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Chapter 1 • Using Windows Server 2003 Planning Tools and Documentation

After you have a high-level understanding of your company’s organizational structureand computing needs, you should inventory the hardware and software that is already inplace. In a small office environment, you can accomplish this by simply taking a walk todetermine the physical layout of network cables, routers, and the like. In a medium- tolarge-sized enterprise network, you will probably want to rely on automated inventorytools such as Microsoft’s Systems Management Server (SMS) or a third-party equivalent.Take as detailed of an inventory as possible, including the hardware configuration of serverand workstation machines as well as vendor names and the version numbers of the oper-ating system and business applications the systems are running.You can use a network analyzer, such as the Network Monitor utility built into theWindows Server 2003 operating system or the more full-featured version of NetworkMonitor included in SMS, to create a baseline of the current utilization of your networkbandwidth. If this utilization is already near capacity, you can use this baseline to justify andplan upgrades to your network infrastructure (moving from 10MB Ethernet to 100MBEthernet, for example).

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ARNINGThe version of Network Monitor that ships with Windows Server 2003 can analyzeonly traffic addressed to the network interface card (NIC) on the server itself orthat is sent by the server on which it is running. The SMS version of NetworkMonitor operates in promiscuous mode, enabling it to capture all network trafficon a given segment, even if the traffic isn’t addressed to or from the local server.Windows Server 2003 has introduced new management features that will assist you inplanning your network configuration, especially in the areas of user and computer manage-ment.The Resultant Set of Policy (RSoP) Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-incontains a Group Policy modeling function that will allow you to simulate changes toGroup Policy Objects (GPOs) in an Active Directory (AD) environment before actuallyapplying them to a production network. For example, if you want to apply a new GPO toa departmental Organizational Unit (OU), the modeling report will indicate how the newGPO will affect the objects within the OU to which it’s being applied.The Group PolicyManagement Console (GPMC) can also provide detailed configuration reports on existingGPO settings in place on a Windows 2000 or Windows Server 2003 AD installation.