware of your hard drives.

I remember it happening to me a couple of years ago. It’s not something that you will find every day, especially your bias. Perhaps it is an old server that was running Windows 7 2003. There is a chance that if you want to run Windows Seven 2012, you will have to add some features to BSA, and the way to do that is to update it. There are applications that can help you do that. As an MTA-certified engineer, you don’t have to do that. You don’t have to know how to deploy Windows 7 and 2008 using a network solution. However, you have to know that there is an option to use Windows Deployment Services.

Thanks to that, what you can do is take advantage of your local area network, or even one; it doesn’t matter which network you have. It means that you will have a disc image and then perform a network installation. It is done using the PXEboot reboot execution environment. In most cases, you will see that on the screen. You can get to it by pressing F 12. I’m not sure if you notice, but if your operating system fails to load, sometimes you will see a message saying, “Oh, I am trying to access something on the network.” I’m trying to get an IP address from a DHCP server. That’s the idea. Because your computer and server failed to find an operating system, It’s desperate.

It’s just saying, “Well, okay, what do I do now?” I’m really desperate. Perhaps there is a server somewhere on my network that can assist me and provide me with an image, something to boot up. We discussed server installation and installation options in this lecture. Please make sure that you memories the facts that we have covered. They’re really important for your exam. And you have to know that in the real world as well, because these solutions are really popular and you will find them everywhere. Thank you very much.

5. Create your own lab – Introduction to Microsoft Virtual PC and VMWare

Virtual PC. In this video, I’ll show you a few applications that you can use and experiment with on Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft Windows Seven, Microsoft Windows Eight, and any other operating system you want. You can even run Linux network devices, Nasservice, or whatever you want as long as it supports virtual infrastructure. The first application I want to show you is made by Microsoft and is called Microsoft Virtual PC. You can run it on Windows Vista and Windows Seven. As far as I remember, you can’t run it on Windows 8. If you want to play with virtual machines on Windows 8, I recommend VMware or Virtual Box. I am going to show you a VMware workstation in a few minutes. We are going to start with a virtual PC. You can download it for free from Microsoft. When you put that on Windows 7, you see a warning saying, “Oh, be careful. It’s not available for that version of Windows.” You can just ignore it. It does work. Just move on, and you’re fine.

Then when you’re done, you can open it, and it will welcome you with this wizard that you can use to create a new virtual machine. The idea is to, of course, create a small lab. That’s our goal here: to have a server and a PC that we can play with later on. We are going to implement a lot of features on both machines. Let’s start with Virtual PC and go through this wizard. If you close it, you can access it. You double-click the file to launch a new virtual machine. You click Next, and then of course you want to create a new one. I am going to call it MTA for Windows Seven 2008 Of course, you can change the location if you want. I am going to do that because I want to put that in here. It doesn’t matter as long as you have enough disc space; that’s absolutely fine. Please remember that if you want to create a virtual machine, you have to have enough RAM. Every time you start a new server, a new Windows 7, a new PC8, and so on, it means that you need some RAM, and that is a question that you will see over here.

What is your operating system? It is Windows 7 2008 Edition. I can see other options because it’s not on the list, and we can customize it later. You can adjust here. I will say I don’t have a lot of RAM, as you can see here. Let’s use 512. That should be okay for a lab. In the real world, you would add more Ramify; that’s the first time you’re running that wizard. You want to create a new virtual hard drive. It is a file that saves all file settings. Your system drive will suggest the same path. I’m okay with that. What’s the size? 16 gig. That’s fine. I’m okay with that. And you finish now rather than starting and running it. I encourage you to click on Settings and play with the things that are inside. Please make sure you go through all these options and understand what they do. It can make your life easier. It’s very similar in all other applications, like VMware Virtual Box and software that can simulate operating systems and run Windows Server.

Windows 7 and 8 Here is what we have to do. We have to go and say, “Well, we need a DVD; we need an image.” We need something that will allow us to instal our operating system. And you do so by checking the box next to this field. And you can put a CD or DVD inside if you have an image. That’s what I’ve got. I’ve got an image of Windows Seven 2008. You can download it from Microsoft as a trial version. I’ll show it to you. Here we go. You just Google it. Windows Server 2008 trial. You will see that screen. You click “continue.” It will allow you to download a file, and it is okay for 180 days. more than enough to play with it and pass any exams that you need. The same applies to Windows Server 2012. You can download it and use it for 180 days. Let’s start it now. Of course it is going to fail and show us where there is no operating system available. What do I do? What do I do? It is trying to use DHCP. It means it’s looking for a network installation option. It’s going to fail as well, because that is not available either.

