Not to mention the fact that most Open Source software is written for Linux and Apache, and while I’ve banged around on the Windows port of Apache, it’s just easier to use a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) box along with one of those nifty cPanel interfaces to get stuff done.

Server 2008 & IIS 7

However, the world has been a-changin’ with Windows Server 2008 and IIS 7. IIS 7 can now support PHP, and since so many of the most popular scripts for content management systems and blogging software are written in PHP, my mind opens up a bit towards the possibility of using a Server 2008 box for web hosting. But even so, the tweaks and worksarounds to make the Open Source stuff work on Server 2008 have been kind of a pain.

The wizards over at Microsoft have even tried to make web life on a Server 2008 box a little easier with their Microsoft Web Platform Installer. . This little 1MB download will help you not only easily install PHP, IIS, Wordpress, Drupal (one of my absolute favorite web apps!) , and a whole mess of other stuff on your web server, but also keep your code up to date. (Note: Check out the 2.0 Beta version for easy installs of PHP support and the latest and greatest from the Open Source stuff. Skip the 1.0, it’s so yesterday.)

So go download it, check it out, and tell me your experience with it in the comments.

Related posts:

• Install BIND DNS on Windows Web Server 2008 – Part 1
• How to Install Windows Server 2008
• Server Core Install vs. Full Install – Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!

Nowadays, it may not be as important to know exactly what to do right off the top of your head, but rather know where to go to find the answers to the issues and problems you might be facing. Of course you know that a solid foundation of knowledge is critical to doing IT work, but there are always going to be limits to what we can cram into our heads.

Some Quick IT Research Sites

One fantastic resource I go back to over and over is the Windows Server 2008 Technical Library. As IT folks, we forget that sometimes the information that we need is actually sitting right on Microsoft’s site. Granted, Microsoft’s web site is gargantuan in it’s scope, but taking a little time to become familiar with the primary areas of their site(s) can save massive time in the future.

For the web heads out there, you know that IIS 7 has been a huge upgrade in terms of modularity and capability of Microsoft’s web services. Get to know IIS.net. There is a massive amount of knowledge on that site.

And lastly, don’t forget about forums. A forum I visit a lot is the one hosted by my buddies over at petri.co.il. Chances are, whatever issue or question you’re facing, someone else has also dealt with the same thing. Finding a solution to an issue might be as easy as doing a search on Petri.

Always keep in mind that with as fast as everything changes in IT, it might be more important to know where to go to find the answer instead knowing what the answer is (at least initially-you do have to find the answer sometime). I’ve provided some resources here that I use time and time again, what knowledge bases, forums, and resources do you use to do research (besides the Best Computer Training on The Planet from Trainsignal.com) ? Post your links in the comments.

Related posts:

• Master Server 2008 R2 for Free
• Video: Coach Culbertson on Server 2008 R2 Training — Free for a Limited Time

What modularization allows us to do is build our own web server depending on our unique needs, so that we don’t have to include stuff that we know we’ll never use.

So today I’ll show you how to build your own web server and how to setup a basic static website.

Here are all the details of what’s covered today:

• New IIS Features — Microsoft has put a lot of work into the new IIS version and we’ll go over what the new features and functionalities of IIS 7.0 are
• Modularization — there are 40 different modules that come with IIS 7 and now you have the option to choose the ones you need; I’ll show you which ones fit into our Verde Petra scenario
• IIS Role Installation — we’ll install the web server role so you can see all the steps that are involved and I’ll also explain the Web Process Activation Service
• Selection of Modules — next we’ll take a look at the available modules and select and customize a few of them for our example
• IIS Manager — we will also explore the IIS Manager so you can see how it functions and where the module settings are located in case you need to change them
• Browsing Your New Site — finally we will add files to our site and browse the site to make sure it’s operational

Free Instant Download

Download this lesson in high-quality WMV video format

Or, download in iPod/iPhone format to watch on the go

Related posts:

• Lesson 5: Windows Server 2008 File and Print Servers
• Lesson 4: Windows Server Core and DHCP Servers in Server 2008
• Lesson 8: Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services

The main reason for this of course, is that Windows Web Server 2008 does not allow you to install the Microsoft DNS Role.

In this part of the series I will walk you through an initial configuration of the BIND DNS server. First let’s talk about a few different types of DNS server setups available.

