Chapter 8 “Maintaining and Updating Windows Server 2008”

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Monitoring a Windows Server 2008 network can be accomplished with the use of three tools that give you the ability to proactively troubleshoot network problems, the Reliability and Performance Monitor, Windows Server 2008 Event Viewer, and Network Monitor.  The Reliability and Performance Monitor allows you to collect real time information on your local computer or from a specific computer that you have the proper permissions to access.  There are three types of information that can be monitored to judge the performance of a Windows Server 2008 computer.  Performance counters, specific processes or events that you want to track, event trace data, data that is collected over time to provide a real-time view into the behavior and performance of the server operating systems and applications running on it, and configuration information, using the Reliability and Performance monitor to query the Windows Registry for specific configuration data to determine how a server is configured and whether changes to that configuration are affecting performance.  The Event Viewer shows logs for informational messages as well as error messages.  Some of the logs that can be viewed in Event Viewer are Windows logs which include application logs, security logs, setup logs, system logs, and forwarded events.  It is important to monitor for events that can give you information about the overall health of the system.  The Network Monitor is not included with Windows Server 2008 but you can download and install the latest version from the Microsoft Web site.  Network monitor can isolate and view the network traffic that is being sent to or from the server. It can tell you if a client application is failing or if a malicious user or virus is attempting to access the computer over the network.  Finally, Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)  is a Web based tool that Microsoft offers as a free download for managing and distributing software updates that resolve known security issues or otherwise improve performance of Windows XP, Vista, 7, Server 2003, and Server 2008 operating systems.  Using WSUS gives you the ability to download and test updates before they are installed on all computers throughout your organization and then release the approved updates to be automatically installed on all client machines.