System Administrator and Server Manager
Windows Operating system is the most popular OS. It is widely used in the world. Therefore, Windows operating system is called PC. Mainly PC means Personal computer. but in modern technology, it means Windows. Through this blog post, I will explain everything about Windows operating system. If you want to become an IT supporter, you will need to know this. To explain the major functionality of the computer that is used in IT support, we interact with Administrative Tools.
Go to the control panel and choose Administrative Tools. There are lots of options are available there. Some of them are:
- Active Directory
- Disk Cleanup
- Defragment and Optimize Drives
- Computer Management
- Event Viewer
- Local Security Policy
- Microsoft Azure Services
- Performance Monitor
- Print Management
- Recovery Drive
- Registry Editor
- Resource Monitor
- Server Manager
- Services
- System Configuration
- System Information
- Task Scheduler
- Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security
- Windows Memory Diagnostic
As an IT Supporter, All the above options are very important. They will need to know. All these options come under the system administrator activities. They use it to know everything about computer operations. So, I will explain them one by one a little bit more.
Before going deeper, first, we understand What is System Administrator?
A System Administrator or short we can call a sysadmin is a person that has the responsibility to add new user accounts to the machine, set up a new machine to the company network, and maintain their services.
What are the responsibilities of Sys Admin?
1. Adding new user accounts
In the company, when new employees are hired and assigned to a process, a new user account is required to create. The sysadmin creates a new account for that user. They provide a user id and password to the new users and also give the permission to change the password and keep a strong password as per the standard rule.
2. Setting up new machines
Whenever the requirement of machines to add to the company network is more, the admins set up this machine and extend the functionality of the network.
3. Maintaining the services
They maintain lots of services in the company like user access and deny permission, access the server permission, system or machine services after damage,
installing or uninstalling software services, security services, and many more,
4. Troubleshoots problem
The system admin should have the ability to solve the user's problem. In organizations, users face many technical problems. Most of the problems are forgetting passwords, or locking the accounts. So, users are not able to solve this problem from his side.
They will need to help. At that time sysadmin role comes to underplay.
In the company, sysadmins handle the operating system, network, hardware, and software. Operating system, network, hardware, and software are put together to create an environment in a company that is called IT infrastructure. The whole responsibility of IT infrastructure goes to the IT, support specialist.
System admin can work on the server-side as well as the client-side. all company data is stored in something called a data center. It is also kept on the server-side.
Data Center
It is a facility of a company that stores thousands of servers where important data of employees or clients are kept secure. The Company also stores the data in the cloud and accesses these data from anywhere, and anytime. This is called cloud computing.
Here, I have used some terms like Client, and Server.
What is a Client?
The client sends a request and waits for a response from another side. It can be a person or a machine. In the technology world, we use the client word for Computer. Computer or system or machine or client these are the same things. So, the computer can be a client sometimes it acts as a server when it responds to other computers.
What is the server?
A machine that responds something to the client. If Computer A provides the data to Computer B, Computer A is called the server, and Computer B is called the client.
There are different types of servers that provide different types of services. But the database server is the most important server that provides the data to clients. Suppose you are using Gmail, this means your data is stored on the mail server. You will never want to lose the data that is useful for you.
In this way, the database server has the responsibility to save and secure your data in the database.
What is data?
Data is the collection of facts. It is the form of words, numbers, images, videos, audio, and anything that you see in the world. Data is the most important asset of any organization or any business so it needs to be secure. It is the backbone of any company. Therefore any type of data even if it is 100 years old, that also be important.
What is the database?
A database is a repository of data. The database is everywhere and we use it every day. It is a program that stores the data. We can add, delete, modify, and query the data from the database. It can be stored in tabular form. The database is kept on the server-side and used as a database server. The function of the database server is to provide the data services when the client sends a request.
The database of any company is kept in security because the most important data is stored in the database. Most of the database is used publically. For that, the company provides a key to use the data from the database. But they allow limited access to the database after that it is paid services.
For example- If you want to use Foursquare location data, after registration, it gives a key called API key to access the location data, and also gifts $ 200 worth of credits on the 1st of every month. Once it is used, you will need to buy it.
why am I talking about data or database? Because whenever you work as an IT supporter, you will interact with these terms. So, you will have the responsibility to secure the use of the company data and according to the company policy, you can't give permission to the user to complete access to the company data.
