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Would like to get learn more about servers and networking

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  • Networking
  • Business Computing
  • Servers
Last response: in Business Computing
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June 4, 2014 11:11:43 AM

Hi all,
I recently was hired as an operations manager whose duties include some IT duties. Mainly, it means I'm the liaison to our IT service provider but I would like to better understand our own network and how servers work.

I'm very comfortable tinkering around when it comes to computers but I don't know anything about servers and networking. I want to learn the basics of how to build a network up, what are the uses of servers for business purposes and other good things to help communicate to our IT consultant.

Any easy to read resources to get me started? I figure I can also try building my own home network as a way to tinker around without harming my work network.

Just to give an idea of our work network environment: We have about 15 staff that are always on the network. We do taxes so we have an additional 15 people who are running a tax application off the server. we have three servers and one of them is virtualized. We use them for file storage, database, applications, and printers and VOIP,

More about : learn servers networking

June 4, 2014 12:27:23 PM

Your style of learning will determine what might be best for you. I would check out some of these different paths:

1) Instructor-led learning - find a course (tons of training centers around) that offers classes on basic network & administration.
2) Books/CBT s/w/Internet courses - a lot of the beginner's books, like the Dummy guides, are actually pretty useful. Get one that has a lot of pictures - that way you can connect the screenshots with the informational text. CBT s/w (Computer-Based Training software) can be purchased, and there are a lot of Internet sites with free instructional material as well.
3) Home network - setting up a network at home is a great way to learn about basic networking.
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June 4, 2014 1:04:26 PM

2Be_or_Not2Be said:
Your style of learning will determine what might be best for you. I would check out some of these different paths:

1) Instructor-led learning - find a course (tons of training centers around) that offers classes on basic network & administration.
2) Books/CBT s/w/Internet courses - a lot of the beginner's books, like the Dummy guides, are actually pretty useful. Get one that has a lot of pictures - that way you can connect the screenshots with the informational text. CBT s/w (Computer-Based Training software) can be purchased, and there are a lot of Internet sites with free instructional material as well.
3) Home network - setting up a network at home is a great way to learn about basic networking.


I think setting up a home network would work best for me. I don't want to sound lazy but I'm hoping someone can point me to some good online resources for how to get started. I'm a new parent in a new job so I am appreciative of all the help I can get!
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Related resources
June 4, 2014 1:39:25 PM

Brian JK said:
2Be_or_Not2Be said:
Your style of learning will determine what might be best for you. I would check out some of these different paths:

1) Instructor-led learning - find a course (tons of training centers around) that offers classes on basic network & administration.
2) Books/CBT s/w/Internet courses - a lot of the beginner's books, like the Dummy guides, are actually pretty useful. Get one that has a lot of pictures - that way you can connect the screenshots with the informational text. CBT s/w (Computer-Based Training software) can be purchased, and there are a lot of Internet sites with free instructional material as well.
3) Home network - setting up a network at home is a great way to learn about basic networking.


I think setting up a home network would work best for me. I don't want to sound lazy but I'm hoping someone can point me to some good online resources for how to get started. I'm a new parent in a new job so I am appreciative of all the help I can get!


Well, if you're too lazy even for Googling, then that is saying something! :) 

The first hit for "basic home networking" was an article from PC Mag - How to Set Up a Home Network in 5 Simple Steps.

You could also try the following:
Home Networking Explained - multi-part series from Cnet

How Home Networking Works - from How Stuff Works

or even this one:

PCs All-in-One For Dummies on Amazon
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June 4, 2014 1:45:25 PM

Here is a free online course put up by Princeton called "Networks Illustrated: Principles without Calculus" http:// It starts in 11 days and is on coursera.org.

Here is another one without a start date. http:// Sounds like this is the better of the two for your learning outcomes.
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June 4, 2014 2:44:06 PM

2Be_or_Not2Be said:


Well, if you're too lazy even for Googling, then that is saying something! :) 




Fair enough! Looking at the links, I think I understand networking well enough that I didn't try googling it because I think I'm more intimidated by setting up a server on a network and figuring out how to mimic our work network.

I have access to download a windows 2012 and 2008 server OS (which we both use at work) but I have no idea where to start or how to interact with it if I did get it loaded up on a spare computer. Not to mention, I'm not sure what is the bare minimum I should plan to have in a server build.

Upon googling "beginning windows server", I get some pretty intimidating looking stuff (at least to me) like http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/WINDOWS-SERVER-2008... or http://books.google.com/books?id=yzCrA6kuv9AC&printsec=...

I'm not looking to learn everything at once, just enough to get me the basic overview and then play around as I learn more.
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June 4, 2014 5:28:55 PM

I'd recommend perhaps having a look at Microsoft Virtual Academy. There are tons of helpful reading material, videos, and webinars on there for all kinds of subjects ranging from small offices to corporation information systems.

Often times setting up a home lab is going to give you the best chance to really learn how to do something. You can look at videos all day of people clicking through stuff, but until you have a chance to actually do it, it may be difficult to comprehend how it is supposed to work as well as leading you to understanding other possibilities and how to apply what you learned.

