4.3 Everyday Administration

To keep the size of this chapter at a (rather huge) minimum, I've tried to focus on common aspects of everyday WS2003 administration and have omitted end user experience stuff like enabling accessibility features, setting screen resolution, playing with desktop themes, and so on. Anyone who's worked with any version of Windows since Windows 95 either knows most of this stuff already or can easily pick it up by right-clicking all over the Windows desktop and selecting each available option. The GUI interface for WS2003 is almost identical to that of XP, so for a good overview of the WS2003 desktop, see a book on Windows XP such as Windows XP in a Nutshell by David A. Karp, Tim O'Reilly, and Troy Mott (O'Reilly). I've also omitted most things that are important only to developers, like ASP.NET, Authorization Manager, COM+, MSMQ, and the .NET Framework, as this is not the sort of stuff the average sysadmin needs to know for day-to-day administration of Windows-based networks. Specialized topics that are usually beyond the scope of day-to-day administration, like clustering, issuing and managing digital certificates, and Terminal Services, are also omitted (though Remote Desktop is covered).

Remember, this book is intended as a quick desktop reference for intermediate to advanced admins, and not as a beginner's tutorial. As a result, few readers will attempt to read this chapter through from beginning to end, and it really isn't intended to be used that way anyway. Instead, you will probably use this chapter to look up what you need to know about a specific topic you are interested in and to learn how to perform various administrative tasks commonly associated with the topic using the different tools the platform provides.