Therefore, it will need to know.
Lifecycle Of Hardware
In an organization or company, there are lots of machines are working 24*7 hours continuously for many years. These systems get strained or damage some parts.
The company uses new hardware. They also use an old machine if it is possible. There are four main stages to dealing with Hardware.
1. Procurement
This is the stage where the company purchases the hardware for users. Sometimes they re-use that machine after maintenance. This saves the expenses for the company.
2. Deployment
After purchasing the machine, it is required to deploy. As a sysadmin, we will have the responsibility to deploy the machine.
How to deploy the machine?
In deployment, the administrator set up the hardware installs the necessary software for employees' use, creates a new account, and provides user IDs and passwords to employees. These tasks will have to be done by a sysadmin.
3. Maintainance
In the company, lots of computers are damaged due to using continuously. It can be hardware problems or software problems. Hardware issues occur when CPU executes the many operations at a time and releases the temperature continuously. They fix the hardware issues.
After some months the Software developer of the company changes some feature or add a new feature to the software and also improve the performance. So, to gain all features and performance, the software is required to be updated. Updating the software reduces the chances of vulnerability.
Therefore, updating the software and fixing the issues of hardware both come under the maintenance stage.
4. Retirement
If hardware is not able to be re-used and is no longer needed, it is completely removed from the company network.
The company follows these steps to complete the lifecycle of the hardware.
Now I will explain about Active Directory. Before going deeper, Let's understand What is Directory Services?
A directory service is a type of network service that is provided by a directory server. A directory service is used in the company or organization to organize the organizational objects. It has the company information like employee's details. It keeps the user accounts, user groups, sharing files, phone numbers, etc. all this information is stored in a directory server to access and manage it in an easy way.
Directory services are very useful to organize the company data and it makes it easy to searchable whenever some data is needed. It is a flexible service that allows you to create another new object and also gives permission to change any objects.
What is Centralized management?
Central management provides central services that manage the work centrally. It can send an instruction to different IT infrastructures and receive them from these systems. A directory service is a service that provides centralized services like Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting services.
What are Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting or AAA?
Authentication
Authentication is the process through which we recognize the user's identity. This acts as a strong security guard of the home. It requires the user's credential and when users enter their credential or user id and password, It checks to match with those credential that is already stored in the database. If it is matched, it allows accessing these things. In simple words, Authentication means that you are able to log in to any things. These may be applications, computers, mobile devices, and websites.
Let's understand with a small example, suppose you are going to the examination. To reach the examination center, you show your own admit card to enter the examination hall and get entered. Here, your admit card acts as an identity and helps to recognize that you are a candidate. So, thus authentication works.
Without authentication, we can't access any things.
Authorization
Authorization is the process through which we get to access some things. To access something, you will need to authenticate. When we authenticate some website, we get to assess the data on that website. It gives them authority to do something like read the content, add new users, modify users, delete users, add account numbers in bank applications,s and many more. But they apply some conditions. We can enter into the website but we can access those data which come under our authority only for that we have authenticated.
Accounting
Accounting is the process through which everything has recorded access and usage. When you suffer on any website, your activities are tracked and recorded automatically.
AAA services take a decision about granting or denying the permission to access the systems. In centralized management, when you create a new account, it appears to the entire network at once. Any changes in the upper-level objects that would affect all sub-objects in the networks.
LDAP OR Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
LDAP is the most popular directory service. It uses two types of directory services:
- Active Directory
- Open LDAP
Active Directory
It is a tool that is used for centralizing the management of computer networks. Active Directory is widely used in organizations to connect the system. Suppose you are working in the company, it is probably that your system is connected to the AD that gives you permission to access the company data.
In Active Directory, you can add or remove the users, add the groups or computers and authenticate it, and lots of things you can do like install the software on hundreds of machines at a time, and change the wallpaper of the system. These all are happened by one computer server and it handles lots of computers at once.
Where do we get Active Directory?
Active Directory is the most powerful tool. It requires a server. You can get Active Directory in Server Manager. Server Manager is a feature of Windows OS. It is not found in Windows Home operating system. If you are using Windows professional, you can get this feature. If you want to install a fresh windows server, you will need to buy a windows server Operating system.