Now, for playing with you don't need anything really special to set up a test server and network, but there are some minimums that I would recommend you have if you are really serious about some hands-on learning. First would be a manageable switch. If you want to learn how to do command-line configurations of enterprise switches you should look at something like a used or refurbished Cisco Catalyst 2960. However you really don't need that fancy. An HP ProCurve 1810 gigabit switch can offer you many manageability features such as VLANs and LACP at a lower cost.

Next, a server. Again, this is going to greatly depend upon what you are wanting to do with it. I'd suggest learning virtualization on your server as it is a core staple of modern server technology. There are many options here, such as Xen, ESXi, or Hyper-V which is a part of the Windows Server OS. Find out what you are using at work and start with that is what I would suggest. On that, you can create multiple virtual machines and learn then how to get everything communicating together in your network and doing services that you'd like to play with. The most common ones to work with are going to be a file server, domain server, and perhaps DNS/DHCP.
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Best solution

June 5, 2014 6:51:34 AM

choucove said:


Now, for playing with you don't need anything really special to set up a test server and network, but there are some minimums that I would recommend you have if you are really serious about some hands-on learning. First would be a manageable switch. If you want to learn how to do command-line configurations of enterprise switches you should look at something like a used or refurbished Cisco Catalyst 2960. However you really don't need that fancy. An HP ProCurve 1810 gigabit switch can offer you many manageability features such as VLANs and LACP at a lower cost.

Next, a server. Again, this is going to greatly depend upon what you are wanting to do with it. I'd suggest learning virtualization on your server as it is a core staple of modern server technology. There are many options here, such as Xen, ESXi, or Hyper-V which is a part of the Windows Server OS. Find out what you are using at work and start with that is what I would suggest. On that, you can create multiple virtual machines and learn then how to get everything communicating together in your network and doing services that you'd like to play with. The most common ones to work with are going to be a file server, domain server, and perhaps DNS/DHCP.


Well, as a beginner whose main job isn't primarily IT, I don't think he would have to go to the point of learning command-line config of a managed switch. :)  I think installing a server would be the first step in learning. I like the suggestions about virtualization & using the Microsoft Virtual Academy as well.

For starters, you'll need a machine to set up as a server. You could probably start small with a Dell PowerEdge T20 or T320 server. The reason to get a Dell or HP server is that they have drivers for server operating systems (like Windows Server 2012); other PCs might work, but it might be easiest to get one that you already know works. Then go to Crucial.com and order more memory for it (put in your server model # and it will show your options) to have a total of 8-16GB. Installing it will give you experience with working with computer hardware. Go to Newegg and buy the same capacity/interface of hard drive of your server's initial configuration. Adding it later will also give you more understanding of storage, and you can then play with RAID options later.

View the Microsoft Virtual Academy courses for Windows Server 2012. Then grab the 180-day trial of Windows Server 2012 R2 and install it. Add the Hyper-V role, and start creating a few virtual guests to make a whole network to play around with, like a domain controller with DHCP/DNS and a file/print server. Add your 2nd hard drive to the server to learn how to expand storage, and then figure out how to create a RAID-1 array for data fault-tolerance.

It's a lot to do, but you may find it to be easier than you first thought. Well, at least the setup of W2012R2 will be easy because it's almost completely automated. All of the hardware should cost < $1000, so you're also not out of too much money. In fact, your work might be able to cover it as it's valuable training.
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June 11, 2014 4:54:30 AM

I don't necessarily know if I'd start off learning 2012 R2, a fairly large portion of businesses still run 2008 R2 and even lower. I'd say focus on getting down 2008 R2 installation first learning about server roles, functionality, and then digging into Active Directory. Most of the William Stanek books on server administration are easy to read and follow and their full of valuable information. As others have mentioned you'll want to then learn about a hypervisor for virtualization such as VMware ESX/ESXi or Microsofts Hyper-V. I think VMware is a better product and its interface is easier to learn than Microsoft's. If you're looking into networking as well, there are plenty of websites that are full of information.. one of my favorites is firewall.cx and there are other sites that have cisco simulators for firewall devices such as ASA5505's which can be used to configure VPN tunnels and lock down a network.

Also if you're going to get into networking, you should learn how DHCP and DNS are utilized as server roles in Windows as this will help greatly to see how they interact with network routers and switches.
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June 12, 2014 4:59:00 PM

I've had quite a few discussions before about the concept of learning older versions of server OS versus the modern releases. Yes, it's true there are quite a few systems out there still running Server 2008 or even 2003 and their interfaces and features are going to be a little different. However, I think it's actually more efficient to learn the newer OS and apply what you learn to the older OS. The reason for this is if you start learning how to set up Server 2008 R2 only right now, and have to suddenly jump to a newer server running Server 2012 R2, there's going to be a LOT that is different that won't apply from your knowledge of 2008 R2. For example, SMB 3.0 network shares and how to use the new Storage Spaces or even administrating from the new dashboard. Even the version of Hyper-V included in Server 2012 R2 is different. However, it is all built upon the same foundation or earlier versions from 2008 R2. So, if you learn how to do something in Server 2012 R2 you can pretty well figure out how to do the same thing in older or earlier versions of the OS. However, the same cannot be said in reverse.

I definitely agree that it is nice to learn the fundamentals of DHCP and DNS, not just on a server but how they work within network devices, etc. Overall getting and understanding of that technology will make working with network infrastructure much more comfortable.
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