IT Book Report: Administering Server Core
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Since my first sneak peek at it, I was convinced that Server Core would become a popular and useful tool in administrators’ arsenals; I knew that the challenge, however, would be the many administrators with minimal command-line experience. Setting up Server Core is definitely a different beast than regular Win2008, but the investment in learning these new command-line techniques will pay dividends over the year. But how do you ramp up on those techniques in the first place?
Administering Windows Server 2008 Server Core, by John Paul Mueller, conquers the challenge. At just over 600 pages, this book walks you through everything there is to know about Server Core, including tons and tons and tons of command-line techniques. Understand: Once Server Core is up and running, you’re free to administer it using GUI tools from your workstation - tools like AD Users and Computers, for example. So the book tends to focus on those tasks which must be performed on the console: Network configuration, installing roles, and so forth. As a bonus, of course, most of the techniques covered in this book apply to normal versions of Win2008, as well.
Tasks include managing drives, the network, and other hardware; managing applications, files and folders the registry, system connections, performance, users, and much more. There’s an entire chapter on managing IIS, since IIS will undoubtedly be a popular use of Server Core.
The book starts at the very beginning; if you’ve used Cmd.exe before, you can safely skip chapter 2, for example, but if you’re new to the command-line then everything you need is in here. There’s a thorough tutorial on the Cmd.exe batch language, and even a chapter focused on VBScript/JScript scripts (although the book doesn’t attempt to provide any kind of deep instruction for those more complicated languages). Task scheduling is next - in other words, all the things you need to write scripts and automate administrative tasks. I’m all about automation.
Much of the rest of the book is an exhaustive reference to command-line tools I’d honestly either forgotten about or never used - and wow, are they powerful. I’m hard pressed to think of a single Server Core-related task that isn’t well-covered here. In some cases, I think the author worked harder than he needed to: I’m unlikely to use WMI or DSAdd to create users right from the Server Core console; I’m more likely to use PowerShell (which won’t run on the Server Core machine itself) on my workstation to automate AD user creation. But, having the information in the book is certainly handy either way.
Light coverage is provided for securing Server Core: Dealing with viruses, for example, terminating tasks, exporting event trace logs, and so forth. This is an area I felt could have used more coverage: I wasn’t overwhelmed by the firewall coverage, for example, and I wanted to see more to emphasize the fact that most anti-malware software will install and run fine on Server Core. The book also assumes that you’ll be doing most of your Server Core work at the console; again, while I think it’s great to have that information, I really hope most admins will stay off the console and work from their workstations. That said, these techniques mostly apply to working from the command-line on your workstation, too.
The IIS coverage acknowledges that IIS on Server Core is primarily for static, ASP, and PHP pages, and not ASP.NET (which isn’t supported); the actual IIS coverage is pretty lightweight (about 30 pages total), but again - get IIS installed and then manage it from your workstation. Pick up a book on IIS for help with that.
The book wraps with an appendix on command line tips and tricks, which I actually have never seen an author do before, but appreciate. It’s easier to review through these short tips in one place than to have them scattered in “tip” elements throughout the book - I’m going to remember this trick for my next book. There’s also an alphabetical command list, and a few “best practices” - which are, basically, familiar admonishments like “don’t test on production systems.” There’s also a glossary, which is fine - not anything better than you can get just using Google, but I suppose it’s convenient to have it there.
All in all, I’m delighted to have this book on my shelf. In fact, I’m hoping the author will be open to doing a session or two at a future conference based on this book, and plan to contact him about it. Even if you’re not using Server core, 99% of what’s in the book is valuable information that EVERY Windows administrator should know.
The author has a Web page you can visit, too.
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