Windows Server Cookbook

Preface

From my admittedly biased viewpoint, system administrators don’t get enough credit. The system administration profession doesn’t get the same kind of respect as the law or medical communities, even though system administrators are constantly asked to diagnosis highly technical problems and perform intricate surgery on both hardware and software issues. And sometimes there may even be lives at stake! OK, perhaps I’m over-dramatizing the situation, but my point is that system administrators are the unsung heroes of the IT revolution and don’t get the recognition they deserve.

There are thousands of programs, tools, commands, screens, scripts, buttons, tabs, applets, menus, and settings that system administrators need to know about and understand to do their job. And it has only been in the past couple of years that Microsoft’s documentation has actually been more of a help than a hindrance. But it still isn’t enough. What Windows system administrators really need is quick and easy ways to find what they need to get the job done.

There are plenty of books that go into all sorts of detail about the theory behind a particular technology or application, but what if you don’t need that? What if you know the theory but just can’t (or don’t want to) remember the exact command-line or graphical sequence to configure an application? Or perhaps you need some barebones code to help automate a task. There are very few books that cut through the fluff and provide only the essentials for ...