Logo
programming4us
programming4us
programming4us
programming4us
Home
programming4us
XP
programming4us
Windows Vista
programming4us
Windows 7
programming4us
Windows Azure
programming4us
Windows Server
programming4us
Windows Phone
 
Windows Server

Windows Server 2012 : Simplifying the Datacenter (part 4) - Managing Windows 2012 with Performance and Reliability Monitoring Tools, Leveraging the Best Practice Analyzer

- Free product key for windows 10
- Free Product Key for Microsoft office 365
- Malwarebytes Premium 3.7.1 Serial Keys (LifeTime) 2019
7/26/2014 9:32:33 PM

Managing Windows 2012 with Performance and Reliability Monitoring Tools

Windows Server 2012 continues to extend the support for viewing, identifying, reporting on, and assisting in the monitoring of the Windows-based environment. Windows performance and reliability monitoring tools help network administrators better understand the health and operations of Windows Server 2012 systems. Just as with the Group Policy Management Console, you can launch the Reliability and Performance Monitor from the Server Manager console. When you click Tools, Performance Monitor, the tool displays a screen similar to what is shown in Figure 5.

Image

Figure 5. Performance Monitor console.

The new tool keeps track of system activity and resource usage and displays key counters and system status on screen. The Reliability Monitor diagnoses potential causes of server instability by noting the last time a server was rebooted, what patches or updates were applied, and when (chronologically) services have failed on the system so that system faults can potentially be traced back to specific system updates or changes that occurred prior to the problem.

Using this combination (in single console) of what used to be three or four tools back in Windows 2003, administrators can now look at system performance, operational tasks, and historical event information as they analyze a server problem or system instability.

Leveraging the Best Practice Analyzer

Included in Windows Server 2012 is a built-in Best Practice Analyzer (BPA), shown in Figure 6. Found in the Server Manager console tool, the BPA runs a series of tests against Active Directory roles, such as the Hyper-V role, the DNS role, and the RDS role, to assess whether the role has been installed and configured properly and to compare the installation with tested best practices.

Image

Figure 6. BPA in the Server Manager console.

BPA results might tell administrators they need to add more memory to a server, move a role to a separate server to improve role optimization, or shift a database to a different drive on the server to distribute disk performance demands on the system. 

Windows Deployment Services Integration

Windows Server 2008 introduced a new tool called Windows Deployment Services (WDS), which was formerly known as Remote Installation Services (RIS) in earlier versions of Windows Server. Unlike RIS, which was focused primarily on scripted installations and client images, WDS in Windows Server 2012 can distribute images of Windows 7 and Windows 8 clients or Windows Server 2008 and 2012 servers in a significantly more flexible and modifiable deployment process.

Like RIS, WDS allows a client system to initiate a Preboot Execution Environment (PXE), effectively “booting” to the WDS server to see a list of images that can be deployed on the system. Alternatively, an organization can create a Windows PE boot disc and have an image initiated from a CD or DVD.

With Windows Server 2008/2012 and Windows 7/8, the image can be created in Windows Imaging (WIM) format, which allows for the injection of patches, updates, or even new code to a WIM file without even booting the image file. This provides the organization with more than just static images that get pushed out like in RIS, but rather a tool that provides ongoing and manageable updates to image files.

Distributed File System Replication

Introduced in Windows 2000, improved in Windows 2003 and 2008, and now a core component of the branch office offerings in Windows Server 2012, Distributed File System Replication (DFSR) allows files to be replicated between servers, effectively providing duplicate information in multiple locations. In most organizations, files are distributed across multiple servers throughout the enterprise. Users access file shares that are geographically distributed, but can also access file shares sitting on several servers in a site within the organization. In many organizations, when file shares were originally created years ago, server performance, server disk capacity, and the workgroup nature of file and print server distribution created environments in which those organizations had a file share for every department and every site. So, files have typically been distributed throughout an entire organization across multiple servers.

Windows Server 2012 DFSR enables an organization to combine file shares to fewer servers and create a file directory tree not based on a server-by-server or share-by-share basis, but rather an enterprisewide directory tree. This allows an organization to have a single directory spanning files from multiple servers throughout the enterprise.

