Lesson Seven: Print and Document Services

This lesson looked at how to manage print resources on a network.  This could include dedicated print servers as well as physical printers connected to client machines.

They talked about how to install and configure printer driver, and how to control access to those printers in various ways.  Printer pooling makes it possible for users to send jobs to one print spooler, and then for that job to be sent to a printer based on availability, capacity or other considerations.

It’s also possible to limit access to users or groups based on their needs or lack of them.  One neat feature is that you can set up two identical printers that print to the same physical unit, but to use the different defined printers to allow or deny access as needed.

Looking for more interesting and useful information in the next lesson.

Lesson Six: File and Share Access

In this lesson, we looked in detail at NTFS file and folder permissions.  These work in close coordination with group access control lists to grant or deny access to system resources including data as well as physical resources such as printers or other items available on a network.

We were shown how to craft file system permissions to allow or deny access to files and folders, as well as how to enable quota management.  This allows sysadmins to control user’s usage of file storage so as to not allow a user to use more than their share of system resources.

You can also use NTFS permissions to control access to system file shares, however it is a best practice to allow everyone to have share access and then lock down permissions on the file system itself.

This module also discussed Access Based Enumeration, and Volume Shadow Copies, which are methods to control access to files and folders and to backup and restore information on the file tree.

Lots of good stuff here, looking forward to more!