What we need to do is help and assist that application in some way, and point to an image or a DVD that can be used to instal our operating system. In my case, I’m going to use an image, and that’s what I prefer to do. I do not use DVDs or CDs anymore. It’s just an image, one file, and you’re done. In images. I’ve got two files. We are going to start with Windows 7 (2008). And then we will put in Windows 7 as well. Why? We need a client because we need a user. We need a PC that can, in a way, simulate a small And then It is really important. It’s not enough to put a server up and play with it. You have to test all things. You have to play with the settings and apply them to see how they work. Make sure that you’re okay with everything that we are going to discuss. You click on “Open,” and it makes sense to reboot now.

It should be okay to start. We’ll continue the installation in the following video. This one is dedicated to Microsoft Virtual PC and VMware. Here we go. I want to show you VMware workstation and VMware ESX, which is more advanced. We do not have time to discuss everything in detail. I want to make sure that you know where to start. And then, of course, it should be enough for you to create your own lab. If you master the previous application, Microsoft VirtualPC, it will be very easy for you to move to applications like VMware Workstation, virtual Box VMware Workstation, or VMware Player. You go to Antonio’s virtual machine. You can go with typical or custom. You will get more questions.

Let’s go for the first one because it would be very similar to the one that we saw. The first question is okay. If you have an image, you can specify it here right away if you have one. Or you can say no; I will do that later. Then you go for the operating system that you want. because Microsoft Virtual PC is a pretty old application. That’s why you will not see all versions of Windows here. If you get the latest one from VMware, you can expect the latest service as well. like, for instance, Windows Server 2012. Let’s go for that one. Of course it will adjust RAM, hard drives, and things like that.

You can customize that as well. It suggests 60 gigabytes. I’m fine with that. Here it suggests 1024. You can always click “customize” and “change.” Is it easy? Yeah, it is. It is really easy. Then you finish, and it’s the same in ESX, albeit more advanced. I will log in for you and show you that in action. I put that on my HP Micro server. We have a dedicated video server on that network. I encourage you to watch it. And here I have a list of virtual machines that are available.

Please note that I am running one virtual machine only. Of course, I can just right-click and power on any virtual machine I want if I want to create a new one. It’s nearly identical; file a new one. And then you create a new virtual machine. Yes, create a new virtual machine. And then you will see a very similar wizard. I hope it makes sense. The easiest way to learn and play with all these things is to just go and download any application you like. Virtual PC, VMware Virtual Box—these three are really popular—so make sure that you’re okay and comfortable with the things that you’re going to find inside. In the following video, we are going to continue with Windows Seven and see how it goes with the installation. Thank you very much.

6. Let’s install our first Microsoft Server – LAB – part 1

You will see that in action in a moment. Here we go. I am okay with that. Now a question: Do you want to go for a full installation or server core? Of course, in our case, we want to go with a Windows 7008 full installation. We want to have a nice interface to manage our server. Of course, you should read that. I can tell you a story. I recall one company doing something because 99.9% of people do not read a license. So one company—I think it was a game or an application; I don’t remember. But in this case, let’s say they put a line over here saying, “Oh, by the way, because we appreciate that you’ve read our license, if you send us an email and they provided an email address, we’ll give you like $1,000.” And you know, they waited like six months for the first guy to realise this and send that email. It’s very funny. We go for custom because there is nothing to upgrade. And in a second, we should be able to decide.

Our hard drive has arrived. If you do not see anything over here, you have to load the driver. It can happen if you have a bad controller or a drive that the Microsoft Windows installer cannot recognize. You have to load the driver. You can put that on a USB stick and load it. We’re okay; we have a drive; that’s okay. We click next, and if Windows is happy, that’s it. You have to sit back, relax, and enjoy the installation. To create a good lab, we need a client.

In our case, in this lab, I am going to use a Windows 7 PC. We’re going to create a new virtual machine. We’ll call it Windows Seven MTA. I want to place it over here. I’m fine with that. The new 116 gig is fine with us. That’s it. We open it, and again, of course, it’s going to fail because there is no disk. It is trying to access the network. It’s going to fail as well. I have an image here. We oh, we reboot, and that should do it. Okay, it’s starting. Setup is starting. We are now moving on to the advanced level. It’s very similar to Windows Server, as you can see. Again, you can load a driver. If Windows struggles to recognise your discs, I’m fine with that. That’s it. Again, you sit back, relax, and enjoy the installation.