Authoritative Name Servers

Every DNS zone, like www.trainsignaltraining.com, is served by at least one authoritative name server which contains all the DNS records for the zone.

To account for fault tolerance most zones have more than one server that keeps all these records in case of outages.

Because of this you will have two types of Authoritative Name Servers — one that keeps the master copy of the zone and that server is called the primary master, and the other called a slave or secondary server that loads their data from the master server by a means of zone replication.

Caching Name Servers

Also called a recursive name server, this is most commonly the local DNS server that your operating system talks to.

When you make a request on your local PC, more than likely it will go out to your ISP’s DNS Caching server which will make a request to the Authoritative Name Server. One of the features of most caching servers is that it will keep that request cached for a certain amount of time to speed lookups.

Creating an Authoritative Name Server with BIND

Once BIND DNS is installed you will see that it is a pretty bare install and needs to be setup via configuration files.

For some Wintel administrators this may be a little daunting in an age of GUI interfaces, but don’t worry it isn’t too painful, and gives you good practice for some *nix cross training.

In this demo I am going to create a Authoritative Name Server for the domain bindtest.com at the IP of 192.168.11.13, as a note this is only accessible at my internal network so don’t go searching around for it.

To refresh your memory we installed BIND DNS at C:\Windows\System32\dns

1. Start by opening a command prompt with administrative rights by clicking on the Start menu, right click Command Prompt then left click on Run as Administrator

2. Type in the following at the command prompt hitting Enter after each line:

cd c:\windows\system32\dns\bin (or where you installed BIND)
rndc-confgen –a
rndc-confgen > C:\windows\system32\dns\etc\rndc.conf

Close the command prompt

3. Open Explorer and go to C:\windows\system32\dns\etc and create the following directories:

run
zones
log

Create an empty file in the log directory called named.log

4. Download the following file: named.conf and place it in C:\windows\system32\dns\etc (or wherever you installed BIND).

If you did install BIND in a different directory, then in the named.conf go in and change the location in options for the directory to your install location.

5. You also need to modify the named.conf to change the zone to the domain you want to manage.

In our example I am using bindtest.com, but you need to change this to match your domain.

You should also change the file name to replace db.bindtest.com.txt to db.%yourdomain.com%.txt –replacing %yourdomain.com% with your domain name.

6. Open rndc.conf in notepad (in the etc folder) and copy everything below the line that says:

# Use with the following in named.conf

7. Open named.conf and paste the contents of the clipboard at the end of the file.

Remove all the # from each line and delete the first line copied in and the last line copied in so it looks like the picture below. Save and close named.conf

8. Download the following file: db.bindtest.com.txt and place it in C:\windows\system32\dns\etc\zones

9. Rename db.bindtest.com.txt to whatever you used in step 5, so that the file is named db.%yourdomain.com%.txt — replacing %yourdomain.com% with your domain name.

10. Open the db.bindtest.com.txt (or whatever you renamed it) and modify the following then save the file:

Change any reference to bindtest.com to your domain name

Change the serial line to reflect the current date in this format: YYYYMMDDRR
YYYY = YEAR
MM = MONTH
DD = DAY
RR = Revision number (01 if this is the first time)

Change the IPs to the IPs that your servers are using

Now you are configured to be an Authoritative Name Server for bindtest.com (or whatever your domain is named) with no recursive lookup.

Open Server Firewall

If you are using a firewall for your server either software or hardware, you will want to make sure that incoming requests on UDP port 53 are open. This will make sure that your server will accept incoming queries.

Start the BIND DNS Service

Ok, we are finally ready to actually start this service. Let’s go in and start this service.

1. Go to the Start button, then to the Administrative Tools, then left click on Services

2. Scroll down and find ISC Bind and right click on it, then click on Start to start the service.

That’s it! The BIND DNS service is now up and running and ready to accept queries. Let’s test out the service.

Testing BIND DNS

I am going to use a very cool tool that is loaded with BIND DNS that’s called DIG.

You will find it in the bin directory where you installed BIND. The tool will go out and query for a domain name and grab all the DNS records. Let’s take a look:

1. Open a command prompt and navigate to the bin directory

2. Type in the following to get a feel for what you get back and hit Enter:

Dig Yahoo.com any

3. Below you will see a piece of the output:

4. Now that you know what to look for, I am going to use my test domain bindtest.com with the dig tool by typing: Dig @192.168.11.13 bindtest.com any

Note: I use @192.168.11.13 because bindtest.com is not registered with ICANN so it tells dig to use the name server at that address.

