Lesson Ten: DHCP

This lesson covered the basic information about how the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) addressing works in the networking environment.  It first went over the theory of how DHCP operates, and covered the authorization requirements and configuration information to successfully implement DHCP in an Active Directory environment.

System administrators can manage IP addressing needs by first defining the addressing scope, and then using reservations to guarantee the same address being handed out to a system and exclusions to prevent systems from being given a dynamic IP address.  These are necessary to streamline client system administration.

A neat feature is that of the split scope.  In this scenario, two DHCP servers on different network segments can each take a portion of the other server’s reserved address pool and hand those addresses out in case of one of the DHCP servers crashing.  Without this failover response, there would be no fault tolerance and the network would be unable to function.

This was the final lesson in this class – chock full of informative and interesting information on how to configure and maintain Windows server systems.

Lesson Nine: Networking

This week's lesson contain information on networking protocols and methods and covered IP v4 as well as IP v6.  Although I've been using IP networking since the early 1990's, it was a great refresher, and I ever learned a few new things.

The instructor did a comprehensive job of explaining IP4 networking concepts including netowrk addresses, subnet masks, the default gateway and address classes such as public and private address assignments.

One thing that I learned a lot from was the two ways of expressing subnet masks.  Since I am rather weak on this theory, I valued the lesson.  I especially appreciated the process of "anding", which is a method to analyze the network address of a classless IP address.   I already knew how to do this, but to have it explained in the manner that was used was interesting and most informative.

We also learned about IP v4 "supernetting", which is a way to join network segments together so that large numbers of devices can be on the same local network.  It's not commonly used and is no longer needed with the larger address pool of 128 bit IP v6 addresses, but was interesting nonetheless.

Other material covered included modern VPN protocols and the strengths and weaknesses of each. One thing is clear:  data has never been more secure while in transit than it is using modern methods available with the Windows 8 and Server 2102 implementation.

Lesson Eight: Group Policy

This week's lesson focused on Group Policy.  This is a useful and versatile tools that works in Windows Server 2008R2 and Server 2012 to help configure workstations.

You can do many things with Group Policy; some common ones include setting and managing passwords, assigning user rights and permissions within a domain as well as working with restricting access to objects that you might not want the user to access.

Another feature that is very useful is the way that Group Policy works with Windows Firewall. Although you can use the Advanced Firewall by itself, you can also call it from a Group Policy object.

Another useful feature is how Group Policy lets an network administrator apply application restrictions in various ways.  You can even set a hash restriction, which allows an application to be blocked even if it is renamed.

One problem is that the Group Policy Editor running on the server software listed above only works with Windows 7 and Windows 8 clients; machines running Vista or Windows XP are not supported. There is a workaround in that you can download Client Side Extensions from Microsoft to use Group Policies with older clients.

A extremely valuable lesson that will help the modern network administator out immensely!