REPORT On WEB SERVER, DNS And DHCP CONFIGURATION

Pattern of report
This report would be grouped into two sections which would include the Web server (IIS), DNS and DHCP in each section. Based on the following order; Role Installation /addition Configuration

Introduction
Practical research has shown that Microsofts windows server 2008, is highly suitable for high end server deployment, especially for theoretically based administrators, who have not acquired too, many practical skills like core operations, programming etc. For the sake of this report, it is assumed that we are conversant with the installation procedure of Windows Server 2008 OS.

Role Installation/ addition

When adding roles to the server it is important to take note of dependencies, around the proper operation of the to-be role. If theses dependencies are not taken care of the roles in question may not function as expected. For example when adding a DNS and DHCP role, it is mandatory that the server is running a functional network (i.e. It must have an interface connected to an active network) and at least one static IP address is configured on one of its interfaces. Failure to do this would result into, inability to add a role, improper role functionality etc.

Hence if you have any missing driver that is associated with any role, then it may be impossible for that role to function properly until the driver is installed. To add a role to your server, perform the following steps 1. Open the Server management console (Server Manager). Using the start menu Click on the start menu. Locate and click on Administrative tools. Locate and click on Server manager, in the pop-up menu item list. OR Using windows run Press the windows key + R, to run a command/ file. Type in CompMgmtLauncher into the run field labeled Open Click on Ok or hit Enter. 2. Selecting a role to be added Click on Roles, on the left tab of the window Locate and Click on Add Roles on the right tab of the window, to start the Add roles wizard Skip the Before you begin section of the wizard by clicking next A list of Roles would be short listed , each preceded by a checkbox To select a role for addition the preceding checkbox must be checked

3. Select and add the required roles (Web Server (IIS) and DNS roles) Check all the required roles Note: You must ensure that you have an active network either through your LAN adapter, or your WLAN adapter. Due to the fact that some roles cannot be installed together with others, it is advisable you select and add roles one after another Follow the wizard accordingly by clicking next for each role o Web Server (IIS)

 Click next until you are asked to select the components of the Web Server (IIS). Select each component by checking the preceding checkbox or locate and check the parent checkbox for each component. As a new user or for development purpose, it is advisable to select all the checkboxes except those that are obviously irrelevant. Click next after you must have selected all you need to and then click install. o DHCP Click next until you are asked to select the interfaces you want to support your DHCP service, the interfaces would be identified by the static IP address configured on it. Select an interface component by checking the preceding checkbox, then click next to proceed. You would be prompted to configure a scope for your IPV4 DHCP server. Configure a scope by clicking add; otherwise proceed to the next stage as this could be configured later. You may decide to enable or disable DHCP for IPV6. Then click install. o DNS Follow up the wizard by clicking next, until you get to the install stage. Then click install.

Configuration
After adding roles to the server it is advisable to restart you server. This would help to reload all the newly added roles, so as to enhance configuration. Just like any other configurations, configuring the newly installed roles is based on or is dependent on what the server administrator wants to achieve for the users of his server. The users of the server must have delegated their request, task etc. to the server administrator. The server administrator on the other must know what is achievable on the server, how to achieve it, and what resources on the server he/she must use make use of to achieve his goal. Now let us consider the configuration of the Web Server, DNS and DHCP on the WS2008 OS. 1. What is achievable? We can host web pages by placing them into our website folders. We can create websites that would respond to specific host names. We can create host names using our DNS server. We would like to offer DHCP service over our wireless Network. Matters Arising Where is the website folder? How do we create the host names? How do we configure the DNS server? How do we configure the DHCP server? 2. How do we achieve them? We can host web pages by copying our files into the C:\inetpub\wwwroot folder which is our default websites directory. Host names can be created by adding an A record our DNS server And so on.

3. What resources on the server must be made use of, to achieve our goals? Just as the server manager manages the services/ roles of the server, the services management console manages individual services/ roles of the server. For instance the Web Server (IIS) service is managed by the, Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager console, likewise DNS which is managed by the DNS console and so on.

The web server configuration is highly dependent on a Domain naming system (DNS), since it involves host names. Hence to successfully run our web server we must configure a DNS server as well. Configuring Web Server (IIS) 1. Starting the Web server Manager console Note: Before we can commence any configuration of the Web server (IIS), the first step which involves adding the roles must have being completed successfully. Using the start menu Click on the start menu. Locate and click on Administrative tools. Locate and click on Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, in the popup menu item list. OR Using windows run Press the windows key + R, to run a command/ file. Type in inetmgr into the run field labeled Open Click on Ok or hit Enter. 2. Adding a website Below the Start page option on the left tab of the window, locate your default web server which should be the name of your computer; usually

starts with WIN by default, unless you have changed the name of your server. Double-click on then it, or click on the cross icon by preceding it to expand the Web server options. Under the options of the Web server locate and expand the option Sites. After expanding the Sites options, you would find an option in it captioned Default Web site. This is the default web site of the server, i.e. this page would be rendered to any request coming to the server if o There are no other web sites under the Sites file, when you have not added any website to the Sites file. The default web site uses the C:\inetpub\wwwroot directory to respond to clients request. o There are other websites under the Sites file, but the request to the server did not meet the requirements for these sites.
For example, I have a web site called imt_students with the following configuration. Hostname = www.imt.com Physical path = C:\inetpub\wwwroot\imt Assuming my server IP address is 192.168.1.2 and we have a DNS host record that maps www.imt.com to 192.168.1.2 And a request comes to in the nature of http://192.168.1.2 from a client. The server would not respond with the index file for C:\inetpub\wwwroot\imt, rather it would respond with C:\inetpub\wwwroot which is the default web sites file. Reason When the request comes into the server, it would examine the header of the request, to find out which domain name was sent from the clients web browser. If it finds anything other than www.imt.com (this would be the case when the clients request uses other host names that still points to 192.168.1.2 e.g. http://imt.com), or no record at all (this would be the case when the clients request uses an IP address e.g. http://192.168.1.2), for the host name in the HTTP request it responds with the default page, else it responds with the physical path of www.imt.com