There are lots of versions of windows servers like windows server 2003, windows server 2008, windows server 2016, etc. These are installed just like the windows operating system. After installing you get the feature of server manager. But for learning purposes, you can use server manager in Virtual Box.
How To Set up Windows server 2022 in Virtual Box?
1. Download Virtual Box: It provides a virtual environment where you can add windows servers freely before any effect on your actual machine.
2. Download Windows server ISO image: You can download windows server 2016, or 2008. For the latest version download the windows server 2022 iso file.
I have uploaded a video in which I have shown how to create a virtual environment for windows OS and how to add a windows server 2022 iso file. You can also set up other windows servers similarly.
Overview Of Active Directory Administrative Center
It is a center that allows managing the active directory installation, where we configure the users, groups, computers, and many more.
OUOU is a container that contains objects for a directory service. Organization Units can contain other OU. It contains the team structure of your organization.
The user's OU can contain other OU. Suppose It contains Developers, Sales, QC. These can also have user accounts.
Any changes in the higher OU, it effects all sub-OUs including Developer, Sales, and QC.
Domain
Windows domains provide access to user accounts, groups, computers, printers, and many more things. It also provides security features as a part of the database. Windows domain is controlled by Domain Controller.
Domain id is a short name like ITStudy.com, here ITStudy.com is a Domain name and ITStudy is a DNS name.
Forest
A forest is a container that contains one or more domains. That means one or more can be a domain controller in a forest. In the above figure, you can see that there is only one domain in the forest.
Domain Controller
A domain Controller is a container in Domain that is created by default. It handles all activities in Domain. The sysadmin has the permission to some changes in networks easily. The domain controller provides central authentication through Kerberos.
When a computer is joined to AD this means there are two things that are happening, first, our computer knows about AD and second AD knows about the computer. So, here computer acts as a user and it can authenticate to Active Directory.
What does the AD do when someone joins the organization?
When a new person joins the organization, the system administrator adds that person by creating a user account. when this happens, Every system that is joined with AD knows about the person that is.
When we click on the user's OU, we get lots of groups and a guest user created by default. I will explain a little bit.
You can see:
- Administrator
- Domain Admin
- Enterprize Admin
- and many more.
Administrator
The administrator is an account of the User's OU. They are the part of members of groups that have the power to change in the active directory. Domain Admin is an administrator of AD. They are also a local administrator of the system.
Enterprize admin is an admin of the AD. They have permission to change to the domain. Enterprize admin does not work as a domain admin or sysadmin on regular basis. Suppose when Active Directory needs to upgrade or any other change regarding the application, Enterprize admin comes to underplay.
Domain users are a group container that has all users' accounts in the domain.
Now, here in the below image, you can see the active directory. This is the active directory in which I have created some groups or user accounts.
How to add a new user in AD?
When a new person joins the organization, the sysadmin adds that person in AD by creating a user account.
To add a new user please follow this step:
- Go to USER's OU and click right.
- Go to New.
- Last, select the user option and click.
A small window is opened that is given below. Fill only mandatory fields. You will fill in only the first name of the user and the user logon name and click next.
After that, it requires the standard password. It should be more complex. Last, click on Finish. You have successfully added a new user in OU.
How To Add A User In AD?
How to add a new group in AD?
Suppose your company has many users like developers, QC, and Sales. As a sysadmin, you want to create a separate group and add them to it. Creating a group is very helpful to assign policies to the users at once. So, how to do that? Simple as you create a new user in the same way you will create a group.
To create a new group please follow this step:
- Go to USER's OU and click right.
- Go to New.
- Last select the group option and click.
A small window is opened that is given below like this. Fill only group name, choose group score and group type and click ok. You have created a new group successfully.
How To Add A Group In AD?
How to add Users to a Group?
To add a user to the group, we will know two ways to do that.
First, We will add users through Group.
Second, We will add users through User.
1. Add a user through Group
1. Double click on any group that you are created. or Right-click the go-to property.
2. Go to Members.
3. Click on Add...
4. Now Inside the white space type the user name that you are created then click Check Names. If that user is available, the typed name is underlined.
5. Click on OK.
6. click apply then OK.
2. Add a user through User
1. Double click on any user that you are created. or Right-click the go-to property.
2. Go to Member Of.
3. Click on Add...
4. Now inside the white space type the group name that you are created then click Check Names. If that group is available, the typed group is underlined.