5. You can see that the BIND Name Server is responding with the correct information:

We have now configured an Authoritative Name Server for the test server bindtest.com that responds correctly to DNS requests.

A quick note, when you make changes you will have to restart the ISC BIND Service or run the command c:\windows\system32\dns\bin\rndc reload from a command prompt or batch file.

Related posts:

• Install BIND DNS on Windows Web Server 2008 – Part 1
• Configure DHCP on Windows Server 2008
• Role Playing with Windows 2008 Server Core

The 2003 version of this edition was severely limited by licensing to what you could install and do on it, and was really only a solution for the most basic of web sites.

The 2008 version has had most of those limits removed and is now a much more viable alternative for hosts and companies looking for a economical Windows based web server running IIS7.

One of the most glaring oversights for this edition of Windows Web Server is the exclusion of the DNS role. I understand the argument from Microsoft that if you are running this edition of server more than likely your hosting company will have a DNS infrastructure in place and most users can and will use that.

I counter that with the fact that I like to control my own DNS name servers and records and do not like having to deal with a hosting company infrastructure that may or may not be streamlined for DNS requests.

I have read in various forums that the Server team is looking into this and it may change in the future, but for now we will have to find another solution for this problem.

This low cost (free) solution is going to be — installing BIND DNS on the server and configuring it to handle DNS queries.

Today I’ll focus on the installation part and in Part 2 I’ll show you how to configure BIND DNS on Windows Web Server 2008.

BIND DNS Server

BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) is an open source implementation of Domain Name System (DNS) protocols distributed for free under the BSD License.

It is currently maintained on the Internet Systems Consortium and is used by the majority of the DNS servers on the Internet.

The current version we are going to be using in this article is BIND 9.5.0-P2-W2 (Windows-specific fixes). You can download the current version at:

http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/sw/bind/index.php

Creating a User Account for Bind

BIND requires a local user with only "Log on as a service" privilege. The installer will actually check for this, and if the user has more rights it will ask if you really want to use that ID.

The default user for the BIND installer is named, but you can do any other name you want.

1. Open the Computer Management console

2. Select Local Users and Groups and then right click on Users, select New User…

3. Fill in the new user information, I am going to use the following and then click Create before closing the New User window:

User name: named
Description: BIND DNS Account
Password: %password%
Confirm Password: %password%
Unselect: User must change password at next logon
Select: User cannot change password
Select: Password never expires

4. Now open the Local Security Policy MMC from the Administrative Tools Menu.

5. Expand Local Policies then select User Rights Assignment in the policy pane; scroll down and right click on Log on as a service, then left click Properties.

6. Click on Add User or Group…

7. Type in the user account you created, in our case the default named, then click Check Names to make sure you typed it correctly, then click Ok.

8. Click Ok to exit the properties box, and you should see the account listed now next to the Log on as a service policy.

That’s it for the user account for now. Later you will have to give the account you created read/write rights to the directory you install BIND into, but that will be covered in a bit.

Install BIND DNS on Windows Web Server 2008

This is where we will walk through the install and initial configuration of BIND DNS. Let’s get started!

1. Unzip the download and then click on BindInstall.exe to start the installation.

2. The installer will ask for the following information:

Target Directory: Your choice
Service Account Name: The account we created earlier
Service Account Password: Password used
Confirm Service Account Password: Password used

For options I am leaving the default , when you are done click Install

3. When you click on Install you might get a message saying the account has too many privileges, just click on No to continue. You can go in and strip out more of the accounts rights, but as a average user, the attack profile will be low.

4. After a few seconds you should see a message that states Bind installation completed successfully. Click Ok, and then click Exit on the installer.

5. We now want to go in and give the user account you have been using full read/write rights to the directory you installed BIND to.

You have now installed BIND on the server and set it up to run as a service. It is important to note that the installer does not copy over the help html files, so if you are going to need those you can move them to a convenient location yourself.

Summary

In this article we have installed BIND DNS on a Windows Web Server and set it up to run as a service under a local user.

