server 2003 ?'s for a newbie

[hellasnow]

i'm a nebie in the IT relm and server 2003 as well. i have a class set up to learn more about 2003 stuff but wanted to ask some questions in the meantime.

i'm just curious on the major things i need to keep up on my server making sure it is running it's best.

one thing i'd like to know as well is if there is some type of admin program that will show me how it is running currently and show me how it's performing.

basically just any feedback on things to do daily, weekly, and even monthly. tasks i should remind myself to do on a regular basis.

another thing i'd like to have is something that will let me keep track of my network, like what websites people are going to (i'm sure this is only done in the firewall tho), and applications that they could be running, without having to actually go to there machine through remote entry or such. anything like that out there?

thanks for any and all feedback

JC

[cluberti]

one thing i'd like to know as well is if there is some type of admin program that will show me how it is running currently and show me how it's performing.

Perfmon is built-in and is likely all you'll need, but there are 3rd-party and Microsoft applications (MOM) that can give you even more detail on server health and performance.

basically just any feedback on things to do daily, weekly, and even monthly. tasks i should remind myself to do on a regular basis.

Review logs, defragment disks, and don't do anything other than what is necessary on the server (i.e. no unnecessary 'net browsing, installing unnecessary applications, etc).

another thing i'd like to have is something that will let me keep track of my network, like what websites people are going to (i'm sure this is only done in the firewall tho), and applications that they could be running, without having to actually go to there machine through remote entry or such. anything like that out there?

You could use a network monitoring tool, but this is much easier done via forcing all traffic through a proxy, and simply monitoring there. Obviously I recommend ISA 2004, but you could go open-source and use Linux and Squid, for example. Monitoring on the proxy is much easier than monitoring on every machine or network segment.

[InTheWayBoy]

Get friendly with the Event Viewer...that should give you most of the info you'll need to worry about in regards to your first question. You can even run it on another computer and have it check the server, so you don't have to work on the server. Of course even that is flawed, but it's a free and useful start.

[hellasnow]

thanks for your replies guys, i appreciate it.

JC

[jftuga]

You could use a network monitoring tool, but this is much easier done via forcing all traffic through a proxy, and simply monitoring there. Obviously I recommend ISA 2004, but you could go open-source and use Linux and Squid, for example. Monitoring on the proxy is much easier than monitoring on every machine or network segment.

Actually, you can now run Squid on top of Windows and it works great.

http://www.acmeconsulting.it/SquidNT/

However, ISA 2004 Server would give you a more comprehensive view of what users are going to what web sites, especially in an Active Directory environment.

-John