Preface

The world is changing. When my wife and I had our first child, I remember numerous people telling us all about how quickly life would fly past now. This is one of those things that everyone hears, but nobody believes until they suddenly realize it has been 5…10…20 years and suddenly we're looking back wondering, "Where did it go?"

So it is with technology. Computers are ever-changing, ever-improving. My first computer at my first IT job was running Windows 98. Some of you reading this have likely never heard of Windows 98, because you weren't born yet. Ouch.

Entering the technology workforce today is very different than it was back then. Nowadays you're often expected to know everything there is to know about current on-premises infrastructures such as Windows 10, Windows Server 2019, switching and routing, and firewalls, and even have a pretty good bearing on security risks, prevention, and remediation. In addition to current systems, it is extremely helpful to know and have experience with previous versions of these technologies so that you aren't completely lost when you encounter one for the first time. Tack on to that all the quickly escalating cloud options provided by Azure, which seem to change daily, and I imagine it can all feel a bit overwhelming.

While marketing engines around the world are working hard to make everyone believe that on-premises resources are a thing of the past, it simply isn't true. Most businesses, and especially most enterprises, will continue to run on-premises servers, storage, and impressively complex networking for decades to come. What is it that drives the processing power of these physical datacenters for the majority of companies around the world? Windows Server. In fact, even if you have gone all-in for cloud adoption and host 100% of your serving resources in Azure, you are still making use of Windows Server 2019. It is the operating system that underpins Azure!

Over the last few years, we have all become familiar with software-defined computing, using virtualization technology to turn our server workloads into a software layer. Now, Microsoft is expanding on this idea with new terms such as software-defined networking, software-defined storage, and even an entire Software-Defined Data Center. The technologies that make these happen allow us to virtualize and share resources on a grand scale.

To make our workloads more flexible and cloud-ready, Microsoft is taking major steps in shrinking the server compute platform and creating new ways of interfacing with those servers. There is an underlying preference for new Windows Servers to be running the smaller, more efficient, and more secure Server Core interface. Additionally, application containers have made huge advancements over the past few years, and Server 2019 allows us to transition our applications into containers to run them in isolation from each other and on a mass scale. We also have new centralized management tools for administering our servers and networks, namely, the newly updated Windows Admin Center.

We'll take some time to discover together the inner workings of the newest version of this server operating system, which will drive and support so many of our business infrastructures over the coming years. Windows servers have dominated our datacenter rack spaces for more than two decades. Will this newest iteration in the form of Windows Server 2019 continue that trend?

Who this book is for

Anyone interested in Windows Server 2019 or in learning more in general about a Microsoft-centric datacenter will benefit from this book. An important deciding factor when choosing which content was appropriate for such a volume was making sure that anyone who had a baseline in working with computers could pick this up and start making use of it within their own networks. If you are already proficient in Microsoft infrastructure technologies and have worked with prior versions of Windows Server, then there are some focused topics on the aspects and parts that are brand new and only available in Server 2019. On the other hand, if you are currently in a desktop support role, or if you are coming fresh into the IT workforce, care was taken in the pages of this book to ensure that you will receive a rounded understanding, not only of what is brand new in Server 2019, but also what core capabilities it includes as carryovers from previous versions of the operating system, and that are still crucial to be aware of when working in a Microsoft-driven datacenter.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Windows Server 2019, gives us an introduction to the latest Server operating system and an overview of the new technologies and capabilities that it can provide. We will also spend a little bit of time exploring the updated interface for those who may not be comfortable with it yet.

Chapter 2, Installing and Managing Windows Server 2019, dives right into the very first thing we will have to do when working with Server 2019: install it! While this seems like a simple task, there are a number of versioning and licensing variables that need to be understood before you proceed with your own install. From there, we will start to expand upon Microsoft's centralized management mentality, exploring how we can now manage and interact with our servers without ever having to log into them.

Chapter 3, Active Directory, leads us into the most core and essential role that exists in a Windows Server environment. AD is the central repository for many different types of data inside most corporate infrastructures, and without understanding the tools that exist to interface with this directory you will not be able to do much work with those fancy new servers.

Chapter 4, DNS and DHCP, segues into two other important roles that exist in almost every network. DNS and DHCP are both necessary technologies and concepts to understand for any IT administrator, and both happen to be roles that can be serviced from Windows Server 2019. We'll dig into both.

