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[Music] welcome to asks me anything your chance to ask the IT pro TV subject matter experts questions live [Music] here's your host Rolly walk hello and welcome to another show here on IT Pro TV called asks me anything and this is the show where you get a chance of course to be able to ask the subject matter experts right here on IT Pro TV any question that you want to and the way that you do that of course is by submitting the questions through your Twitter and when you do so are you to our Twitter here you go ahead and hashtag it with ask SME anything and that of course will get you to be able to put a question on our show now today we have with us of course well mr. Mike Roderick himself he is a subject-matter expert right here at IT Pro TV for things like Windows Server as well as PowerShell and of course just about anything that you do in Windows Mike pretty much is our subject matter expert that we go to for this as well and so we are going to of course have some questions for him so Mike thank you for being on the show today glad you are here with us for your first time right here on ask me anything how does it feel Mike it feels great thanks for having me Ronnie I appreciate the opportunity to get a chance to talk to our viewers have them ask us questions I'm looking forward to this well that sounds good Mike so here we are so is this shows not about me talking it's more about you talking as well as interacting with everybody on our show here so what we want to do of course is go to a question make sure that we understand what we're actually taking a look at and so when we actually do take a look at the list that we've gotten here the first question that we have of course is going to be well what is powershell core itself now Mike this seems a little bit strange to me but there is a difference between the idea here of what they're asking about so what are they really talking about here Mike that's a great question whoever asked that but it's PowerShell core is a was a good way to say this this is a new thing that Microsoft been introducing it's not brand new it's in the second release on their beta currently but it is basically a replacement or Microsoft site it's going to supplant PowerShell as we know it right most of us are familiar with PowerShell it's a very powerful scripting engine it does a lot right and most of us know this is the has been the administrative tool that we used in managing Windows networks for some time but one of the things about PowerShell is it was a Windows only thing right it was built on top of the dotnet framework which meant it was only going to work on Windows and in today's environments Microsoft and everybody is realizing that it's not just Windows right we have to manage devices that are not windows-based especially with the whole BYOD type thing people using their own personal laptops different mobile devices tablets various forms we needed something that was able to manage all of those and what we would call a heterogeneous environment right and that's where PowerShell core comes in PowerShell core is built on dotnet core which is a subset of that dotnet framework and because of this it's going to allow us to run PowerShell core cross-platform we can actually get powershell core for Windows of course we can also get it for Linux and Mac OS X so it's going to allow me to use this incredibly powerful management tool in a environment that's not strictly Windows alright so Mike just to follow up on that question as we do that so is there any additional core package that we need on something like Ubuntu or any other Linux additions before we could run this yeah you will need to download it it's available Microsoft distributes are currently through github and you can download the it's a beta preview 6.0 - or 6.0 beta - I believe is their current version at the time of this and you just download it install it some of the really cool things about PowerShell core are the fact that what's cross-platform I mean that obviously is one of its greatest features that allows me to run across linux and mac and windows also some other cool things about it is that it's it's it'll run side-by-side with PowerShell so you've got a Windows system for example you've got PowerShell is a built-in component on our modern Windows 10 server 2016 but that's not going to stop me from using PowerShell core I can go and I can get PowerShell core I can install that on my system and I can run it side by side without it interfering with anything I might be doing currently with PowerShell so if I already use PowerShell to do a lot of administration I've got scripts that I use things like that workflows that I use to automate things play books from books I can still do that PowerShell core is not going to interfere with that and this is a great opportunity for us as administrators to start working with PowerShell core and start migrating over why we have this both of them at the same time because PowerShell is going to be going away right Microsoft the lace version of PowerShell and we'll call it Windows PowerShell right Windows PowerShell versus PowerShell core windows powershell if you look at PS version table dot PS Edition in PowerShell you'll see it's labeled as desktop that's the windows powershell powershell core to do that same command dollar-sign PS version dot PS edition it's listed as core right and again you can run those side by side the the executables are different as well powershell exe for windows powershell PS wh gosh if i remember that right if i get that backwards is going to be a PW SH PowerShell if I can get that p WS h dot exe for launching PowerShell core but back to what I was saying is 5.1 is really the last version i'll say that