Right click on the Sites option, and click on Add Web Site

 In the Add Web Site configuration window, enter a site name (hint: use something that is related to the site you intend to host). The name you entered would also be used to create an application pool for the website by default. Enter the Physical path to the files for the web site you intend to host e.g. C:\inetpub\wwwroot\imt The binding settings include the following o Type: Specifies the type of Web protocol you want to use for your web site, either http or https (secured) o IP Address: Specifies an IP address to which your site would respond to (this means that only request from clients destined to this particular IP address would be replied, applicable where your server has more than one IP address) o Port: Specifies the port to which the web site would be listening. Default is 80 (It is advisable not to change this, unless for specific reasons) o Host Name: Specifies the host name for your web site e.g. www.imt.com. After completely filling all the configuration fields, you may uncheck the start web site immediately option if you do not intend to start the web site immediately. Then click OK, and that is all that needs to be done to set up a web site. Once you ensure that the host name www.imt.com is available on the DNS server Forward lookup zones. Any request coming to www.imt.com from clients would be responded to using the C:\inetpub\wwwroot\imt directory. Repeat the steps to add as many websites as you want We can now establish the fact that a strong relationship exist between the Web server and the DNS servers, they work mutually to achieve the goal of www services.

Configuring DNS 1. Starting the DNS console Note: Before we can commence any configuration of the DNS, the first step which involves adding the roles must have being completed successfully and it is also very expedient that an active network must be running (wired or wireless) with of course a static IP address configured on the interface. Using the start menu Click on the start menu. Locate and click on Administrative tools. Locate and click on DNS, in the pop-up menu item list. Your DNS server would be unavailable if there is no active network. OR Using windows run Press the windows key + R, to run a command/ file. Type in dnsmgmt.msc /s into the run field labeled Open Click on Ok or hit Enter. 2. Adding a DNS record Below the DNS option on the left tab of the window, locate your default DNS server which should be the name of your computer; usually starts with WIN by default, unless you have changed the name of your server. Double-click on then it, or click on the cross icon by preceding it to expand the DNS server options. Under the options of the DNS server locate and right click on the Forward Lookup Zones and click New zone. Note that the Forward Lookup Zones are used to translate Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDN) to IP address. Follow the wizard, check Primary Zone (default) and click next. Enter the zone name (aka Domain name) e.g. imt.com, imt-isp.net. Follow the default settings by clicking next all through, until you see finish. That would create a forward lookup zone for imt.com.

 Now that the zone has being created, click on the zone to display the zone records. You will notice two already existing records known as o Start of Authority (SOA): this record specifies authoritative policies for this zone which include (the primary server, responsible person, and some other timing parameters) of the zone. o Name Server (NS): this record specifies all the name servers for the zone. It points to other servers that are responsible for the zone. We can create A records (records that maps host names to IP addresses), by right clicking on the right pane of the selected zone on DNS console window. Then Click on New Host (A or AAAAA), to create a new host record. In the host field enter the name of the host e.g. www. The next field shows the FQDN of the host, for example in this case it would be www.imt.com. The next field is the IP address of the host in question e.g. 192.168.1.2. Note that this would create a record that would map www.imt.com to 192.168.1.2. Now this means that imt.com being the zone would not have a mapping. It is advisable to restart your DNS service by doing the following; o Press the windows key + R, to run a command/ file. o Type in net stop dns into the run field labeled Open o Click on Ok or hit Enter o Press the windows key + R, to run a command/ file. o Type in net start dns into the run field labeled Open o Click on Ok or hit Enter To test your DNS configuration assign 127.0.0.1 (localhost) or 192.168.1.2 (www.imt.com) to the primary DNS field of your TCP/IPv4 configuration. Run command prompt and enter nslookup. You should see, C:\Users\Administrator>nslookup Default Server: localhost Address: 127.0.0.1

Or otherwise, if you used 192.168.1.2. At this point you can add as many records as you want by repeating the steps. 3. Working with the Reverse Lookup Zone A reverse lookup zone is the opposite of a forward lookup zone. Cannot function without a corresponding forward lookup zone. Right-click on the Reverse lookup zone option and click New Zone Double-click on then it, or click on the cross icon by preceding it to expand the DNS server options. Under the options of the DNS server locate and right click on the Forward Lookup Zones and choose New zone. Note that the Forward Lookup Zones are used to translate Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDN) to IP address. Follow the wizard, check Primary Zone (default) and click next. Enter the network ID of the zone you wish to revers e.g. 192.168.1. Follow the default settings by clicking next all through, until you see finish. That would create a reverse lookup zone for imt.com. Now to add a record for the reverse lookup zone, go to the associated forward lookup zone, right-click on a record you wish to reverse click properties and check Update associated pointer (PTR) record. Click ok, and that would create a reverse record for the selected Forward look up zone record.

Test your configuration

Open your web browser and enter the following url; http://www.imt.com You should get the content of the C:\inetpub\wwwroot\imt That concludes the report.