7. Basic configuration – LAB – part 2

Basic configuration steps The installation has finished. I want to show you a few things that you have to tweak and change. It doesn’t matter if you go for Virtual PC, VMware, or anything else you want. There are two things that you have to do. First of all, please note that we have to use virtual machines. Just as you can see, the state is saved. It means that I can double-click and open it right away. Because this is currently loading it. It’s a cool feature of, I think, all applications like that, that they can save the state and then you can restore it in a couple of seconds. It’s awesome. I’m not sure if you noticed in our previous video that there was a problem with the cursor.

You saw two of them. And the reason for that is that while this application has to capture a mouse cursor to sort it out and have things like drag and drop, you have to update, instal a virtual machine, and instal add-ons. The same applies to VMware. It gives you a lot of additional features. Make it faster, more reliable, and do it every single time.

The main advantage is that now I can move I can move my mouse without any problems. Second of all, we want to create our small network. When you go to settings, one of the options that you will see is networking. Here on Virtual PC, it is pretty simple. In VMware, you can have a virtual switch or VMware networks. It doesn’t matter. The idea is the same. They have to be on the same network. in a virtual PC. I decided to stay strictly local. It means it’s isolated, with no access to the Internet. I like to do it that way so I can play with it without access to my main network.

In VMware, you can go for VM net. Let’s say number seven. If you use Workstation, then do the same on both machines, and they will be able to see each other. Okay, this is Windows 7; we should at least note when it’s ready; I’ll try clicking, and you’ll see what I mean. Okay, now I can’t move my mouse. Okay, and now we have to reboot. That’s it. I want to show you our network. We’ve got a server. The IP address will be 192168, dot one, dot one PC, 192168, dot one, dot eleven. That is all for now. Later on, we will enable HTTP on Windows Server. The HTTP will allow a client to get an IP address automatically. That’s how we do that in the real world. We avoid assigning static IP addresses to clients’ PCs because it is very difficult to manage it. That is why, in most cases, we run a DCP server on a Windows server.

For now, we want to go for the basic configuration steps and make sure that we are okay. We can ping each other. We can see each other, and we’ll take it from there. Let’s start at the server. I just rebooted it. All we have to do for now is just assign an IP address. Make sure that we can see a PC running Windows 7. That’s okay for now. Just ignore it for now. We don’t need a sound card. That’s why we should see a screen. Here we go. Okay, so this is a list of tasks that Microsoft prepared for you. And they said, “Okay, we appreciate that you have a new server.” We recommend you go through all these steps. It makes sense to follow that. Just set the time zone and set up your network. This is really important. It’s something that I keep forgetting. Please note the name. Yeah, it’s really strange. Weird. It’s random, and it’s so easy to forget to change it. And later on, when you have all the roles in Active Directory, Exchange, and other things like that, it’s almost impossible to change the name.

So, let’s get that done right away because it would be a nightmare if you forgot. So that is a name, and let’s call it Windows Server 2008. It’s just a name. We’ll leave it as a workgroup for now. Every time you change a name, it will ask your server to be rebooted. We’ll restart later because I want to set up the network, and now we will go for a static IP address. We go to Properties, and here we enter our static IP address subnet mask. We don’t have a default gateway for now. Let’s make it up. The default gateway in most cases is a router. We will be the DNS server. So for now, let’s leave it. When we enable Active Directory, we will go to the domain controller. It will point to itself, so it doesn’t matter for now. We don’t need DNS (Domain Name Service). Okay, now we can reboot. We can go to Windows 7 now, and we’ll do the same here. Please note that there is absolutely nothing on this Windows 7 computer. I have not changed anything. So that’s the idea. We go to Network and Sharing Center Adapter settings, and it’s the same screen. Here we go. Let’s leave it empty for now. It doesn’t matter. Okay, that’s it.

Now we go to the CMD command-line interface. We type CMD. And here we’ll try to ping our server. Let’s see if it’s up. I hope it’s still booting up, I hope. Here we go. Okay, we can ping 192.168.1.81, and we can do T. It means to keep pinging and we’ll leave it at that. Wait for the server to come back online. It should reply, still applying some settings. Let’s wait and see how it goes. That’s a good sign. We can ping our server. There’s one thing that I like to do, and you can argue, but I’ll tell you what I do. There is a built-in firewall in Windows. When you type “firewall,” you can go to Windows Firewall and see that. and you’ll see. Oh no, it’s disabled. Yes, it is. and a lot of companies do that. They disable the windows. Firewall. The reason for that is that there is a corporate firewall, a proxy server, and an intrusion prevention system in place. You don’t really need a firewall on your PC. And what’s more, it can cause a lot of issues when it comes down to the server. Well, a lot of companies are happy to leave it in place. However, for troubleshooting, it is a good idea to disable it as well. So, for instance, let’s say you want to share a folder or ping a PC, and you cannot. Of course, you can create a rule that is beyond our discussion.

