Well, what a miserable experience for me this has been. Something went wrong with my DHCP installation as you can see, so I decided to configure it manually, which is the same process as in Windows Server 2003. I have to say it; setting up DHCP manually is boring and tiresome. It’s a lot of information that needs to be entered properly since this determines a successful server that can assign temporary addresses to clients. Even after all of that, I still did not get the DHCP working, so I had to uninstall the role, reinstall it back; there was some confusion between the network segment and DHCP. I went to check my TCP IP Properties, only to discover that the Default Gateway was set to 191.168.0.1, not 192.168.0.1. I wish it had told me that before and there seems to be no way to edit and let DHCP update the settings without having to uninstall DHCP and start over.

Uninstalling Roles

This is done from the Server Manager Console and follows the same procedure as adding roles, only difference is, you uncheck and follow the instructions of the wizard, a restart was then required. I don’t know why this is required, since I haven’t even connected a client to the server yet. Adding back the Role DHCP, I still continued to receive an error saying ‘Attempt to configure DHCP Server failed with error code 0x80070005. Access denied’. I wish a clearer description was provided. This is something I got fed up of and almost decided to feed the clients static IP addresses. I don’t know what was the initial cause, since it’s something I have done over and over again in Server 2003. The error code was of no use, since I couldn’t diagnose the problem.

I thought, either DHCP Service is not running, or it was not uninstalled at all. I then decided to start it manually through CMD:

• sc config dhcpserver start= auto.

• type: net start dhcpserver.

After almost being on the brink of giving in, I figured out the problem, I had to delete the failed Scope before activating it again. Now something strange happened here and I want to make it simple for you the reader to understand what I was experiencing.

• I installed DHCP, opened the DHCP MMC under Admin Tools to setup a new Scope.

• Applied all correct information, such as IP Range and so on, and then went about Activating Scope “now” at the end of the wizard.

• But the scope would not activate when I proceeded to Right click the server and click Activate.

Instead, I had to manually authorize the server first, and then activate the scope. Microsoft could have simply made this easy by authorizing and activating the scope through the wizard instead of having the administrator do that manually. It’s rather confusing and upsetting that you have to do multiple things to achieve a correct result. However, all has turned out well, and you can see in the screenshot that DHCP is setup successfully. The Add Roles, wizard unfortunately was of no use, since I still had to manually setup the DHCP, it would have been nice if Add Roles, was more in tuned with Roles it was installing so I didn’t have to go through approximately 13 steps to achieve a result.

IIS releases are not as dramatic as version 7, featuring a streamlined, console, making it easier to manage and configure. Features include, Start Page, Bread Crumb style menus and multiple task panes for setting up an FTP or HTTP based websites. You can edit basic settings and even access common locations like :\inetpub\wwwroot even faster. Working with Default Web Site in Server 2008 is different compared to IIS6, in version 7, everything seems to already be prepared, all you have to do is add whatever files you want in :\inetpub\wwwroot and you are good to go. Most of IIS 7’s web configuration information is stored as XML config files. But, I still find IIS 7 a bit unfamiliar, it just acts differently. For instance Default Website Properties is nowhere to be seen, but I found a similar option from the contextual menu for Default Website called Edit Bindings. IIS 7 which first debuted in Windows Vista supports a more modular architecture, features can be added to the engine to provide the user with desired features to extend the functionality of the service.

Changes to IIS 7:

PICS content ratings, support for Microsoft Passport, and server-side image maps are no longer included.

Executing commands via server-side includes is no longer permitted.

IISRESET -reboot has been removed.

The CONVLOG tool, which converts IIS log files into NCSA format, has been removed.

Support for enabling a folder for "Web Sharing" via the Windows Explorer interface has been removed.

IIS Media Pack (see below), which allows IIS to be used as a bare-bones media server, without using Windows Media Services.

New FTP module, that integrates with the new configuration store, as well as the new management environment.

The way its setup is different in IIS 7, instead of using the parent window to edit all its settings, you have to launch a separate MMC IIS 6, here I understand that Windows Server 2008 is running multiple instances of IIS, versions 6 and 7 it seems. Overall, IIS 7 works accordingly.

Setting up a Domain Controller is only one part of the equation; the next step is to connect client machines to the Server to prove your success. I had a variety of desktop Windows versions installed, the first and most obvious choice is Windows XP Professional 32-bit with Service Pack 3. It connected without a hitch, the same for Windows XP Professional x64. Vista Enterprise x64 and Ultimate x64, both connected successfully to the Domain. As I previously noted, connecting Vista to a domain is slightly different, instead of selecting the domain from the list box on the Log on dialog, the DOMAIN\Username is set by default. If you want to log to the computers local account, the MACHINENAME\Username, will need to be entered. It’s weird.

Heh, this is a rather tricky one, but there are of course benefits when Windows Server 2008 and Vista are deployed together, I personally didn’t see them immediately, but they are indeed there.

• Searching Windows Server 2008 servers from Windows Vista clients delegates the query to the server, which uses the Windows Search technology to search and transfer the results back to the client.

• In a networked environment with a print server running Windows Vista, clients can render print jobs locally before sending them to print servers to reduce the load on the server and increase its availability.

• Event forwarding aggregates and forwards logs of subscribed Windows Vista client computers back to a central console. Event forwarding can be enabled on the client subscribers from the central server directly from the event management console.

• Offline Files are cached locally so that they are available even if the server is not, with copies seamlessly updating when the client and server are reconnected.