My travels have taken me around the globe and back. My goal: to track down
some of the world's most experienced IT guides. These are My adventures in IT.
Constructed in 3700 BC, the Knap of Howar in Scotland is one of the oldest
preserved standing houses in the world,
building something remarkable that stands the test of time does not happen
by accident. Proper planning and a good foundation are what separate the tear
downs from the testaments to human achievement. Now, we may not intend for
the networks that we built today to still be running 5000 years from now.
But a little bit of planning couldn't hurt, right? To dig into networking
fundamentals and to better understand how to set up DNS, DHCP,
WINS, I sought out Joaquin Ochoa, a veteran, IT pro and MSP who has had
his hand in the construction of many a network. OK, first of all, for any
networking novices out there, what's with all the abbreviations? DNS,
DHCP, WINS. Well, let's start of with the most important one,
which is actually DHCP, which stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol.
This is the service on the network that basically gives IP addresses to all
the devices that connect to the network. The next most important thing is DNS.
DNS stands for Domain Name Service. This is what converts what you and I know
as a domain name like www.whatever.com to an actual IP address. Without
this service, we would never be able to browse the Internet. The last, most
important part is WINS, which stands for Windows Internet Naming Service.
It's kind of like DNS but it is more focused on the Windows network, and it's kind of like
a backup service to DNS. If for some reason you are disconnected from the Internet, where
you can authenticate an actual domain name, the WINS jumps into its place
and lets you connect to your peers, lets you connect to the server and lets you
connect to the local devices without a problem. So that's why I always work
with DNS and WINS. It is better to be redundant than to have a single point of failure.
OK, so is there anything that we need to know before we start setting this up?
Not really. We could just jump right into it. It's relatively easy. We are
going to be using HPE Gen10 MicroServer and Windows Server 2016. Once you pull
up the Server Manager Dashboard, you are going to go to Add roles and features, you are
going to hit Next. It's going to ask you what you want to do. A Role based
feature installation or Remote desktop service installation? We are going to do
a role based feature installation. Hit Next. You are going to have to pick from
the list of servers that are available to you. We only have one
server because is the one we are testing right now. You are going to hit Next, and you see,
we already have Active Directory Services already installed because
There is already an Active Directory Domain. So now we need to add the
features of the domain. So we are going to start of with is installing the DHCP
server. You literally go to it. Click Add a feature. It is going to tell you it
doesn't have a static IP address. We are going to go to the server, assign
a static IP address to it. Right now, it's relatively quick and easy.
OK, we added the IP address. Once we added the IP address, you go ahead and
close this out. I will go back to the Installation menu.
Hit Continue. It's going to recognize it’s got an IP address. now. We are
going to hit Next. You are going to hit Next again.
Next again. And then there is this little box that says here: Restart
the destination server automatically if required. You want to do this? So when
it needs to restart the server, it restarts with all the latest updates
you just made. We are going to install it, and then we are going to be able to go directly
into the DHCP manager and start setting everything up. So we are going to go into
the DHCP manager, you click on it. Relatively easy interface. Nothing too
crazy. Nothing too out of this world.
One of the most important things that you need to do in a DHCP server before
you could use it, is you need to authorize it. So you are going to hit right
there on the server and you are going to hit the right mouse button. You are
going to hit Authorize. Once you hit Authorize. Then the server is now allowed
to give IP addresses on the domain. If you don't authorize it on the domain,
the server will never give out an address. It's one of those added
security features. Now, once we have that done, we are going to go into
the IPv4, you are going to hit the right mouse button. We are going to go to New
scope. That New scope is going to allow us to create an IP address range that
the device will be able to collect from. We are going to call this Test Scope.
We are going to start off with the basic IP address then.
And then basically, right here, we just assigned 254 IP addresses to be able
to be used by the DHCP server. Once that's done, we need to specify
the specific parameters. The router address, the DNS server, and the WINS
server. All the other things that we have been talking about. These are key
important items, because if you don't specify on this, on the DHCP server
when it sends out the address, it's sending out the address but not the
partner information like, where do you resolve the name? How do you get out to
the internet? So all this is vital to be put into here. The first thing we
are going to do is we are going to configure the IP address for the router. You add that,
hit Next,
you are going to specify the domain name
and this is great. That way, when the computer is connected to the domain,
you always see the domain name on the network on the computer itself,
which it looks really pretty. We are going to add the DNS server now,
and then we are going to add the WINS Server.
And then once everything's configured, is going to ask you the most important
thing. Do you want to activate the scope? Yeah, kind of like turning it on,
turning it off. If you don't activate it, You set everything up. You have done
everything, but it's not working yet, so we are going to activate the scope, and
that's pretty much it. DHCP is now installed, configured and running.
And what we are going to do now is we are going to install DNS and WINS together.
You are going to open up the Server Manager. You are going to go back into Add roles and
features. We are going to go through the same process, skip the disclaimer,
pick the server. Once again, it brings up the list of stuff that we are going to add.
We are going to add first here DNS servers. Once you check it is
going to ask you: Do you want to add this feature? Add feature. We are going to hit Next.
Now we are going to add the WINS. You are going to scroll all the way to the bottom.
You are going to have it right here, selected, WINS and hit Next. It's going
to install now.
Once it does the installation process, it's pretty much up and ready to go and
running already. We have waited for it to install, what's next? Well, the next
thing is, we got open up the DNS menu app and we are basically going to configure the services for DNS
scroll down to the DNS menu. The DNS manager now opens up. You are
going to see right off the screen the server name. There is a couple
things that you need to configure to make your life a lot easier. One of
the first things you are going to do is you are going to come up here, hit the
right mouse button. You are going to go to Properties. You want to make sure that
you have Forwarders set up just in case something can't resolve on the server itself,
it's able to go out to the Internet and pull up additional
information. Usually what I do, I add public DNS servers, make life simple and
easy. The next step that I go to that's going to the Advanced tab. You are going to
Enable BIND secondaries. This will be able to search additional records
within the DNS hosts. Root Hints, you always want to make sure that this is populated.
Without this information or if you see this information, your DNS server
will not work correctly. So you always need to be attentive to that
information. We are going to close this menu out, and then we are going to expand on
the DNS server. And what we are going to do is we need to do the last, most
important part. First, you need to make sure that it's had the Forward Lookup
Zone. You have your domain name set up there, and then you are going to go into
the Reverse Zone Lookup. And basically what you are going to do for the reverse
zone, you are going to just set up the zone ranges. We are going to set up the first one
and call it a Primary Zone.
Hit Next.
OK,
okay. Allow only Secure Dynamic Updates. You don't want anybody that's
not authorized on the server updating your DNS records, because that
totally compromises your network.
You are going to hit Next and finish. So what about WINS? WINS is relatively easy to set up.
Open up the WINS manager. Once you go into the WINS manager
you have got the WINS server right there. You don't need
to worry about authorizing or approving the server in this case.
This one's always up and running. You come here to Replication Partner. You’re going to hit the right
mouse button. You’re going to put a new Replication Partner. You are going to specify
the IP address of the replication partner. Hit OK, you are done. That's by far
the easiest one to do. I am going to ask you, how does HPE fit into all this?
Well, HPE is fitting into this by having the Small Office Deployment Solution.
They are bundling all these different products and services together and
basically lay out a road map between training videos, white papers,
documentation, hardware support software support. The combination of all
these items put together in a bundled solution.
It's cutting down our process and making it more streamlined.
Thanks for watching. Come join the next adventure while we set up a storage
server.