it's the last version we're gonna see a PowerShell right Microsoft said there's no longer gonna be implementing any new features in Windows PowerShell they will still update it if they've got critical security patches or anything like that they will still be providing that so we can continue to use it safely in our environment but don't look for any new features all new features are going to be rolled into PowerShell core like I said this is really a good time to start moving over and that brings up some more questions if we if we've got time you know what can I move everything directly over from Windows PowerShell to PowerShell core and the answer is mostly all right not everything because of the fact that it's based on a it's not the entire net framework so we don't have all of the same support that we had the same libraries behind it that we had with Windows PowerShell so there are going to be some things that are left out a power core could they be added later in a different way possibly if Microsoft feels the need to do so but you'll see like the list of modules that's available for PowerShell core is much smaller than what we have for Windows PowerShell now we're from reading some of the blogs out there from the Microsoft MVPs and the people on the PowerShell teams on that project just because some of those modules are listed if here's a particular module that you use in Windows PowerShell and you're trying to move over to PowerShell core but that module is not available natively now if you do a list available through PowerShell core you don't see that module it's not to say that it won't work right you can still there's a great article out there on Microsoft's website you could do a quick search for it on linking your current PS module paths into PowerShell core what they'll tell you is that a lot of those modules will still work even though they're not listed in the available for PowerShell core but that's up to you to test right they haven't been officially ported and tested so they're not going to tell you that yeah it works like if you want the DHCP module or the hyper-v module those are listed when you go and look at PowerShell course modules but that doesn't mean you can't use it it very well could work just fine you're just gonna have to test it out yourself Microsoft hasn't gotten that far yet there's also some cool modules that users are actually at the community the PowerShell community has built like when you look at the official support for PowerShell core we're looking at things like Red Hat a boon to Mac OS what's some other ones we got on that list there openSUSE sent us debian and mostly the later builds of these I won't give you the specific build numbers now you can go look that up those are all officially supported with PowerShell core but in the community they've added support for things like Arch Linux Kali Linux which you know is a popular security based Linux distribution so the fact that you know it's just really neat to see the community coming together and with Microsoft being open right and and showing this clock cross-platform support community coming together it's it's pretty neat all right Mike again just a short follow-up on this as well in your experience have you seen a steep learning curve from you just known PowerShell to go into PowerShell core no it's almost the same okay I really haven't experienced anything different other than like I said some commands not being available because those modules aren't there but so far just the ones I've used have all worked just fine in fact my profile it's a simple little things but even my profile that I took some time to create for my Windows PowerShell I installed a PowerShell core on my system it detected that you know I had that in my documents and that default location and it picked up my profile and is using it just fine so I really don't see there are like I said there's a few things that they're not going to be bringing along if we look at PowerShell workflows unfortunately because of the lack of the.net framework by going to that dotnet core that subset we lose PowerShell workflows so if those are something that you use to manage your environment we're gonna have to think of other ways to do that and again you can still use PowerShell right Windows PowerShell is still available it will still be patched just not adding any new support PowerShell snap-ins which are really probably not too many of us still using those those were pre PowerShell module days I was like what we had before we had modules dynamic link libraries that had to be registered into the registry we don't really use those but maybe you've got one that you've been using forever in a day unfortunately no more support for those WMI version one commandlets are lost they're gonna recommend that you go to the CI a more the WMI v2 commandlets DSC executing DSC resources is another thing that we lose in PowerShell core and I mention these because these are some of the things that I know administrators are probably out there using currently and so it's something that we've got to be aware of as we start migrating over to power stroke or the PowerShell core is the way to go like I say they're gonna they're not adding new functionality to Windows PowerShell and it's just where we need to be because we have to deal with a mixed environment it's not just a window shop anymore yeah it's kind of amazing I guess with the introduction of the cloud and everything else that we're seeing that this was inevitable for Microsoft also moved to all right Mike thank you for for answering that question that came in from one of our viewers as well and that means don't forget if you're watching this live you are also going to be able to submit that question remember go to our Twitter