5. Click OK.
6. click apply then OK.
Here I have a scenario in which you can create four user accounts and three group accounts. After that add three users in groups according to the image that is given below.
How to add Users to the Group?
A workgroup is a collection of systems connected to a network that works together. These systems have their own rules and permission at the local level.
But Domain has a group of systems that are bounded by specific rules of the domain controller.
This is the important question that is asked in the interview.
Group Type: What are the types of Groups in AD?
- Security Group
- Distribution Group
What is the Security Group?
Security Group contains users, computers, and other security accounts. It manages the source units. It helps to assign rights to the users and computers. Security group controls the traffic from one source to another source. Each source has a security group to gain the right access to the computer.
What is the Distribution Group?
It is used only for email sending and group accounts. Only some users can't use distribution groups to access the network resources.
Group scope
There are three types of Group scope:
- Domain Local
- Global Scope
- Universal Scope
These groups are used to assign permission in a different way.
GROUP POLICY OBJECTS
Group Policy Objects are the set of policies that bounds all users, groups, and computers by specific rules. It has many policies regarding user activities. It has all settings for systems and accounts.
GPO or group policy objects have the event log. It keeps the record of entering the wrong password. GPO also helps to install the software in other multiple computers by creating a new Group Policy.
The below image shows Group Policy Management.
GPM has a Forest like Forest:example.com and Forest:company.com. It has domains, site, group policy modeling, and group policy result. When you click to expand the Domain, you get your domain name like company.com.
When you click on Domain Controller, you get Default Domain Controller Policy.
Where can we see user configuration and computer configuration?
By right-clicking on Default Domain Controller Policy, Go to Edit and click. We find Group Policy Management Editor. Here you can see the Computer Configuration and User Configuration.
When we sign in to the Active Directory Domain, GPO is in effect and applies the computer configuration.
When Users log into the system, GPO is in effect and applies the user configuration.
When users sign in to the domain, the domain controllers give the system or computer a set of group policies. Group policies are downloaded by the computer in a folder called sysvol. After that computer applies these policies to the computer. Now users only can do those operations on the computer that Domain Controller wants.
Whenever some changes are done in Group Policy, it needs to update by typing the command in command prompt 'gpupdate'. It is good to use that change.
How to set wallpaper through Group Policy?
- Open the Group Policy Management
- Go to Forest like Forest: ITStudy
- Go to Domains
- Click On Domain Name
- Go to Group Policy Objects
- Create a New Policy by Clicking right and clicking New and giving some name like Wallpaper.
- Click right on the new policy that is wallpaper and select the edit.. option. After clicking, Group Policy Management Editor is opened.
- Go to User Configuration
- Expand the Policies option
- Go to Administrative Templates
- Go to Desktop
- Again Go to Desktop
- Right-hand side Double click on Desktop Wallpaper
- Set the Enabled
- Paste the Link to the wallpaper in the Wallpaper Name
- Click Apply and OK
The more you will be familiar with Active Directory, The more you will know about it.
Disk Clean up
Disk Clean-up is a method through which we improve the disk performance and speed up the application load time. Clean-up files are created by Graphical System. When it is cleaned up, Our system re-generated these files again when it is needed.
Where can we find the disk clean-up option on a computer?
To clean up the disk:
1. Right Click on Disk Volume or Partition in This PC or Computer.
2. Go to Property
3. In the General option you can see the disk clean up button.
After clicking the disk clean-up button, it shows unnecessary files like the internet cache and cycle bin files that are stored in the computer. So, you can select these files and click OK.
Defragment and Optimize Drives
Defragmentation
When we store the data on the computer, we don't know where is our data stored on the hard drive. So, recognizing the location of the data is very important because it helps to put it back together with the related data on a hard drive. This process is hidden and users can't do that.
So, in this case, defragmentation comes to underplay. It is a process of recognizing the data in a disk so that the related data may be put back together.
Optimization
Optimization is a common process and you do it on daily basis with your cellphone to make your device more efficient so that it may work perfectly. Similarly, Optimization is a process through which our computer runs more efficiently and gives better performance.
Where can we find Optimize option on a computer?
A new window is opened and you can see their optimize option.
Comments
Post a Comment