Now since BIND DNS comes from the *NIX side of the house there is quite a bit more we have to do to configure this before it runs.

In the next article we will go through configuring BIND DNS with some demo configurations.

Related posts:

• Configure BIND DNS on Windows Web Server 2008 – Part 2
• Windows Server 2008 Active Directory — Creating Users is Easy!
• Windows Server 2008: Install Active Directory Domain Services

We’ve already told you how to score your free copy of Server 2008 that Microsoft is giving away at their launch events.

So today I’ll show you all the steps to installing Windows Server 2008. We’ll briefly go over the different editions and hardware requirements and then get right into the installation.

But before we get started, I do want to mention that we will be releasing comprehensive training covering Server 2008 that Ben “Coach” Culbertson is working on, so keep an eye out for it if you’re interested in learning more.

Windows Server 2008 Editions

Server 2008 comes in eight different flavors, the editions include:

• Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition (x86 and x86-64)
• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition (x86 and x86-64)
• Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition (x86 and x86-64)
• Windows Web Server 2008 (x 86 and x86-64)
• Windows Storage Server 2008 (x86 and x86-64)
• Windows Small Business Server 2008 (Codenamed Cougar) (x86-64)
• Windows Server Codenamed “Centro” (for mid-markets)(x86-64)
• Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems (IA-64)

The first three editions — Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter — should be quite familiar to all of you who have used Windows Server 2000 or 2003 in the past. And most of you will probably be using one of these three editions.

Next we have Windows Web Server, main purpose of which is to handle IIS 7.0. There’s also the Windows Storage Server which is primarily for Storage Area Networks (SAN).

The next two are for small to medium-size businesses and they are the SBS 2008 and Server “Centro”. These two haven’t been released just yet, but they are currently in beta mode.

The last version on the list is for Itanium based systems that use the 64-bit Itanium processor. Now let’s move on to requirements.

Windows Server 2008 Hardware Requirements

When it comes to the minimum requirements for your server, you will need at least 10GB of Hard Disk Space, but you really want to get as much as possible to optimize your server performance.

1GHz 32-bit processor is required, but again this is just the bare minimum. I would recommend getting at least 2GHz.

As far as RAM is concerned, you must have 512MB but again, you should get at least 2GB. Now here is something quite interesting, the MS Server 2008 Standard Edition has a maximum limit of 4GB of RAM, so even if you install more RAM you will only be using 4GB with the Standard Edition.

You’ll also need a DVD drive to run the install, and lastly what Coach Culbertson calls “the blinding flash of the obvious” — your Network Card needs to be installed.

Windows Server 2008 Installation

To start the installation go ahead and boot up the server and insert your Installation DVD/CD.

1. When the Install Windows box comes up go ahead and make the language, time and keyboard selections. When ready, click on the Next button:

2. In the next window, go ahead and click on the Install Now button in the middle of the screen … duh, I know …

3. Locate the product key on your CD case and enter it into the Product key field. When finished, click Next:

4. Select the Windows version that you want to install, but make sure you select the one that you actually purchased, as the pricing for different editions is quite different.

In our example we are going to select the Enterprise edition. We are also going to check the box next to “I have selected the edition of Windows that I purchased”. When ready, go ahead and click Next:

5. Check the box for accepting the license terms and click Next:

6. If this is an upgrade from windows server 2003 you will need to select the Upgrade option all the way on top.

In this example however, we are going to use the Custom option, and we’ll install a clean copy of Windows. So go ahead and make your selection by clicking on the appropriate option:

7. Now you can select which hard disk you want to install the Windows on. In this example we only have one disk listed so we will select it and then click Next:

8. Once the disk is selected, stand back and relax. Windows are installing …

9. Once the first part of the installation is completed, your server will restart and you will get a prompt to change your password. So click the OK button and change your password:

10. Once you change your new password you will see the Initial Configuration Tasks window.

Let’s start with changing the time zone. Click on the Set time zone link at the top:

11. Now this part is easy. In the Date and Time window, click on the change time zone button and select your time zone. Once finished, click OK to get out of the window:

12. Our next step is to configure networking:

Double click on the Local Area Connection and then click on the Properties button:

13. By default IPv6 is enabled, but if you are not going to use it, un-check it — in our example we are going to do exactly that. We’ll un-check IPv6 and then double-click on the IPv4 to open the properties box:

14. Select the use the following IP address radio button and enter your static IP address, subnet mask, default gateway as well as your preferred DNS server. When finished, click the OK button twice and then close:

15. Our next step is to provide the computer name and domain. So let’s go ahead and select that link:

16. To rename the computer, click on the change button:

Type in the new computer name then select the Domain radio button and enter the domain name.