here and hashtag asked me anything and you can also ask your question and hopefully we'll get to it if not we'll get to in another episode as well but we do have another question that submitted Mike and so we are ready to go here so our second question of the day for Mike here is going to be what is the difference between conditional forwarding and stub zones all right Mike I understand this especially when I was learning about so Mike help us out here yeah you're no slouch I know when it comes to Windows at Microsoft but yeah this is something that we get a lot because when we think about conditional forwarding and stub zones they really accomplish the same thing right in the end they're both designed to speed up name resolution and let's back up run if we can just for a second and kind of make sure and when we think about the way DNS works right in your enterprise you're most likely hosting or paying somebody to host your namespace right whether that's you know will use Microsoft contoso comm for example or IT Pro TV here right we've got DNS servers that host that namespace so if we need to resolve names that end in IT product Eve II our computers will query our local DNS server here then get that no problem but if we create something outside of our organization something that we're not responsible for like amazon.com or Microsoft comm or new egg or Facebook or whatever then our DNS servers go through a process to find that IP address to name mapping starting up with the route and working their way down through the top-level DNS servers and and so on and so forth right and it's really a pretty impressive and fast process as it is but there's always room for improvement right and the idea is if I do let's say we're IT Pro TV I know there's a stretch of the imagination and let's say we do a lot of work with contoso comm so my users are constantly resolving names that ending contoso calm which means that our DNS server is going up to the root to find that contoso dot-com DNS server before it can look that name up right looking for that authoritative DNS server and I understand caching and there's a lot of other things that can speed that process up but caching aside we need to go through that process because those records will timeout eventually what the idea behind conditional forwarding and stub zones is let me go ahead and give my DNS server the IP address of that authoritative DNS server for contoso com that way I don't have to start up at the top and work my way down its gonna make it a little bit faster and every you know half a second that I can shave off of this name resolution process is gonna be an improvements going to make things work faster so rather than have to go to the process we're just going to tell it exactly where that authoritative DNS server is I can use either one conditional forwarding or stub zones I like to call well let's take conditional forwarding first right because because channel warnings been around a little bit longer and the idea was in my DNS server I can create a rule that says if the name you're attempting to resolve ends in contoso com here's the IP address of the authoritative DNS server that way you don't have to go through that process you know of all those iterative queries to locate the authoritative server you can go straight to the authoritative server which is a good thing but the downside of conditional forwarding is I had to create a rule and that rule was static so once I created that rule everything worked fine but what if contoso changed the IP address of their DNS server for some reason you know they restructured their network or they change which machine was hosting DNS any number of reasons that IP address could change the problem is my conditional forwarding record wasn't updated I would have to first realize there was a problem hey our name resolution with contoso isn't working any longer I'd have to contact them and say hey what did you change your DNS servers IP address to and then I have to go into my DNS server and I'd have to update that rule right to make everything start working again which is you know not a huge deal but there could be a period of time before I even realize it's broken it's a lot it's just extra administrative work dynamic or sub zone our sub zones are really dynamic conditional 40 we're going to accomplish the same thing but we're gonna do it a little bit differently we're gonna create a zone 4 so here I am an IT Pro TV I go to my DNS server and I create a zone for contoso comm now your first thought might be well wait a second you can't just host a zone for somebody else's namespace without getting permissions right to replicate primary to secondary I need to be on the list of authorized DNS servers things like that stub zones don't require that because stub zones it's going to be a zone for let's say contoso comm but the only thing that's in the zone it's not going to have all of their a records all of their SRV records all of their cname records I'm not getting all that from them the only thing I'm going to get is going to be their SOA there's startup Authority they're a records for the DNS servers and the NS records for their DNS service the NS records would give me the name of their DNS servers and then the a records would allow me to turn that name into an IP address and that's it and this is information that's generally publicly available anyway so I don't even need permission from canto SOCOM to set up a stub zone to host that on my DNS server now same thing happens when my users are querying for names attending canto SOCOM my DNS server knows the IP address of canto so's DNS server but the cool thing is because it's a stub zone and not a static rule I'm replicating that information from their zone and so if their information