Because the DFSR directory is a logical directory that spans the entire organization with links back to physical data, the actual physical data can be moved without having to make changes to the way the users see the logical DFS directory. This enables an organization to add or delete servers, or move and consolidate information, however it works best within the organization.

For branch office locations, DFSR allows for data stored on a file server in a remote location to be trickled back to the home office for nightly backup. Instead of having the remote location responsible for data backup, or the requirement of an organization to have tape drives in each of its branch offices, any data saved on the branch office can be trickle replicated back to a share at the main office for backup and recovery.

If the main office has data that it wants to push out to all remote offices, whether that is template files, company policy documents, standard company materials, or even shared data that a workgroup of users needs to access and collaborate on, DFSR provides the ability to push out data to other servers on the network. Users with access rights to the data no longer have to go across a WAN connection to access common data. The information is pushed out to a server that is more local to the user, and the user accesses the local copy of the information. If any changes are made to remote or centralized copies of data, those changes are automatically redistributed back to all volumes storing a copy of the data.

One of the enhancements made in Windows Server 2008 and extended in Windows Server 2012 specific to DFSR is the ability for an administrator to set a DFS replica to be read-only. In the past, DFS replicas were all read/write replicas, and so a user in a remote location could accidentally overwrite files that would then replicate to all replicas in the environment. Administrators have compensated for this potential issue by setting file-level permissions across files and folders; however, for many remote branch offices, if the administrator could simply make the entire replica read-only, it would simplify the security task dramatically. Therefore, read-only replicas can now be set so that an entire server or branch of a DFS tree can be set to replicate to a remote server on a read-only basis.


Other -----------------
- Windows Server 2012 : Enabling Users to Work Anywhere (part 2) - RDS Web Access
- Windows Server 2012 : Enabling Users to Work Anywhere (part 1) - Windows Server 2012 DirectAccess
- Windows Server 2012 : Enhancements for Flexible Identity and Security (part 2) - Active Directory Unification for Various Directory Services
- Windows Server 2012 : Enhancements for Flexible Identity and Security (part 1) - Dynamic Access Control
- Windows Server 2012 : DHCP,IPv6 and IPAM - Exploring DHCP (part 3) - Creating IPv4 DHCP Scopes
- Windows Server 2012 : DHCP,IPv6 and IPAM - Exploring DHCP (part 2) - Installing DHCP Server and Server Tools
- Windows Server 2012 : DHCP,IPv6 and IPAM - Exploring DHCP (part 1)
- Windows Server 2012 : DHCP,IPv6 and IPAM - Understanding the Components of an Enterprise Network
- Windows Server 2012 : Configuring IPv6/IPv4 interoperability (part 7) - ISATAP
- Windows Server 2012 : Configuring IPv6/IPv4 interoperability (part 6) - Configuring a DHCPv6 server, IPv6 transition technologies
 
 
Top 10
- Microsoft Visio 2013 : Adding Structure to Your Diagrams - Finding containers and lists in Visio (part 2) - Wireframes,Legends
- Microsoft Visio 2013 : Adding Structure to Your Diagrams - Finding containers and lists in Visio (part 1) - Swimlanes
- Microsoft Visio 2013 : Adding Structure to Your Diagrams - Formatting and sizing lists
- Microsoft Visio 2013 : Adding Structure to Your Diagrams - Adding shapes to lists
- Microsoft Visio 2013 : Adding Structure to Your Diagrams - Sizing containers
- Microsoft Access 2010 : Control Properties and Why to Use Them (part 3) - The Other Properties of a Control
- Microsoft Access 2010 : Control Properties and Why to Use Them (part 2) - The Data Properties of a Control
- Microsoft Access 2010 : Control Properties and Why to Use Them (part 1) - The Format Properties of a Control
- Microsoft Access 2010 : Form Properties and Why Should You Use Them - Working with the Properties Window
- Microsoft Visio 2013 : Using the Organization Chart Wizard with new data
 
programming4us
Windows Vista
programming4us
Windows 7
programming4us
Windows Azure
programming4us
Windows Server