Configuring windows 2012 servers for the lulz

[___]

Hey guys, I just started to shift my job perspectives from theatre to IT businesses (hopefully) and have to get a certification in order to start an actual education as a sysadmin/developer.

Hence I have to attend a 3 week course "networking basics" and am bored to death. All of the stuff I have to "learn" is shit I have learned as a hobbyist already.

So I have spent my time this week playing around with the VMs that they provide for learning more advanced stuff. The learning centre is completely microsoft oriented and I used the chance to have a look at how a windows server system is deployed and configured... and I am laughing my ass off!

First thing I did was set up a domain controller with AD and slapped a DHCP and DNS service onto it for good measure (I know, should be seperate, bad practice but whatever) and connect a couple of clients to it, one being an office terminal, the other a file server.
I tried to get the freaking DHCP server up and running for two sessions before asking the mentor to take a look at my config since it wasn't working. He spent about 15 minutes checking all of my configuration (really? that takes 15 minutes with all that GUI crap?) and found no fault. Perplexed we just rebooted the domain controller and to my surprise it then worked.

This experience has pretty much repeated itself when I tried to set up more machines with other services.

I really can't see any reason for a corporation to waste their money on these licenses except for the obvious "but we need an exchange server/random proprietary database".

Microsoft admins must be masochists... it's so convuluted with menus and crappy list views. Please enlighten me, is there anything I am missing out on?

Anyone here done this before or on a regular basis even (meaning: deploying and maintaining windows servers)?

The only thing I liked so far is the new powershell, but compared to a simple bash it's still pretty meager and clunky.

Anything fun I could try while I have access to these machines? I'd love to try hardening the setup but I am not sure if it will be any fun or just plain frustration ^^

 

[PowerGod]

A friend of mine that does this things for work always tells me that he doesn't bother with GUI, and seems able to do everything from command line... once I also saw it while working, and used many commands I've never seen mentioned before, with parameters not even documented...

 

[FBnil]

Well, each Windows version is different and the things are in different places, but the commandline (for example, 'mstsc') always work.
Windows Powershell is not as shell, there is an object orientedness to it that makes it a bit harder to understand, but once you can do both (linear commands and object oriented loops), you are all set. And once you install/activate plug-ins, you can do pretty nifty stuff like finally be able to send an email through the commandline, or use alternatives that behave like wget. Some plug-ins only are there if you install software. For example, installing exchange will add tons of A.D. objects into it's LDAP, and powershell gets a nice plug-in to work with exchange from the commandline... so don't throw out Powershell just yet. (you can also create GUI's in it... but THAT is clunky...).

Also it bothers me that you can not shut down windows2012 (you need to press WindowsKey+I to get a side menu, and THERE you can shut it down... as if it was stable enough).

Not Windows OS per se, but from the Linux world (opkg, apt, yum, emerge, etc) there are a few nice package managers. I recommend spending some time with Chocolatey to install a few things... (Chocolatey uses powershell...)

Ah, and install some applications, then install splunk (the 30 days free version), and connect the Windows logfiles to it.

But also do the boring stuff: Install AD, Access, DFS, Terminal Services. Check WMI scripts and what they can do, certificates, maybe install monitoring software, like PRTG...

 

[TeDaDeS]

I see a lot of sysadmins have a hard time getting a job these days, as companies are automating a lot of stuff these days (VMs and puppet for example) and are outsourcing/centralizing IT maintenance.

 

[slaeshjag]

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff545499(v=vs.85).aspx is always a laugh

 

[___]

Well, each Windows version is different and the things are in different places, but the commandline (for example, 'mstsc') always work.
Windows Powershell is not as shell, there is an object orientedness to it that makes it a bit harder to understand, but once you can do both (linear commands and object oriented loops), you are all set. And once you install/activate plug-ins, you can do pretty nifty stuff like finally be able to send an email through the commandline, or use alternatives that behave like wget. Some plug-ins only are there if you install software. For example, installing exchange will add tons of A.D. objects into it's LDAP, and powershell gets a nice plug-in to work with exchange from the commandline... so don't throw out Powershell just yet. (you can also create GUI's in it... but THAT is clunky...).

Also it bothers me that you can not shut down windows2012 (you need to press WindowsKey+I to get a side menu, and THERE you can shut it down... as if it was stable enough).

Not Windows OS per se, but from the Linux world (opkg, apt, yum, emerge, etc) there are a few nice package managers. I recommend spending some time with Chocolatey to install a few things... (Chocolatey uses powershell...)

Ah, and install some applications, then install splunk (the 30 days free version), and connect the Windows logfiles to it.

But also do the boring stuff: Install AD, Access, DFS, Terminal Services. Check WMI scripts and what they can do, certificates, maybe install monitoring software, like PRTG...

Ah okay, I get it. Object oriented it seemed to be, which is what really put me off at first but I think I need to get into powershell scripting a bit more. The missing shutdown option really baffled me as well, but I found the sidebar quite quickly. On monday I think I'll try setting up a core server and see what I can do with that. I have set up AD already and that was quite fun. Not as frustrating as getting that buggy DHCP service to run ^^. Also I like how you can control exactly what people can do with GPOs. It's very fine tunable.

Thanks for the tipps, I'll try it out. Not sure on what I am allowed to install, but there's only one way to find out ... and also I guess I can ask the mentors.

@TeDaDeS yeah but that's still more of a perspective than running after jobs in the stage business and getting paid shit for basically selling your body and soul. I'd rather go into development anyways, as I finally want to learn some decent coding.

 

[TeDaDeS]

I did MCSE and CCNA and I liked it. Just see my friends having a struggle while my dev friends literally get 10 job request each day is strange. Having fun and doing a good job really helps though.