The reason we are installing the Service packs on any server is to resolve the know bugs and issues. The service packs contains the cumulative of hotfixes released by the vendor. So it is always recommended to install the latest service pack also known as SP on ever servers. But before installing the SP please be aware about what are all the issues fixed by the SP which you are install.

In this article we will see how to install the Service pack 2 on our Domain controller which was installed in our previous articles.

You can download the service pack 2 from the Microsoft downloads based on your server bit version. It is available for 32 bit machines and 34 bit machines. Usually the 32 bit machines only for lab and testing purpose.

It is not required to install the service pack in a series. Because SP2 is a combined version of SP1 + SP2.

For 32 bit version – http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=41

For 64 Bit version – http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=10018

Since I am using the Lab environment I downloaded the 32 bit version

Double click the file to extract it

Once you extract the file you will see the up gradation wizard

Click next to proceed further and agree the license agreement

After clicking next you will see the following option to select the uninstall folder. Please do not change the path. Click on next button

It will start inspecting your previous settings

In the meantime it will also backup the existing settings before up gradation

After that it will start installing the new .dlls and files

One the installation is done click on finish. Restart is required.

Once the restart is done you can check the SP2 status here

Congratulations!! You have installed the SP2 successfully.

Hope you have learned something new today. If you have any queries feel free to get back to me.

Thank You!!

In this article we are going to see what is the procedure to join a windows 2003 server to a domain to make it as a member server.

The reason behind to make this article is almost every application related to messaging are active directory dependent. Let’s take an instance. If we are going to install Exchange server it needs to be installed on a member server.

First I have followed the steps mentioned in my previous article to install the windows 2003 server.

And applied the SP2 by following my previous article.

So before installing an Exchange server we need to make the server as member server in the domain.

To make the server as a member server first configure the NIC settings

Go to the properties of NIC and assign the IP and the preferred DNS. Here I am using the IP as 10.1.1.3 and preferred DNS is 10.1.12

Make sure that we can able to ping the domain controller

Once you configured then go to the properties of My Computer and click on computer name

Click on change button

Change the member of option to domain and enter your domain over there and click on ok button

After that the member server contact the DC and prompt for credentials. Enter the admin account user name and password

Once the account information is validated then you will get a welcome message

Click on Ok then it will prompt for restart

Restart the server and the entry of the server will be listed in the DNS server with the IP address.

Congratulations!! You have successfully added the server as a member server to the domain.

Hope you have learned something new today. If you have any queries feel free to get back to me.

Thank You!!

In this article we are going to see how to configure the DNS in windows 2003.

What is DNS?

Domain Name Service also known as DNS is helps to convert the IP address to domain name and domain name to IP address. Because remembering the IP address is very difficult when compare to the name of the server or domain name.

I guess now you understood the importance of DNS. So let’s see how to configure the DNS.

Open the DNS console by navigating to the following path

Start -> Administrative Tools -> DNS

You can able to see two zones by default

1. Forward Lookup Zones
2. Reverse Lookup Zones

Forward lookup zones will helps to provide the information about the IP address of the mentioned host name

Let’s say if you type the host name in the command prompt it will give the IP address information. But if you want to get the information about the host name if you provide IP then you need to configure the Reverse lookup zone.

Right click on Reverse lookup zones -> New Zone option to create a new zone under reverse lookup zones

Select the Primary Zone option since it is going to be the first zone under the reverse lookup zone.

Select the option appropriately based on your requirement. I am selecting the third one here.

Now type the IP address without the last octet. For instance if your is 192.168.2.2 then type 192.168.2. In this case I am using 10.1.1

Select the first option which is the recommended.

Click finish.

Congratulations!! You have configured the DNS server successfully.

Hope you have learned something new today. If you have any questions feel free to get back to me.

Thank You!!

Before getting into the installation part let’s see what is domain controller.

Domain Controller:

Domain controller is the server which host the active directory domain services which is responsible for responds to security authentication requests (logging in, checking permissions, etc.) within the Windows Server domain. A domain is a concept introduced in Windows NT whereby a user may be granted access to a number of computer resources with the use of a single username and password combination.

Domain controller doing the above mentioned works by using LDAP protocol . In the previous article we have seen the installation of Windows server 2003. Now we are going to see how to install the Active directory service in the Windows server 2003.

Insert the Windows server 2003 CD to the computer drive were we have windows server 2003 installed.

Before installing the AD (Active Directory) we need to configure the NIC. Because after installing the AD and DNS our server (In our case it’s going to be the same server since it is a lab environment) will communicate to AD even internally through the IP address. So if the server needs to communicate through DNS it should know the DNS IP address. In the below screenshot I used 10.1.1.1 is the DC server IP and since it is going to be the same as DNS I entered the same IP in the preferred DNS column. Before installing the DNS and AD you need to mention the preferred DNS IP because while installing the DNS it will look for this settings. If you forget to mention these details you will get an error while installation.

After the NIC configuration, open the cmd and type DCPROMO

You can able to see the AD installation wizard

Since we are going to install the first domain controller in the forest select the option “Domain controller for a new domain” and then click next.

And now we are going to create a new domain in the new forest. Select the option “Domain in a new forest” option and click next

While evaluating it will find out that there is no DNS server configured in the forest. So it will give the following popup. Select the option “Yes, I will configure the DNS client”

Now we are going to name the domain name for our company. I am going to use my blog name as my domain name messagingpro.in

It will automatically calculate the domain netbios name. So click next

Now we need to select the Database and log folder path for AD

And then select the Sysvol folder path

Once you configured the above mentioned information it will look for DNS and give you an option to install the DNS server on this system. Select the section option.

After that it will prompt for permission for user and group object. Recommended settings is the second option. And click next.

After clicking next it will start installing the AD and DNS in our windows server 2003.

Post the installation it required to restart the server.

Once the restart is done our server became DC in our forest.

Congratulation!! You have installed DC successfully.

Hope you have learned something new today. If you have any queries feel free to get back to me.

Thank You!!

All the Messaging application including Exchange servers are dependable of Active Directory service/servers. So before learning about Exchange servers let’s focus on getting familiar about Windows server and the domain controllers. In this article we will learn to install the Windows server 2003.

Insert the Windows server 2003 CD in the server and boot up the server.

Press ENTER to continue.

Press F8 to agree the license agreement

If you want to partition the disc press C. Since this is the lab setup I am going to use the single partition option by using ENTER option.

To install the windows server we need to format using NTFS file system. I am going to use the quick NTFS format option since it is a first time installation.

After completion of the copy process the server will reboot itself and you will see the following process

In the meantime of the installation you need to personalize the application which will be prompted during installation

Enter the Name and Org name to continue further

Once the key is entered you need select the licensing mode based on your purchased key.

You need to enter the computer name and admin password here

Next we need to configure the networking settings. Select typical settings and click next. We can do the complete configuration after the installation.

Select the workgroup since it is the first server in the org. Later we will configure the domain.

After that the installation is done the server will reboot automatically and will prompt for username and password to enter the server

Congratulation!! You have install the windows server 2003 successfully in your organization.

Hope you have learned something new. If you have any queries feel free to get back to me.

Thank You!!