MCSE Planning and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure: Exam 70-293 Study Guide and DVD Training System

This book’s primary goal is to help you prepare to take and pass Microsoft’s exam number 70-293, Planning and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure. Our secondary purpose in writing this book is to provide exam candidates with knowledge and skills that go beyond the minimum requirements for passing the exam, and help to prepare them to work in the real world of Microsoft computer networking in an Active Directory domain environment.

What is Exam 70-293?

Exam 70-293 is one of the four core requirements for the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) certification. Microsoft’s stated target audience consists of IT professionals with at least one year of work experience on a medium or large company network. This means a multi-site network with at least three domain controllers, running typical network services such as file and print services, database, firewall services, proxy services, remote access services and Internet connectivity.

However, not everyone who takes Exam 70-293 will have this ideal background. Many people will take this exam after classroom instruction or self-study as an entry into the networking field. Many of those who do have job experience in IT will not have had the opportunity to work with all of the technologies covered by the exam. In this book, our goal is to provide background information that will help you to understand the concepts and procedures described even if you don’t have the requisite experience, while keeping our focus on the exam objectives.

Exam 70-293 covers the basics of managing and maintaining the network infrastructure in a network environment that is built around Microsoft’s Windows Server 2003. Objectives are task-oriented, and include the following:

• Planning a secure baseline installation, including planning a strategy to enforce system default security settings on new systems, identifying client operating system default security settings, and identifying all server operating system default security settings.

• Planning and configuring security for servers that are assigned specific roles, including domain controllers, Web servers, database servers, and mail servers. This includes deploying the security configuration for servers assigned to these specific roles and creating custom security templates based on server roles.

• Evaluating and selecting the operating system to install on computers in an enterprise, including identifying the minimum configuration to satisfy security requirements.

• Planning a TCP/IP network infrastructure strategy, including analyzing IP addressing requirements, planning an IP routing solution, and creating an IP subnetting scheme.

• Planning and modifying a network topology, including planning the physical placement of network resources and identifying network protocols to be used.

• Planning an Internet connectivity strategy.

• Planning network traffic monitoring, using tools such as Network Monitor and System Monitor.

• Troubleshooting connectivity to the Internet, including diagnosing and resolving issues related to Network Address Translation (NAT), name resolution cache information, and client configuration.

• Troubleshooting TCP/IP addressing, including diagnosing and resolving issues related to client computer configuration and DHCP server address assignment.

• Planning a host name resolution strategy, including planning the DNS namespace design, planning zone replication requirements, planning a forwarding configuration, planning for DNS security, and examining the interoperability of DNS with third-party DNS solutions.

• Planning a NetBIOS name resolution strategy, including planning a WINS replication strategy and planning NetBIOS name resolution by using the Lmhosts file.

• Troubleshooting host name resolution, including diagnosing and resolving issues related to DNS services and client computer configuration.

• Planning a routing strategy, including identifying routing protocols to use in a specified environment and planning routing for IP multicast traffic.

• Planning security for remote access users, including planning remote access policies, analyzing protocol security requirements and planning authentication methods for remote access clients, offering remote assistance to client computer, and performing remote administration using terminal services.

• Implementing secure access between private networks, including creating and implementing an IPSec policy.

• Troubleshooting TCP/IP routing, using tools such as ROUTE, TRACERT, PING, PATHPING, and NETSH, as well as the Network Monitor.

• Planning services for high availability, including planning high availability solutions that use clustering services and Network Load Balancing (NLB).

• Identifying system bottlenecks, including memory, processor, disk and network related bottlenecks, using System Monitor.

• Implementing a cluster server and recovering from cluster node failure.

• Monitoring Network Load Balancing, using tools such as the NLB Monitor MMC snap-in and the WLBS cluster control utility.

• Monitoring servers that provide network services, using tools such as System Monitor, Event Viewer, and service logs.

• Planning a backup and recovery strategy, including identifying appropriate backup types such as full, incremental and differential, planning a backup strategy that uses volume shadow copies, and planning system recovery that uses Automated System Recovery (ASR).

• Configuring network protocol security, including configuring protocol security in a heterogeneous client computer environment and configuring protocol security by using IPSec policies.

• Configuring security for data transmission, including configuring IPSec policy settings.

• Planning for network protocol security, including specifying the required ports and protocols for specified services and planning an IPSec policy for secure network communications.

• Planning secure network administration methods, including creating a plan to offer Remote Assistance to client computers and planning for remote administration by using terminal services.

• Planning security for wireless networks.

• Planning security for data transmission, including securing data transmissions between client computers to meet security requirements and securing data transmissions by using IPSec.

• Troubleshooting security for data transmission, using tools such as the IPSec Monitor MMC snap-in and the Resultant Set of Policies (RSoP) MMC snap-in.

• Configuring the Active Directory directory service for certificate publication.

• Planning a public key infrastructure (PKI) that uses Certificate Services, including identifying the appropriate type of certificate authority to support certificate issuance requirements, planning the enrollment and distribution of certificates, and planning for the use of smart cards for authentication.

• Planning a framework for planning and implementing security, including planning for security monitoring and planning a change and configuration management framework for security.

• Planning a security update infrastructure, using tools such as the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer and Microsoft Software Update Services.

Microsoft reserves the right to change the objectives and/or the exam at any time, so you should check the web site at http://www.microsoft.com/traincert/exams/70-293.asp for the most up-to-date version of the objectives.