Solution

The tides changed dramatically with the release of Windows 2000,
which turned out to be much more scalable and manageable.
Microsoft began to improve in the management areas it had
previously lacked by adding more tools and introducing several new
scripting interfaces that were robust and easy to use.
But in many ways, Windows 2000 felt like a first version release of a
major piece of software, which it was. Windows 2000 did a lot of
things right, but there were still major gaps in terms of
manageability. Windows Server 2003, Microsoft’s latest server OS, is a much more mature
platform. It isn’t as big of an upgrade as
Windows NT to Windows 2000, but Microsoft
smoothed out a lot of the rough edges that were
present in Windows 2000.
So what are we left with? If I had to sum it up into a single sentence:
Windows Server 2003, and Windows 2000 to a lesser degree, is a
sophisticated OS that has been built from the ground up to be both
scalable and manageable, and supports all of the major information
technology services you need to run a business or organization. The
result is that administrators now have to do a lot with a lot.
You can’t get all of this capability wrapped up into a single OS
without some trade-offs. To be able to take full advantage of
Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003, you have to know
lots of gory technical details. You have to know how to navigate
through the hundreds of dialogs and menus. You have to know
which command-line utilities are available to accomplish various
specific tasks, where to find them, and which options you should
use for each utility. You have to know what scripting interfaces are
available to automate tasks so you can keep your support costs low.
We take it for granted, but that is a lot for any one person to know.
I’ve been doing Windows system administration
for
eight years and I still have a difficult time
recalling the correct tool or command or
scripting interface for certain tasks.

And that is the purpose of this book: to be a comprehensive
reference so I don’t have to waste time (and brain cells)
trying to remember that Windows Management
Instrumentation (WMI) doesn’t have any
scripting interfaces for creating
or modifying page files; or how to use Group
Policy to run a task on a group of workstations;
or how to find all of the files that are currently
open on a system. This book covers general
system administration duties, but it also covers
a great deal more. There are dedicated
chapters on many of the major services you’ll
end up running at one point including IIS,
DNS, DHCP, Active Directory, and Exchange.