changes my zone will get updated so I don't have to worry about it breaking if they change their infrastructure I don't have to make it a task to go check on that every once in a while and that's why I say it's really like dynamic conditional forwarding because it's going to be kept up to date automatically and the cool thing is I don't again don't even need permission and everything the only thing I need is access to their DNS server so make sure by my firewalls are allowing that query yeah it really sounds like an amazing process in the way that we can help everything kind of get the name resolved way that we need to and the great thing is Mike I think during our shows that we do for certification training we go over this idea of how to actually set up the conditional and stub zones and even more so we want to make sure of course that you check out the IP pro te library as well and get in there and you actually learn more about it - so Mike thank you again for asking if we're answering that question and don't forget you know if you want to actually submit your own question once again Twitter or go ahead and tweet at IT Pro TV and with the hashtag asks me anything and Mike it looks like we have another question so very popular at this point here we are at our third question already here so how do I get experience with Windows server without a job a great question Mike that is that's something we get a lot I know I do Ronnie I'm sure you do as well because it is kind of a catch-22 sometimes right you what you want to get into the IT field you want to go out there and get a job and they want to know what your experience where have you worked I haven't I'm just getting started how do I get familiar with these operating systems I'm not running servers at my house I don't have Active Directory up and running well I might but most people don't right you know how do i how do I get experience with that and honestly it's it's not as difficult as you might think there's several options available and it's something you really should do because you can study and I'm saying there's anything wrong with with you know reading books obviously that's a good thing we like to read and you can learn a lot that way but many of us learn differently I'm a very tactile learner and visual learner I'd like to see and do things I love to read things to kind of get my initial knowledge base but then I like to get in there and do it and that's really what reinforces it for me I know everybody works and learns a little bit differently so back to the original question before I get too far off you know how do I get that experience we take advantage of technologies the virtualization technologies that we have available nowadays and the fact that most vendors will give you if it take Microsoft I'll stick with Microsoft because that's what I know they give you a valuation of software they make that available for this very purpose so that you can either learn the product or if you're already in the field play with new products learn it test it before it gets rolled out so if you go out and do a quick Google search or use your favorite search engine Microsoft evaluation you'll find the Microsoft evaluation center and from there you can get is OS for most everything they have right as far as like Windows to the current stuff you can't go back in history Windows 95 or anything like that which is okay because we're not supporting that nowadays but you can get ISO at a for Windows 10 for Server 2016 for most of your system Center roles and things like that sequel you can get those and then you can set up a little test lab now there's several virtualization technologies available you know when we look at Windows 10 for example we have client hyper-v built-in so I don't even need to go out and purchase anything if I have a licensed copy of Windows 10 I have access to hyper-v and I can create virtual machines there which I know Ronnie I think you've done a couple of shows on we've got extensive shows on virtualization within our course library here but that will give you the ability to start playing with some of these and I highly recommend it you know there's nothing like setting up your own little domain create some fake users I mean I remember I had Batman as my salesperson and Robin and Batgirl as my salesperson I have I think Batman was my manager you know just make up names do whatever you've got to do but create your a whole environment simulate a what you would think of as a normal workplace different departments you've got some users that are managers that have more rights than others and it gives you that chance to play around install different roles install DNS install DHCP you don't need that much that many resources to set up a small lab you don't need ten servers and a hundred clients to play with it right right because it's all gonna it doesn't really matter doesn't change much as you scale up in an enterprise you know I don't say I would be careful when I say that I mean obviously there are some significant changes as we scale up but for the most part you know whether you're running one DNS server or five it's pretty much the same we start throwing in replication and things like that but you can take a single server and run most of the roles on it put Active Directory DNS DHCP certificate services on there run one or two clients and maybe one more server as a files and if you're given each one of those maybe two gigs of RAM might not be the fastest in the world you might need what is that Ronnie two times four is eight you know if you've got something like that in your laptop or your desktop you can have a pretty decent little test environment and that'll give you the ability to to try to start getting that experiencing getting familiar