// January 6th, 2010 // No Comments » // Geek-Stuff, school
So, I had my first exam today.
The course in question: Network Operating Systems 1 – Windows Server 2008
- Warning –
This post may contain higher levels of geeky-ness than normal.
During the semester, my lab-partner and me set up 2 servers, running Windows Server 2008.
(we were running these as a virtual machine, using VMware).
The 2 servers were in seperated subnets, both running a number of services.
The exam consisted of getting everything up and running and showing the teacher everything worked.
Step 1: DHCP
Boot a client-pc, see which DHCP-server he’s getting an IP from. Then disable the DHCP server on that specific server and renew the clients IP-adres. If all goes well, the client should get an IP-adres from the server in the other subnet (only because the ‘iphelper’ command was entered on the router between the subnets).
Check
Step 2: DNS
Add a Pointer-record on one server and make it replicate to the other server.
Check
Step 3: Active Directory
Log on with a normal AD-user. Use the ’set logonserver’ to check with of the 2 servers is being used as logonserver. Then do ’set logonserver=\\%theotherserver%’, log off, then disable the networkcard on the current logon-server (to simulate it being down). Log on again and if everything is good, the client should use the other server as logonserver. (thus making logon possible if the server in the client’s subnet is down)
Check
–
And this is where it get’s interesting. The client was on my subnet, so he was using my server as logonserver. So I disabled the network-interface to do the previous step.
In the next step, I needed my server again so I enabled the network-interface again.
And that’s when it happened. The icon stayed grayed-out for longer then expected. And *bamm*. BSOD.
I almost fell out of me chair, holly fuck…
I let it do it’s physical memory dump, it rebooted and worked all normal again. But holy fuck.
Thank god the teacher was standing right behind me when it happened and most the exam was already over.
–
Step 4: VPN
We used a predefined VPN-interface on the client (which was pointing to my server, which was why I needed my server online)
Check
Step 5: Group Policy
Create a number of policies, limiting options for specific users. Logon with a number of users to check if the different policies were being applied.
Step 6: VPN+GPO
Log on with a user over VPN and see if the policy is being applied (the policy here being ‘the user can only start notepad and calculator, nothing else).
Check
Check and check. The teacher congratulated us on a good exercise and excellent know-how.
Hell yeah 
Up the next one! (tomorrow that is…)
. To my colleagues, not to worry, I’m not leaving you all just yet. It’s an evening class. Well, class might be a bit of an understatement. It’s a 3-year program that results in a graduate-degree. Where am I doing this? At Groep-T, right here in Leuven, couldn’t be beter. When? In the first year, classes are on Thursday-evening (18h-21h40) and on Saturday-morning (8h10-12h40). That’s right again, every Saturday morning, so that means no more badminton-tournaments. This is one of the reasons why I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to do it. I used to play 2 tournaments a month and those usually last the whole weekend. But now that I’ll be having class every Saturday morning, what will be history for at least a year. But I’ve made peace with that now 