In our example we are only going to change the computer name and leave the setting on Workgroup:

17. Now you need to restart your computer so click OK and wait for the server to boot up:

18. At this point we have completed the first set of tasks — specifying computer information.

We are going to move along and continue with updating your Windows server task list, so let’s click on the Enable automatic updating and feedback link.

19. You will have two choices here: You can enable the automatic updating or you can manually configure the settings. We are going to enable it as it is recommended:

20. We are going to skip the next task, which involves downloading and installing updates, since we have the most recent version of Windows.

If you are not sure if your version is the latest available, go ahead click on the link and install the updates:

Now you are ready to proceed with the next set of tasks — Customizing Your Server. When you customize your server, you will be able to add roles, features, enable remote desktop as well as configure windows firewall. But we’ll leave this for my next article.

Related posts:

• Windows Server 2008: Install Active Directory Domain Services
• Install BIND DNS on Windows Web Server 2008 – Part 1
• Server 2008: Install Active Directory Certificate Services

Installing the role services selected in these steps will provide you with a web server with the following features and capabilities:

• Internet Information Services 7.0
• Common HTTP Features for serving static web content
• Application Development Services for hosting dynamic web content
• Basic logging functionality and tools
• Security Protocols for serving content securely to the internet or intranet
• All management tools for local and remote web server administration
• FTP Publishing Service for manageable file hosting

Let’s Get Started!

Performing the Web Server Role installation requires the administrative credentials of the IIS Web Server Administrator role. Once logged in with the proper credentials, you’re ready to start:

1. Launch the Add Roles Wizard using one of these methods:

• On a new Windows Server 2008 installation click Add Roles from the Initial Configuration Task Window
• From the Server Manager click Add Roles from the Roles Summary or Roles Manager

2. The Add Roles Wizard will begin with some recommendations for the installation; click the Next button to proceed.

3. You may be prompted to add the Windows Process Activation Service feature, in this case click the Add Required Features button.

4. From the Select Server Roles Wizard step check the box labeled Web Server (IIS) and click Next to continue.

5. After reviewing the Web Server Installation introduction, click the Next button to begin selecting the role services to install.

6. The role services selected in the left column are the default for a new Server 2008 installation. In order to install a web server with the functionality outlined in this exercise, check the boxes for the role services selected in the right column.

Note: The role services selected in this exercise may differ from your requirements. Feel free to explore the descriptions of the role services and select or deselect the features you see fit.

7. After checking the box labeled Application Development, you may be prompted to add the .NET Environment, if it is not already installed. Click the Add Required Features button to continue selecting role services.

8. Once you’ve completed selecting the role services to install for your web server, click the Next, button to proceed.

9. Review the installation selections and confirm them by clicking the Install button. The Add Roles Wizard will then perform the installation of the selected role services.

10. When the wizard is finished installing the roles, review the installation results and click the Close button to complete the installation.

Add Roles Wizard Makes Installation a Snap!

Thanks to the Add Roles Wizard, setting up a web server has never been easier. Selecting from the many role services used by a web server is intuitive since the services are well defined and any feature dependencies required by a role service are prompted to be installed on demand.

Out of the box, the web server should be configured to allow access with anonymous authentication locally and over the internet.

Serving content over the internet may still be blocked by firewalls on your network or internet service provider (ISP). Hosting a web site via a domain name will require the IP address of the server be registered through an authorized ICANN registrar.

Some of the security and management role services may still require additional configuration or enabling. Once the steps are complete the server should be ready to host web sites, applications, and services as well as files via FTP.

To confirm that Internet Information Services is started and able to serve content visit http://localhost/ with Internet Explorer or another web browser on the server. If your installation was successful, you should be brought to the web page pictured below:

Related posts:

• Installing Hyper-V Server Role in 7 Easy Steps
• Install DHCP Role on Windows Server 2008
• Role Playing with Windows 2008 Server Core