with what it's like to manage one of these servers and install roles configure roles things like that so that's that's one option is to go the virtualization route and that's probably my favorite now we also have here at IT Pro TV we offer practice labs right so along with your subscription here you can use the the practice labs that we provide and these are fantastic they're scenario based setups where you know you'll have a certain problem setup or tasks that you need to accomplish and you can go out and you launch up these pre-built machines they're already configured they have user accounts and roles set up all of that and you can go through they give you step-by-step on how to accomplish certain things and you can start practicing that way another cool thing about using those practice labs that I like to do Ronnie is just because the lab is designed to configure stub zones doesn't mean that's all you have to do right they're not flash simulations I remember how you and I go back pretty far and I remember some of the learning tools that we had available way back when were flash based where you had it what looked like a computer screen but you could only click on things yeah because that was all they chose to animate and their little flash animation so if you click on anything else doesn't actually work so you couldn't learn anything other than what they wanted you to see with practice labs those are full-blown server installs client installs so even though the lab has you creating a stub zone for DNS that doesn't mean you can't do something else with them you know sometimes I'll go look in those labs and I'll read an article about something I want to try I'll be like okay to set this up it says I need two servers and two clients I'll go to practice labs and find a lab that has two servers and to clients in it the topic of the lab might not have anything to do with what I'm trying to accomplish but I don't doesn't matter all I need are two servers two clients and I can experiment and play around yeah whether it's practice labs or whether you're setting up your own virtual labs using the trial software the great thing about the virtualization is if you break it it's okay yeah hey click reset or you shut your machines down and you roll them back to a checkpoint and you start all over that's the whole idea is this is where I want to break it in that virtualization environment so that I don't break it when I get into a production environment alright so yeah I would highly recommend setting up your own little test lab if you can it's a lot easier than when we were doing it Ronny no doubt I remember going to all kinds of garage sales looking for any computer I could buy and I had a mishmash of stuff in my room to set up a little test lab as I back in the Windows 2000 days now I've got my laptop that luckily for me my work is provided and I've got quite a bit of RAM in here but I can run an entire network on this one laptop and take it around with me right rather than have to have the physical equipment so this is a great time to be learning IT and to be playing with us stuff you know a mic just just to add to that if we'll take a look at my computer screen will show you some things that Mike was talking about right here that will help us out so just like what Mike recommended if you go and do a search in your favorite search engine for Windows Server evaluation here you will actually end up seeing when the first links that there will lead you to this page and is from here that you can get an 180-day evaluation of something like a Windows Server 2016 so of course you can do that now are they're gonna ask you to fill out some stuff so they can market to you you better believe it they're gonna ask you that but overall though you at least get access to that server for a hundred and eighty days which is actually very nice and one of the virtualization technologies that I liked at the very beginning and I'm just showing this one I'm not really picking one over the other I don't even use this one today but this one right here the reason why it's absolutely 100% free that's what I love about it and this one will run on any platform so if you're running Linux get a run if you're running Windows in a run if you're running Apple get a run and that's why I like this particular platform and I used it for a long long time for for everything that we've done so just combining any of those together it'll help you learn a new technology at the same time you're also learning server so it's a great one for us to actually think about when we do this all right Mike once again thing you for that for helping us out because a lot of people probably have a question like that but we do have another question lined up already so that means we are ready to go for our next question alright Mike it looks like we're heading back to Active Directory which seems to be the popular kind of topic today what are sites used for in Active Directory alright so Mike here it is everybody understands the idea of users and computers but what's the sites about yeah that's a good one Ronnie yeah a lot of people I think maybe not even aware that this is available right it's not something you see I shouldn't say it's not something you see a lot of but if you don't have a need for it you you've probably never dealt with it and that's fine it'll sit in the background and do absolutely nothing and it's just it's it's just as happy doing that as doing what it's supposed to do so a site when we when we look at our Active Directory we're talking about an on-prem type deployment we're not talking about a cloud at this point when we're talking about on Prem deployments right if we're a single shop let's say like IT Pro TV we got this one physical location one building all