I'm in the middle of setting up a web server for my site. In a previous post I had blogged on getting the machine up and running. In this post I will take a closer look at Active Directory which proved even more central than I had expected. Again this is nothing deep. IT pro guys are probably laughing their heads off reading this. But hey you guys: you're speaking a different language than us developers. Again these are just some things I wish I had known in advance and were hidden to deep in the docs.
Adding features to a Windows 2003 is a matter of enabling roles. My hard earned advice is to start always with the Domain Controller role. This will install and set up active directory. The setup will ask for the name of the domain the server is going to control. This is a point of "Think first, start the setup later". Why ?
- A domain control can only control one domain (name). Period. My server is going to host my old GekkoSoftware.nl domain but also PetersGekko.net as well as PetersGekko.com. I had to chose one of these names as the domain name. Internet request for the other domain names can be handled by this server as well, more on that in a later post, but there is no way to administer that in AD on a single server.
- Adding the AD role will also configure the DNS role. In case you already set up that one things might get messed up.
In case things do get messed up there is a very nice MS support article which really helped me. In title it is directed at Windows 2000, but it did help me very well in straightening my 2003 box.
Active directory is everywhere and I am really beginning to like it; in one place I have an overview of all computers, users, shares and the kitchen sink. There are several ways for machines to join. They can join themselves from the system part in their control panel. Having done that I can than manage the client PC straight from a server management console. But you can also add a machine from the server. In my network I have a Maxtor network storage drive. So far I had to manage and monitor it in a browser. Having added a computer named Maxtor in AD I now have a view on what's going on over there straight from the AD console.
It even shows things it's web-based management interface keeps hidden. Like the folder path's of the shares. Pleasant surprise.
Active directory controls everything. As mail server I installed Exchange. It took me some time to find the place to add and manage mailboxes and email addresses. It is right in the heart of AD user management, a right click away.
By default the property pages of an AD user already has three rows of tabs. Exchange will add even another row.
So setting up the server all boils down to Active Directory management. In the next and (intended) last post I'll describe the pitfalls I encountered setting up incoming traffic. After all, that's what a web server really is about.