|
My personal preference is to use striping with parity because it provides fault tolerance and increased performance (particularly if you also place the paging file on a striped set without parity). But if you need maximum data protection, use the disk duplexing option. Continuing this basic premise of keeping your server functional during hardware failures, you might want to consider using one of the following optional techniques:
- • Uninterruptible Power Supply—A UPS is used for two purposes. First, it protects against temporary power outages by providing a battery to supply AC power to the computer. And in the case of a long-term power outage, the UPS service will shut down the server in a graceful fashion. Secondly, a UPS filters your AC power. And, in my opinion, this is the most important feature, because poor power (spikes, surges, low-line conditions, and so forth) can cause more damage to your server’s peripherals than anything else.
- • Symmetric Multiprocessing—When installed on a platform with multiple CPUs, not only is the performance of your server increased, but its fault tolerance increases as well. Should one CPU fail, it can be disabled (if the underlying hardware supports this type of detection), but processing will continue on the other CPUs. On a uniprocessor computer, if the CPU fails, the entire server goes down.
- • Multiple Network Adapters—Installing multiple network adapters provides several advantages. First, multiple network adapters can be used to increase network performance by spreading the network load among several channels. Secondly, multiple network adapters can increase performance of a specific network transport by binding that transport to a single adapter. Or, conversely, multiple network adapters can increase fault tolerance by binding transports to each network adapter. If a single adapter fails, it will be disabled, and the load will be spread among the additional adapters.
The fault tolerant capabilities of Windows NT provides a good foundation for a server. As with any project, you need tools with which to continue to build your services, and Windows NT includes almost all the tools you will need. If a tool is not included in the base package, you’ll most likely find it in one of the BackOffice applications (such as Exchange Server for e-mail services and administration). But enough about BackOffice, let’s move on to the tools provided with Windows NT Server.
Centralized Administration
One of the major benefits to utilizing Windows NT is the ability to manage your entire network from any NT Server, NT Workstation, Windows 95, or Windows 3.x workstation running in enhanced mode. I have divided these management tools into two sections: Computer Management and User Management.
Computer Management
Computer management includes the administration tools used to configure either your local computer or a remote client computer. And while I will not mention them all, I will point out the more useful tools. These tools are:
- • Event Viewer—In my opinion, this tool is seriously underrated. The Event Viewer is the first tool you should use to determine NT Workstation client problems. It provides the ability to look at an NT computer and determine if any system, application, or security problems have occurred in the past. Each of these problems is stored in a unique file, which I refer to as a log file. These include the system log for system related events, the application log for application programs not critical to system operation, and the security log for security related events. Every administrator should review all three logs on a daily basis to determine what type of problems may be accumulating. Not all problems are immediately flagged and sent to the administrator in an alert. Monitoring your system log can warn you of imminent failures, such as the SCSIDISK bad partition warnings on a SCSI drive, which I received on my server indicating that one of my disk drives was getting ready to fail completely. Monitoring your security log can warn you of security breaches, such as hackers attempting to gain access to your system.
Windows Explorer—If you have been using Windows 95 for some time, then you already know that this application is the replacement to the Windows File Manager and is used for manipulating files and directories, creating network shares (a shared directory), and auditing directories and files on a per-user basis.
TIP: Even though the Windows Explorer has replaced File Manager, there are times when you will still want to use File Manager. First, File Manager is the only tool that has the ability to view who currently has a specific file open. Secondly, only File Manager can be used to easily view a directory of specific file types (such as DAT). Future versions of the Windows Explorer (speculated to be available in Windows NT Server 5.0) will include these missing features.
- • Network Client Administrator—This tool is used to make installation disks for you to create a network installation setup disk. This setup disk can be used to install Windows 95, Windows for Workgroups, or MS-DOS and Windows 3.x from a network share. You can also create an installation disk set to install the MS-DOS 3.x client-based network drivers, TCP/IP-32 for Windows for Workgroups, the Remote Access client for MS-DOS, or the Microsoft Network Client for MS-DOS. It is also possible to use this tool to copy the client-based network tools directory to a network share for later installation from network clients.
- • Remote Boot Manager—This tool is used to install and configure the software for your diskless workstations. It is also used to add network clients network card addresses to the remote boot database to authorize their remote boot connectivity.
- • Remote Access Server Administrator—This tool is used to completely control the remote access service on either a local or remote NT computer. It includes the ability to start the service, authorize users to make use of the RAS connectivity features, and to send messages to connected RAS clients on a per-port basis. The remote access service can also be used to provide a cost effective wide area network solution, particularly if you make use of either a 56Kbps modem or an ISDN connection.
TIP: Until you authorize users to use the RAS service, they will not be authenticated if they connect and will not be able to access any network resource.
- • Server Manager For Domains—This tool is the beginning to limiting access to your domain. I say this because the Server Manager For Domains is responsible for creating the computer account that your NT Workstation clients will utilize to gain a trusted connection to your server. Without a computer account, the network client computer cannot be authenticated, even if the user attempting to log on to the domain from the workstation has a valid user identification. It can also be used to control the services on a remote client as well as determine who is connected and what resources they have in use. You can even use this tool to disconnect users, and, if installed, you can monitor the FTP service, as well. A few additional capabilities are included to provide the configuration of replication service alerts.
- • Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Manager—This tool is used to create DHCP and configure scopes (i.e., subnets) on your TCP/IP network. DHCP can be utilized to automate the assignment of IP addresses to network clients and then, when their lease (or time-out) expires, retrieve the IP address for allocation to a new user. IP address reservations (a reassignment mechanism) can also be created with this tool.
- • Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS) Manager—This tool provides the management of all NetBIOS computer names to IP address resolution. It effectively performs the same task as a Unix Domain Name Server (DNS). A useful feature of WINS is the ability to replicate automatically the database among several other WINS servers on the network.
- • DNS Manager—This tool provides a graphical interface to the Microsoft implementation of DNS on Windows NT Server. It also provides NetBIOS’s computer name to IP address resolution. Its primary benefit over WINS is that DNS is supported by almost every TCP/IP client available unlike the Microsoft implementation of WINS, which was designed specifically for Microsoft operating systems.
|