of my computers reside in here in that case sites really don't do anything for me I mean I I could if we had a multi-story building we'll come back to that concept but you know for a single physical location typically sites are just unnecessary and like I said you leave the default location you'll never even think about it and Active Directory is just fine with that but as we start growing as an enterprise right if we start adding multiple physical locations that's when sites are going to become very important to us and that could be because we've opened up an office across town another state another country or I'm a campus layout where I've got separate buildings like a college or university across the campus and we can do it that way as well but the idea is with sites they allow me to control two very important things replication being the first one all right let's talk about that with Active Directory we always run more than one domain controller for fault tolerance and load balancing but primarily fault tolerance because oh if one goes down not stuck and if I can still log on alright and and when you log on your computer queries DNS for SRV records for Kerberos servers or authentication servers gets a list back and it contacts the first one in that list if I'm a multiple if I have multiple physical locations and I put domain controllers at each one which is Microsoft's recommendation write a minimum of two domain controllers per physical location when I go to log on there's no guarantee that I'll use if I'm here at this building and there's two domaine controllers in the server closet right over there 200 yards away from me there's no guarantee that my computer will use those domain controllers to log on to can very well end up talking to a domain controller that's out in California right because when it retrieves that list from DNS it's just an unordered list of the IP addresses for domain controllers if I set up sites I can start to control that process you know I think I lost track to I was talking about replication right first and I started getting off on logon traffic I loved sites they're very exciting to me let's go back to replication so within a single location I've got two domain controllers those domain controllers are gonna replicate very quick often all right any little change can trigger replication we won't get into the minutiae of how often they do this and things like that but let's just you know change occurs replication has occurs there going to be what's the term I'm looking for Ronnie when you talk about convergence they're gonna be pretty consistent right across those two main controllers little convergence yeah a little time converging slow time exactly all right now we start adding another physical site let's say I do open up a shop over in Jacksonville we're here in Gainesville Florida I got one in Jacksonville I put a domain control over there if I change anything in Active Directory here triggers replication on the land that's fine I'm okay with that I've got good fast land speeds but my way in I don't necessarily need that instant replication of every little change that's going on because I can start to overwhelm that that Network and that bandwidth so with sites I can control that replication rather than replicating immediately upon changes we're gonna slow that down by default it's a hundred and eighty minutes or three hours that will slow that replication down too so now changes that are occurring won't replicate to that other site for 180 minutes by default we can control that and I will say that with today's technology in today's bandwidth this is not as big of an issue as it used to be in fact I think will recommend that we drop that replication window down to like 15 minutes because I don't necessarily need a change occurring here and then not getting to my other office for three hours right but the point is I can control it that's the idea is it's at my discretion I can decide how often those guys are replicating those changes how important is it that I get those changes to the other office and control that bandwidth a little bit better right so that's the first thing sites allow me to do is control that Active Directory replication the other thing they allow me to do is localize any site aware services site aware services there's many of them you know a lot of the Active Directory services are site aware we look at exchange we look at the logon process for example and what I mean by site aware is go back to that login scenario where I said if I've got two main controllers here and in Jacksonville when I go to logon no guarantee which one I'm gonna be using when I log on right and I'd much rather use the one that's right here on the same land as me it's gonna be a lot faster with if I define sites though if I say Gainesville is one site and Jacksonville is its own site when I go to log on my computer is gonna query DNS DNS is gonna turn around and say well wait what site are you in well it's a combination of DNS and Active Directory but it's going to determine what site my computer resides in and then it's going to return a list of domain controllers that I can authenticate with that are located in the same site as me right and that's gonna help that's going to contain that's what I mean by localized site aware applications is now instead of picking any ol domain controller to log on with I'm gonna use the domain controllers that are here in my site exchange is another one right if I were to open up my mailbox I've got a mail a mail server here and I've got a server in Jacksonville it's gonna be much faster if I retrieve my emails from the server here on the same land as me rather than going across the way in without sites I have a more difficult time controlling that with