Introduction

The Internet and private networks are complex entities that are constantly changing. Although change and configuration management, capacity planning and monitoring, and network and system performance monitoring are not new topics, they have never been more important to the health and proper operation of networks than they are today.

You will commonly find yourself troubleshooting network traffic problems and troubleshooting network connectivity to the Internet. In addition, you will likely spend some time ensuring that servers' services are running smoothly and responding as required.

All these monitoring and troubleshooting tasks might seem boring or even unnecessary in the stable and automated world of Windows Server 2003, but they have their place, just as much as or even more than they did before. This chapter examines a wide array of monitoring and troubleshooting topics that you will be expected to understand for Exam 70-291 and later use while managing a Windows Server 2003 network.