If you have ever had to move a DHCP Server from one physical server to another, you know that the process isn’t exactly fun or intuitive if the servers are running Windows Server 2003. Fortunately, when Microsoft created Windows Server 2008, they completely redesigned the administrative interface, and in doing so, also made DHCP much easier to migrate. In this article, I will show you how it’s done.

Windows 2008 Network Infrastructure 70-642 Training!

Have you seen the Network Infrastructure 70-642 Training video by Train Signal? I highly recommend this course, as you will learn much more than you will from any book. Train Signal's package includes new iPod/MP3 versions of the course (for learning on the go) and Transcender practice tests to help you prepare for certification. The instructors, Ed and Coach, do an amazing job not only preparing you to get Microsoft Certified but also showing you what tasks you need to perform on real Windows 2008 Servers, in the real world!

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Installing Windows Server 2008 is pretty straightforward and is very much like installing Windows Vista, but I thought I'd list the necessary steps here for additional information. For those of you who have never installed Vista before, the entire installation process is different than it used to be in previous Microsoft operating systems, and notably much easier to perform.

Using Vista's installation routine is a major benefit, especially for a server OS. Administrators can partition the system's hard drives during setup. More importantly, they can install the necessary AHCI or RAID storage drivers from a CD/DVD or even a USB thumb drive. Thus, error-prone floppies can finally be sent to the garbage bin.

Note: Windows Server 2008 can also be installed as a Server Core installation, which is a cut-down version of Windows without the Windows Explorer GUI. Because you don’t have the Windows Explorer to provide the GUI interface that you are used to, you configure everything through the command line interface or remotely using a Microsoft Management Console (MMC). The Server Core can be used for dedicated machines with basic roles such as Domain controller/Active Directory Domain Services, DNS Server, DHCP Server, file server, print server, Windows Media Server, IIS 7 web server and Windows Server Virtualization virtual server. For Server Core installations please see my "Installing Windows Server 2008 Core" article.

To use Windows Server 2008 you need to meet the following hardware requirements:

Component	Requirement
Processor	• Minimum: 1GHz (x86 processor) or 1.4GHz (x64 processor) • Recommended: 2GHz or faster Note: An Intel Itanium 2 processor is required for Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems
Memory	• Minimum: 512MB RAM • Recommended: 2GB RAM or greater • Maximum (32-bit systems): 4GB (Standard) or 64GB (Enterprise and Datacenter) • Maximum (64-bit systems): 32GB (Standard) or 2TB (Enterprise, Datacenter and Itanium-based Systems)
Available Disk Space	• Minimum: 10GB • Recommended: 40GB or greater Note: Computers with more than 16GB of RAM will require more disk space for paging, hibernation, and dump files
Drive	DVD-ROM drive
Display and Peripherals	• Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution monitor • Keyboard • Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device

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What's different in Windows 7 related to time and date?

Honestly, the Windows Vista and Windows 7 time and date configuration is very similar. By double-clicking on the taskbar clock you will bring up the Date and Time configuration where you will configure the date, time, timezone, additional clocks, and Internet time.

The only difference that I could find is the reminder for daylight savings time. In Windows Vista, the default is to Remind me one week before this change occurs. With that setting, of course, you would get one week advance notice before the clock "springs forward" or "falls back".



Figure 1: Windows 7 Date and Time Configuration

I do not think that one week notice is very helpful. Surely, you will forget that it is going to change the time one week later. Microsoft must have felt the same way because in Windows 7, they changed this to just Notify me when the clock changes. Thus, you would just be alerted that it has changed. That is fine with me. I do not think that most of us need a one week notification.

Of course, the time and date that daylight savings time occurs in the United States changed in 2009 and the application of DST around the world is very different. Fortunately, Microsoft keeps track of that for us and makes these changes based on our Windows time zone settings.

Windows 2008 - before and after DCPROMO

With a Windows Server, time and date can be very different if you are using it as an Active Directory Domain Controller (ADDC).

A typical Windows 2008 server will, by default, look very much like the Windows 7 machine in Figure 1. All the same tabs, including Internet Time, are present. You can see this in Figure 2, below.



Figure 2: Windows 2008 Server before DCPROMO

However, what happens if you make that same Windows Server a DC?

After running a DCPROMO, if you go back into the same Date and Time tool, you will find that the Internet Time tab is missing. Take a look at this in Figure 3, below.



Figure 3: Windows 2008 Server After DCPROMO

Why is this? Well, when a Windows Server becomes a domain controller the default of obtaining the date & time via NTP from time.windows.com, over the Internet, goes away. The server becomes the root time server for all computers in the domain using Windows SNTP (simple network time protocol). The w32tm service (and CLI command) is what provides this and controls this.

As you can see, on this server that is not a ADDC, the Windows Time service is set to manual and is not started.



Figure 4: Windows Time not started on default server

However, on the Windows Server in Figure 5, the Windows Time server IS started and set to Automatic because this is an Active Directory Domain Controller.



Figure 5: Windows Time running on Domain Controller

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