However, you can create a rule. The simplest method is to ensure that the server you are currently configuring is not in a production network. Yeah, just go and disable it. It will answer that question straight away. Is it a firewall or not? When you create a rule, you can make a mistake and think, “Oh yeah, the firewall is okay; I allowed ping.” Ping uses ICMP. It’s a special protocol for ping. And then you make a mistake, and you can sort it out. Then, when you see, “Oh yeah, that was the firewall,” you can create a rule. Of course, if a server is already up and running, that is not a solution you can go for. That’s what I wanted to discuss in this section; that is really important. There are two main things that I like to do, maybe three, but we’ll talk about that in a moment. First of all, change the name. Make sure that the name is okay. Assign IP addresses, and make sure that you can ping each other. And the last thing that we are not going to do, because it’s just a lab, is download and instal updates. It is a good idea to do that. Make sure that you have all updates in place before you go and deploy roles and features. It’s a lab. We’re running Windows Server with Service Pack 1. That should be more than enough to enable the features that we want. Thank you very much.

8. Windows Server 2012 – bonus video

Windows Server 2012 It is a good idea to check for the latest operating systems. I always encourage my students to do that. Even though, for instance, they are studying for, say, Windows Seven. It is advisable to test Windows 8. The same applies to our MTA Windows Server administration. Fundamentals, even. Even though the core of our discussion is around Windows Server 2008, It is a good thing because it is a server that will be with us for, oh, I can guess, ten more years. It is a very reliable version of Windows Server. Most companies will not see any reason to upgrade to Windows Server 2012. Nonetheless, it is prudent to investigate Windows Server 2012. The good thing is that every time you want to see that in action, you want to put it on your PC. There is a trial version. You can download it from Microsoft. You can put that on your PC using VMware Virtual, PC VirtualBox, or even a dedicated server.

Whatever you want, play with it. Of course, Microsoft has prepared a lot of interesting features here. I am showing you two features at the moment. We will connect to my Windows Server 2012 Essentials. We’ll see that in action. I’m not sure if you remember our discussion where we talked about Windows Server additions. One of the things I mentioned was a special version of Windows Server called, remember, “for small businesses.” What was it? SBS. small business server. There is no small business server for 2012. Microsoft, when they made that decision, knew they could not leave that gap. They had to create something to replace SBS, and they did. There is a Windows Server 2012 foundation. There are essentials. And that’s what I want to show you. We are connected to Windows Server 2012 Essentials. Let’s go to the dashboard. It is based, as you can see, on Windows 720Twelve R2, because it’s a special version of Essentials. That’s why you have a dedicated dashboard and some additional tools that Microsoft created for you. and I really love it. The way it works is that we’re going to talk about ActiveDirectory domains and how to join a PC to the domain. We’ll talk about that when we get to roles and features here.

When I saw Windows Seven Essentials for the first time, I said, “Well, that makes sense.” I can manage my devices, my laptops, even though they are not on the domain, so they are not in this special group, but it is still possible to manage them. I can see updates, I can force policies, and I can make backups. That’s awesome. And the way it works is that you put a small piece of software on your laptop or computer. Thanks to that, they can communicate and report back to your Windows Server. In my case, I’ve got three PCs. One of them is online at the moment. It’s five backups. Yeah, it did work. Updates are okay. It will check the security status, antivirus, and other such things. And there are no alerts. That’s what you can see. a nice dashboard. And you can imagine—let’s say you have like ten PCs over here, laptops. It’s pretty easy to manage them.

It is devoted to small and, yes, small businesses. I would not say medium-sized companies. Of course, you can create users. You have storage for everything that you want to have. It is designed to be easy to use and give you the features that you need in a small company. The best way to see that is to Check it out, experiment with it, instal it on your virtual PC, and yes, you all say, “OK, it looks like Windows 8.” What do you want from me? Yes. I don’t get it, but that’s the way Microsoft decided to implement Windows 7 2012 as well. That’s the way it is. It’s like Windows Seven 2008 and Windows Seven; they’re similar; it’s the same family. Windows 7, 2012, and Windows 8 are the same idea. And in my opinion, unfortunately, they decided to implement a lot of the features that you can find on Windows 8 as well. We’re going to start our next section dedicated to server roles now. I hope that you’ve enjoyed our discussion so far. Thank you very much.