Networking with Windows Server 2019

As we have been discussing so far in this book, servers are the tree trunks of our networks. They are the backbone infrastructure that enables us to get work done. If servers are the trunks, then the networks themselves must be the roots. Your network is the platform that supports the company infrastructure; it makes up the channels that all devices inside your company use to communicate with each other.

Traditionally, there have been server admins and network admins in the IT industry, separated roles, and in many places that is still the case. An administrator who primarily works on servers does not generally have enough time in the day to also support the network infrastructure in an organization of any size, and the reverse is also true. Network administrators generally stick to their own equipment and management tools and aren't interested in diving too deeply into the Windows Server world. However, many of us work in smaller companies...

Introduction to IPv6

Welcome to the dark side! Unfortunately, that is how many people think of IPv6 for the time being. While IPv6 is by no means a new thing, in my experience it is still something that almost no one has deployed in their networks. While working with hundreds of different companies all over the world over the past few years, I have come across only two organizations that were running IPv6 over their entire production network, and one wasn't even true native IPv6. Instead, they were using a tunneling technology, called ISATAP, over their whole network to make all of the servers and clients talk to each other using IPv6 packets, but these packets were still traversing an IPv4 physical network. Don't get me wrong; I have found plenty of cases where companies are toying around with IPv6 and have some semblance of it configured on a sectioned-off piece of their networks, but using it for the entire production network? Most of us just aren't ready for that...

Your networking toolbox

Whether you are a server administrator, a network administrator, or a combination of the two, there are a number of tools that are useful for testing and monitoring network connections within the Windows Server world. Some of these tools are baked right into the operating system and can be used from the Command Prompt or PowerShell, and others are more expansive graphical interfaces that require installation before running. The following are the built-in Windows network tools that we are going to look at:

• ping
• tracert
• pathping
• Test-Connection
• telnet
• Test-NetConnection

All these tools are free and included out of the box, so you have no excuse to delay getting acquainted with these helpful utilities.

ping

Even the newest IT pros are usually familiar with this one. ping is a command that you can utilize from a Command Prompt or PowerShell, and it is simply used to query a DNS name and/or IP address to...

Building a routing table

When you hear the term routing table, it is easy to pass that off as something the network folks need to deal with, something that is configured within the network routers and firewalls. It doesn't apply to the server admins, right? Networking servers together has been made pretty easy for us by only requiring an IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway, and we can instantly communicate with everything inside the rest of our network. While there is indeed a lot of networking magic going on under the hood that has been provided to us by networking equipment and network administrators, it is important to understand how routing inside Windows works because there will be some cases when you need to modify or build out a routing table right on a Windows Server itself.

Multi-homed servers

Running multi-homed servers is a case where you would certainly need to understand and work with a local Windows routing table, so let's start here. If you...

NIC Teaming

Moving on to another network topic that is becoming more and more popular on server hardware, let's walk through the steps to create NIC Teaming. The ability to team NICs together essentially consists of binding two or more physical network interfaces together so that they behave as if they were a single network interface within Windows. This allows you to plug in two physical cables to two different switch ports, all using the same settings. That way, if one NIC port or switch port or patch cable goes bad, the server continues working and communicating without hesitation, because the teaming allows the NIC that is still working to handle the network traffic.

NIC Teaming itself is nothing new. It has been around for 10 years or more inside the Windows Server operating system. However, early versions were problematic, and in the field, I find that Server 2016 is the earliest server operating system most IT personnel consider to be stable enough to use NIC...

Software-defined networking

The flexibility and elasticity of cloud computing cannot be denied, and most technology executives are currently exploring their options for utilizing cloud technologies. One of the big stumbling blocks to adaptation is trust. Cloud services provide enormous computing power, all immediately accessible at the press of a button. In order for companies to store their data on these systems, the level of trust that your organization has in that cloud provider must be very high. After all, you don't own any of the hardware or networking infrastructure that your data is sitting on when it's in the cloud, and so your control of those resources is limited at best. Seeing this hurdle, Microsoft has made many efforts in recent updates to bring cloud-like technology into the local data center. Introducing server elasticity into our data centers means virtualization. We have been virtualizing servers for many years now, although the capabilities there are...

Summary

Server administration and network administration used to be segregated pretty clearly in most organizations, but over time those lines have blurred. There are numerous networking configurations and tasks that now need to be accomplished by Windows Server administrators without needing to involve a networking team, so it is important that you have a good understanding of how your infrastructure connects together. Familiarity with the tools laid out in this chapter will provide you with the ability to configure, monitor, and troubleshoot the majority of Microsoft-centric networks.

Our introduction to software-defined networking may be a partially confusing section if you have never encountered this idea before, but hopefully it will prompt you to dig a little deeper and prepare yourself for dealing with this in the future. Ready or not, the cloud is here to stay. Microsoft on-premises networks now have numerous ways you can interact with Microsoft Azure, and it will soon...

Questions

1. How many bits in length is an IPv6 address?
2. Re-write the following IPv6 address in condensed form: 2001:ABCD:0001:0002:0000:0000:0000:0001.
3. What is the name of the command that is similar to trace route, but displays the local NIC that traffic is flowing out of?
4. True or False—On a server with multiple NICs, you can input a default gateway address onto each of those NICs.
5. What is the PowerShell cmdlet that can be used to create new routes on a Windows Server?
6. Which Windows Server operating systems can be used with an Azure Network Adapter in order to connect them straight to Azure virtual networks?