Biohead Posted August 3, 2017 Share Posted August 3, 2017 Hi all, Looking for a few recommendations from members for good material to read for a beginner to Windows Server - in a home environment. My situation is as follows: In the past I just ran OpenMediaVault to act as a simple file server. It served it's purpose well but I'm in a position to switch to Windows Server and learn about it along the way. This is purely for home/personal gain - it's not me cheaping out on job training! The hardware I've got is a WD Sentinel DS6100 (Xeon E3 1265L V2, 8GB RAM) - it's currently running Server 2012 R2 Standard with the Essentials Role installed. The rest of the network is a pfsense router, a raspberry pi running pi-hole as the DNS server providing adblocking (with a nice UI) and Aerohive WAP. I'm happy to let WS take over some of the functionality such as DNS and DHCP once I'm confident how it will all work. The server is still primarily a file share for the home but aiming to do a bit more now. I've got a few computers connected to it using the Essentials Connector (Mainly 10 Pro, a couple of 10 Home). One of the things I'm genuinely interested in is WSUS - is this even possible in a home configuration? I've very briefly started researching the subject and it seems 10 Home is a no-no, but 10 Pro devices can be done with a simple registry key but I think I need to know more of the basics - a lot of the material is designed for much larger scale deployments so I'm getting lost pretty quickly. So I guess what I'm really looking for is somewhere I can start to understand the basics that would apply in the home environment. Shame WHS was culled off! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sc302 Veteran Posted August 3, 2017 Veteran Share Posted August 3, 2017 First off what are your requirements of said server. What do you want it to do exactly? I can point you in a lot of different directions and books/videos that will make your head spin. File share, you could have a pc do that. Basically saying, it isn't anything special to enable file sharing. You mention DHCP and DNS...that is starting to get into networking, is that what you want? Do you want to get into authentication too? Do you want to get into web hosting? Do you want to get into ftp? What is it exactly that you want? Basically you just went to a buffet and they have everything from fried chicken to sushi...sure it has salad, every buffet has some form of salad (this equates to file sharing) ....what is it that you want or are you happy just waiting on line and looking at everything? You want books here you go: https://www.amazon.com/Active-Directory-Designing-Deploying-Running/dp/1449320023 https://www.amazon.com/Group-Policy-Fundamentals-Security-Managed/dp/1118289404/ref=pd_sim_14_4/139-8476379-2860608?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1118289404&pd_rd_r=HSB5MEMG1NHF9TRFQV60&pd_rd_w=piW1h&pd_rd_wg=5oESw&psc=1&refRID=HSB5MEMG1NHF9TRFQV60 https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Server-Library-70-740-Certification/dp/0789759047/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501792634&sr=1-3&keywords=microsoft+dns+server https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-IIS-Month-Lunches/dp/1617290971/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501792671&sr=1-7&keywords=microsoft+iis https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617294160/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501792693&sr=1-1&keywords=powershell+in+a+month+of+lunches https://www.amazon.com/Windows-PowerShell-Cookbook-Scripting-Microsofts/dp/1449320686/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501792693&sr=1-7&keywords=powershell+in+a+month+of+lunches Circaflex 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Circaflex Posted August 3, 2017 Share Posted August 3, 2017 6 minutes ago, sc302 said: First off what are your requirements of said server. What do you want it to do exactly? I can point you in a lot of different directions and books/videos that will make your head spin. File share, you could have a pc do that. Basically saying, it isn't anything special to enable file sharing. You mention DHCP and DNS...that is starting to get into networking, is that what you want? Do you want to get into authentication too? Do you want to get into web hosting? Do you want to get into ftp? What is it exactly that you want? Basically you just went to a buffet and they have everything from fried chicken to sushi...sure it has salad, every buffet has some form of salad (this equates to file sharing) ....what is it that you want or are you happy just waiting on line and looking at everything? You want books here you go: https://www.amazon.com/Active-Directory-Designing-Deploying-Running/dp/1449320023 https://www.amazon.com/Group-Policy-Fundamentals-Security-Managed/dp/1118289404/ref=pd_sim_14_4/139-8476379-2860608?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1118289404&pd_rd_r=HSB5MEMG1NHF9TRFQV60&pd_rd_w=piW1h&pd_rd_wg=5oESw&psc=1&refRID=HSB5MEMG1NHF9TRFQV60 https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Server-Library-70-740-Certification/dp/0789759047/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501792634&sr=1-3&keywords=microsoft+dns+server https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-IIS-Month-Lunches/dp/1617290971/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501792671&sr=1-7&keywords=microsoft+iis https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617294160/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501792693&sr=1-1&keywords=powershell+in+a+month+of+lunches https://www.amazon.com/Windows-PowerShell-Cookbook-Scripting-Microsofts/dp/1449320686/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501792693&sr=1-7&keywords=powershell+in+a+month+of+lunches Not OP, but thanks for the reading material. I always enjoy adding new pieces to my library. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shockz Posted August 3, 2017 Share Posted August 3, 2017 (edited) I'd personally take that server and install ESX on it, with a Windows Server VM running under it. Not sure how limited you are with licensing. Afterwards you can do all sorts of things with it, not to mention use it as a testbed to learn and run various VMs, OSes, Utils on it. Edited August 3, 2017 by shockz GadgetPig 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sc302 Veteran Posted August 3, 2017 Veteran Share Posted August 3, 2017 there is nps and ca and lots of other stuff... like setting up certificate based authentication via AD CA and NPS through your wireless access points or through a managed switch. There is a ton out there that you can have windows server do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biohead Posted August 4, 2017 Author Share Posted August 4, 2017 Thanks for the material recommendations - I know it's a huge world. I think my problem is I've been given the hardware and I'm wanting to try maximise the usage of it. The hardware is designed for Win Server - specific drivers so I'm going to stick with it. It's why I've gone with the Essentials role as I thought it may be a good start to it. I would've liked to go down the VM route but I'm pretty sure the hardware is stuck with Win Server. It's actual requirements are a file server and a torrent client, nothing more. But it really is like the buffet analogy now - I know it can do more so I was looking for the best place to start off. As I'm running a separate DNS server at the minute that why I'm wondering if it would be sensible to setup that? DHCP - pfsense is happily sorting that out right now but would there be a benefit to shifting it? It's the little questions like that which I'm trying to pick up. Some of the other things I have in mind is Radius - I've not used it before but I've never been in the situation where I've got the kit which could do it and manage it with relative ease. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sc302 Veteran Posted August 4, 2017 Veteran Share Posted August 4, 2017 Like I said before, you don't need a server to host files. And you sure don't need a server to use it as a torrent client. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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