Chapter 9. Maintenance Practices and Procedures

In this Chapter

Maintenance is not as Interesting as Implementing New Technology

What to Do Every Day

What to Do Every Week

What to Do Every Month

Consolidating Servers as a Maintenance Task

Backup Tips and Tricks

Making Automated System Recovery Work for You

Leveraging Scripting for Maintenance Practices

Why Five-9s Might Be a Bad Idea

Automating Updates

BEST PRACTICES

Keeping Up with Patches

Schedule the Scandisk

Profiling Your Backup Network

Saving Time on Restores

Make the Checklists Easy to Follow

What Does Clustering Actually Accomplish?

After the network operating system is installed and users are able to use the network on a daily basis, the job of the network administrator is not over. Although Windows 2003 is a very stable and resilient operating system, it won't perform ongoing maintenance and ongoing support on its own. To maintain a reliable network system, proper maintenance must be conducted . This will keep the environment stable and proactively prevent system failures. Potential problems with an Active Directory environment can be greatly mitigated through regular maintenance practices covered in this chapter. By proactively identifying and fixing inconsistencies in the Active Directory, you can avoid a downed network and a restore from tape later.

This chapter will explore best practices in system maintenance and provide step-by-step recommendations what can be done to implement an effectively maintained environment. The processes described in this chapter will help you improve the stability of your network and allow for more proactive support in managing the network.