MCSA Windows Server 2012 R2 Complete Study Guide. Panek William

provides you with management and development tools that work with industry security technologies including encryption, certificates, and authentication to help organizations create reliable information protection solutions.

      Application Server Application Server provides an integrated environment for deploying and running custom, server-based business applications.

      Failover Clustering The Failover Clustering feature provides a way to create, configure, and manage failover clusters for up to 4,000 virtual machines or up to 64 physical nodes.

      File and Storage Services File and Storage Services allows an administrator to set up and manage one or more file servers. These servers can provide a central location on your network where you can store files and then share those files with network users. If users require access to the same files and applications or if centralized backup and file management are important issues for your organization, administrators should set up network servers as a file server.

      Group Policy Group policies are a set of rules and management configuration options that you can control through the Group Policy settings. These policy settings can be placed on users’ computers throughout the organization.

      Hyper-V The Hyper-V role allows administrators to create and manage a virtualized environment by taking advantage of the technology built into the Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system. When an administrator installs the Hyper-V role, all required virtualization components are installed.

      Some of the required components include the Windows hypervisor, Virtual Machine Management Service, the virtualization WMI provider, the virtual machine bus (VMbus), the virtualization service provider (VSP), and the virtual infrastructure driver (VID).

      Networking This feature allows administrators to design, deploy, and maintain a Windows Server 2012 R2 network. The networking features include 802.1X authenticated wired and wireless access, BranchCache, Data Center Bridging, low-latency workload technologies, and many more.

      Network Load Balancing The Network Load Balancing (NLB) feature dispenses traffic across multiple servers by using the TCP/IP networking protocol. By combining two or more computers that are running applications in Windows Server 2012 R2 into a single virtual cluster, NLB provides reliability and performance for mission-critical servers.

      Network Policy and Access Services Use the Network Policy and Access Services server role to install and configure Network Access Protection (NAP), secure wired and wireless access points, and RADIUS servers and proxies.

      Print and Document Services Print and Document Services allows an administrator to centralize print server and network printer tasks. This role also allows you to receive scanned documents from network scanners and route the documents to a shared network resource, Windows SharePoint Services site, or email addresses. Print and Document Services also provides fax servers with the ability to send and receive faxes while also giving the administrator the ability to manage fax resources such as jobs, settings, reports, and fax devices on the fax server.

      Remote Desktop Services Remote Desktop Services allows for faster desktop and application deployments to any device, improving remote user effectiveness while helping to keep critical data secure. Remote Desktop Services allows for both a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and session-based desktops, allowing users to connect from anywhere.

      Security and Protection Windows Server 2012 R2 has many new and improved security features for your organization. These security features include Access Control, AppLocker, BitLocker, Credential Locker, Kerberos, NTLM, passwords, security auditing, smart cards, and Windows Biometric Framework (WBF).

      Telemetry The Telemetry service allows the Windows Feedback Forwarder to send feedback to Microsoft automatically by deploying a Group Policy setting to one or more organizational units. Windows Feedback Forwarder is available on all editions of Windows Server 2012 R2, including Server Core.

      Volume Activation Windows Server 2012 R2 Volume Activation will help your organization benefit from using this service to deploy and manage volume licenses for a medium to large number of computers.

      Web Server (IIS) The Web Server (IIS) role in Windows Server 2012 R2 allows an administrator to set up a secure, easy-to-manage, modular, and extensible platform for reliably hosting websites, services, and applications.

      Windows Deployment Services Windows Deployment Services allows an administrator to install a Windows operating system over the network. Administrators do not have to install each operating system directly from a CD or DVD.

      Windows Server Backup Feature The Windows Server Backup feature gives an organization a way to back up and restore Windows servers. You can use Windows Server Backup to back up the entire server (all volumes), selected volumes, the system state, or specific files or folders.

      Windows Server Update Services Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) allows administrators to deploy application and operating system updates. By deploying WSUS, administrators have the ability to manage updates that are released through Microsoft Update to computers in their network. This feature is integrated with the operating system as a server role on a Windows Server 2012 R2 system.

      Migrating Roles and Features to Windows Server 2012 R2

      Once you decide on which roles and features you are going to install onto your Windows Server 2012 R2 system, then you either have to install those roles and features from scratch or migrate them from a previous version of Windows server.

      Windows Server 2012 R2 includes a set of migration tools that administrators can use to help ease the process of migrating server roles, features, operating system settings, and data. Administrators can migrate this data from an existing server that is running Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows Server 2012 R2 to a computer that is running Windows Server 2012 R2.

      Using Windows Server Migration Tools to migrate roles, role services, and features can simplify the deployment of new servers. You can migrate roles and features on servers running the Server Core installation option of Windows Server 2012 R2 and virtual servers. By using Windows Server Migration Tools, an administrator can reduce migration downtime, increase the accuracy of the migration process, and help eliminate conflicts that could otherwise occur during the migration process.

      One advantage of using the migration tools is that most of them support cross-architecture migrations (x86-based to x64-based computing platforms), migrations between physical and virtual environments, and migrations between both the full and Server Core installation options of the Windows Server operating system. In Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server Migration Tools also supports cross-subnet migrations.

      To use Windows Server Migration Tools, the feature must be installed on both the source and destination computers. Windows Server Migration Tools installation and preparation can be divided into the following stages:

      1. Installing Windows Server Migration Tools on destination servers that run Windows Server 2012 R2

      2. Creating deployment folders on destination servers that run Windows Server 2012 R2 for copying to source servers

      3. Copying deployment folders from destination servers to source servers

      4. Registering Windows Server Migration Tools on source servers

      If you plan to use Windows Server Migration Tools, you must be a member of the Administrators group on both the source and destination servers to install, remove, or set up the tools.

      Administrators can install Windows Server Migration Tools by using either the Add Roles Or Features Wizard in Server Manager or Windows PowerShell deployment cmdlets for Server Manager.

      To install Windows Server Migration Tools on a Server Core installation of Windows Server 2012 R2, you would complete the following steps:

      1. Open a Windows PowerShell session by typing powershell.exe