Chapter 5, Group Policy, showcases a fantastic policy engine that can be used inside any Active Directory environment to create a centralized management location for your users and workstations. Whether you are interested in setting up password policies, configuring lockdowns on your systems, automatically mapping network drives, or even distributing software, Group Policy is a powerful tool that is often underutilized.

Chapter 6, Certificates in Windows Server 2019, jumps into one of the pieces of Windows Server that has existed for many years, and yet most server administrators that I meet are unfamiliar with it. We'll take a closer look at certificates as they become more and more commonly required for new technologies that we roll out. By the end of this chapter, you should be able to spin up your own PKI and start issuing certificates for free!

Chapter 7, Networking with Windows Server 2019, begins with an introduction to that big, scary IPv6, and continues from there into building a toolbox of items that are baked into Windows Server 2019 and can be used in your daily networking tasks. We will also discuss the parts and pieces that make up Software-Defined Networking.

Chapter 8, Remote Access, takes a look at the different remote access technologies that are built into Windows Server 2019. Follow along as we explore the capabilities provided by VPN, DirectAccess, Web Application Proxy, and the new Always On VPN.

Chapter 9, Hardening and Security, gives some insight into security and encryption functions that are built into Windows Server 2019. Security is the primary focus of CIOs everywhere, so we'll explore what protection mechanisms are available to us out of the box.

Chapter 10, Server Core, throws us into the shrinking world of headless servers. Server Core has flown under the radar for many years but is critical to understand as we bring our infrastructures into a more security-conscious mindset. We'll make sure you have the information necessary to make your environment more secure and more efficient, all while lowering the amount of space and resources that are consumed by those servers.

Chapter 11, PowerShell, gets us into the new, blue command-line interface so that we can become comfortable using it and also learn why it is so much more powerful than Command Prompt. PowerShell is quickly becoming an indispensable tool for administering servers, especially in cases where you are adopting a centralized management and administration mindset.

Chapter 12, Redundancy in Windows Server 2019, looks at some platforms in Server 2019 that provide powerful data and computing redundancy. Follow along as we discuss Network Load Balancing, Failover Clustering, Storage Spaces Direct, and build our own instance of Storage Replica.

Chapter 13, Containers and Nano Server, incorporates the terms open source and Linux into a Microsoft book! Application containers are quickly becoming the new standard for hosting modern, scalable applications. Learn how to start enhancing your DevOps story using tools such as Windows Server containers, Hyper-V containers, Docker, and Kubernetes.

Chapter 14, Hyper-V, covers a topic that every server administrator should be very familiar with. Organizations have been moving their servers over to virtual machines en masse for many years. We'll use this chapter to make sure you understand how that hypervisor works and give you the resources required to build and manage one if and when you have the need.

Chapter 15, Troubleshooting Windows Server 2019, provides information about tools and software included with Windows Server that can be used to troubleshoot common problems. Server 2019 seems to be Microsoft's most stable and reliable server operating system to date, yet as you all know nothing is perfect, and issues are bound to present themselves. Here we discover tools like Resource Manager, Performance Monitor, and System Insights that help to keep our servers tuned and running well.

To get the most out of this book

Each technology that we discuss within the pages of this book is included in, or relates directly to, Windows Server 2019. If you can get your hands on a piece of server hardware and the Server 2019 installer files, you will be equipped to follow along and try these things out for yourself. We will talk about and reference some enterprise-class technologies that come with stiffer infrastructure requirements to make them work fully, and so you may have to put the actual testing of those items on hold until you are working in a more comprehensive test lab or environment, but the concepts are all still included in this book.

We will also discuss some items that are not included in Server 2019 itself, but that are used to extend its the capabilities and features. Some of these items help tie us into an Azure cloud environment, and some are provided by third parties, such as using Docker and Kubernetes on your Server 2019 to interact with application containers. Ultimately, you do not need to use these tools to manage your new Windows Server 2019 environment, but they do facilitate some pretty cool things that I think you will want to explore.

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781801078313_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are several text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. For example: "Inside DNS, I am going to create an alias record that redirects intranet to web1."

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

Uninstall-WindowsFeature -Name Windows-Defender

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on the screen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "Simply find the appropriate OU for his account to reside within, right-click on the OU, and navigate to New | User."

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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