Table Of ContentWindows Server 2012
R2 Administrator
Cookbook
Over 80 hands-on recipes to effectively administer and
manage your Windows Server 2012 R2 infrastructure
in enterprise environments
Jordan Krause
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Windows Server 2012 R2 Administrator
Cookbook
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First published: January 2015
Production reference: 1220115
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Credits
Author Project Coordinator
Jordan Krause Suzanne Coutinho
Reviewers Proofreaders
Bede Carroll Ting Baker
Jochen Nickel Stephen Copestake
Matthew Stone Lawrence A. Herman
Kunal Udapi
Indexer
Commissioning Editor Hemangini Bari
Kunal Parikh
Production Coordinator
Acquisition Editor Melwyn D'sa
Vinay Argekar
Cover Work
Content Development Editor Melwyn D'sa
Pooja Nair
Technical Editor
Prajakta Mhatre
Copy Editor
Ameesha Green
About the Author
Jordan Krause is a Microsoft MVP in the Enterprise Security group. He has the unique
opportunity to work with the Microsoft networking technologies daily as a senior engineer
at IVO Networks. Jordan specializes in Microsoft DirectAccess and has authored Microsoft
DirectAccess Best Practices and Troubleshooting, Packt Publishing, one of the few books
available worldwide on this subject. His additional technical expertise includes Microsoft
Unified Access Gateway (UAG) and Microsoft Threat Management Gateway (TMG). He spends
the majority of each workday planning, designing, and implementing DirectAccess for
companies around the world.
Committed to continuous learning, Jordan holds Microsoft certifications as an MCP, MCTS,
MCSA, and MCITP Enterprise Administrator. He regularly writes tech notes and articles
reflecting his experiences with the Microsoft networking technologies; these can be found at:
http://www.ivonetworks.com/news.
Jordan also strives to spend time helping the DirectAccess community, mostly by way of the
Microsoft TechNet forums. Always open to direct contact, he encourages anyone who needs
assistance to head over to the forums and find him personally. Jordan lives and works in the
ever-changing climate that is Michigan.
About the Reviewers
Bede Carroll is an IT everyman, working with servers, networking, and storage when not
dabbling with some coding for fun. His desire to learn has led him to hold many industry
certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and EMC to name but a few. Bede has many
years of industry experience obtained while working in small business environments all the
way through to Fortune Global 500 organizations. This diverse experience has given Bede a
unique perspective on the industry and the ability to respond to any client needs.
Bede can be found on Twitter @bedecarroll, on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/
bedecarroll, and occasionally blogging at www.bedecarroll.com.
I would like to thank my wonderful family for their love and support in
helping me to achieve my goals.
Jochen Nickel is a Cloud, Identity, and Access Management Solution Architect with a focus
and deep technical knowledge on the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite. He currently works
for inovit GmbH in Switzerland and spends the majority of each work day planning, designing,
and implementing single parts such as Azure Active Directory Premium, Azure Rights
Management Services, or complete Enterprise Mobility Suite solutions.
Also, he has been part of many projects, proof of concepts, reviews, and workshops in this field
of technology. Furthermore, he is a Microsoft V-TSP Security, Identity, and Access Management,
Microsoft Switzerland, and he uses his experience for directly managed business accounts in
Switzerland. He is also an established speaker at many technology conferences.
As an active writer and reviewer, Jochen authored Learning Microsoft Windows Server 2012
Dynamic Access Control and reviewed Windows Server 2012 Unified Remote Access Planning
and Deployment by Erez Ben-Ari and Bala Natarajan, both by Packt Publishing.
Committed to continuous learning, he holds Microsoft certifications such as MCITP, MCSE/A,
MCTS, MTA, and many other security titles. He enjoys spending as much time as possible with
his family to get back the energy to handle such interesting technologies.
He regularly blogs at www.inovit.ch/blog.idam.ch.
Matthew Stone is an IT veteran, having worked on a wide range of technologies over the
last 20 years, including Windows Server and many other Microsoft server technologies. In
addition to systems administration, he has also served as a technical writer, most recently
writing a training course on Office 365 administration and deployment. His current focus is on
orchestration and configuration management in the enterprise, focusing on Windows Server
and Puppet technologies.
Kunal Udapi has acquired more than 8 years of IT experience in SMB and Enterprise
infrastructure design, implementation, and administration. He has provided architectural
and engineering expertise in a variety of virtualization, data center, and private cloud-based
engagements for company's internal IT team environment. He currently holds the title of
Senior System Administrator at a company in Pune, Maharashtra, India.
Kunal holds numerous technical certifications (Windows and VMware) and was awarded
VMware vExpert in 2014. He frequently answer users' questions on VMware Technology
Network (VMTN) and LinkedIn groups.
Kunal is an independent blogger for http://kunaludapi.blogspot.com. He focuses
on creating content that revolves around VMware virtualization and PowerShell/PowerCLI
automation, which benefits the technology community.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Learning the Interface 9
Introduction 10
Shutting down or restarting the server 10
Launching Administrative Tools 13
Using WinKey + X for quick admin tasks 15
Using the Search function to launch applications quickly 17
Managing remote servers from a single pane with Server Manager 20
Using PowerShell to accomplish any function in Windows Server 23
Installing a role or feature 25
Administering Server 2012 R2 from a Windows 8.x machine 27
Identifying useful keyboard shortcuts in Server 2012 R2 29
Setting your PowerShell Execution Policy 31
Building and executing your first PowerShell script 33
Searching for PowerShell cmdlets with Get-Help 37
Chapter 2: Core Infrastructure Tasks 39
Introduction 39
Configuring a combination Domain Controller, DNS server, and DHCP server 40
Adding a second Domain Controller 45
Organizing your computers with Organizational Units (OUs) 47
Creating an A or AAAA record in DNS 50
Creating and using a CNAME record in DNS 54
Creating a DHCP scope to assign addresses to computers 55
Creating a DHCP reservation for a specific server or resource 58
Pre-staging a computer account in Active Directory 60
Using PowerShell to create a new Active Directory user 62
Using PowerShell to view system uptime 65