sites I can say hey look make sure you use the mailbox server that's in the same site as you so that's the other thing that sites allow me to do is localize site aware applications sites are defined by subnets there's a snap in that you can use Active Directory sites and services and like I said if you if you're a single location you'll never open up that console and that's perfectly fine as soon as you move to a as soon as you start adding other physical locations that's when you're going to want to open up that console and start looking at creating sites and they're gonna be defined by subnet right so we do have to layout our network appropriately to support sites we would use one subnet here a different subnet and Jack's you can use more than one right I could have maybe the office here is much larger so I used three different subnets here and I only use one and Jacksonville but again what you do is you associate a particular subnet with a particular site alright and that's very important because if my subnet addresses stretch across physical boundaries I have no way of determining what site you're in any more sites will not work so the network does have to be laid out properly to support the usage of sites but that's that's the idea is controlling replication traffic and localizing site aware applications that's what we use sites for in Active Directory alright Mike so leading it back to those that may want to actually dig a little bit further into that that doesn't sound like it's probably part of the the basic Windows 10 Windows 10 Windows Server 2016 course so where would we find that that type of information that's really put me on the spot here you remember those course numbers it's going to be in the I want to say the advanced advanced infrastructure class I get all those course numbers mixed definitely in our server classes if you look at any one of the MCS a-trak classes alright Mike whoa thank you again like we said that that question was a lot more expansive and actually covered a lot more than then I thought it would but there's a lot of detail in here so you're noticing something if this is your first time taking a look at Active Directory that it goes beyond just what I said right users and computers being a centrally managed at that's when a small environment for us we're normally only thinking about that but yeah once we start getting into the the idea here of multiple locations then the idea of sites are really going to be important to help us out as well all right Michael well that leads us to our final question of the day here which is ready for us here and actually it's another good question it's it's basic knowledge but at the same time people may actually have a problem with this idea of why would I create a DHCP reservation so Mike we understand that the purpose of DHCP right the way that it can hand out information dynamically and I understand the idea of even creating static addresses but why would actually make a reservation and you know as well so Mike helped us to understand the concept and what the purpose of the reservation really is that's a great question I see this one a lot as well because it does kind of go against you know your normal train of thought or what you're thinking when it comes to working with IP addresses so to go back Ronnie as you said we understand the DHCP dynamic host configuration protocol as a protocol that we use to automate the assignment of TCP IP information right much more than just IP addresses subnet mask default gateways DNS server addresses NetBIOS node type if you're still using that if you know all kinds of good stuff can be passed out using DHCP we also understand that I don't have to I can have clients on the network that I don't want their IP address to change that kiosk machine that printer most of my servers that are providing network services like DNS Active Directory I don't want their IP address changing so we'll statically map those right we'll just we won't use DHCP on those so then we've got this concept of reservations within DHCP and a reservation is just a way to ensure that a device a node it's the same IP address every time it talks to DHCP so you boot up that kiosk machine it calls up DHCP it says hey any IP address D&I if you've created reservation for it dhcp says oh I know you mr. kiosk I've been told to give you this IP address every single time and that will ensure that it always has the same IP address and usually what people will then say is why don't you just statically map it yeah right great question because yeah it was a great question why why don't I just statically map it and it goes back to what I said at the very beginning of this question DHCP does so much more than just passing out IP addresses default gateway subnet mask DNS servers IP addresses DNS suffixes things like this can all be passed out using DHCP if I statically map a device none of that information is dynamic if anything in my network changes the IP address of the DNS server changes the default gateway changes we reorganize our network and we break up our subnets in a different way and we use different subnet masks if any of that changes that means I have to go back to those statically map devices and update that information manually and we understand what manual meets right that means I have to go do it I have to walk over that machine or remote into and typically it is go over to it if I'm changing IP information sometimes that can be difficult if your remoting into it but I have to remember to do that and I have to do that to every one of those devices that I've manually updated if I have 15 different print servers that are all statically mapped and something changes I've got to update all 15 of those devices manually right whereas with a reservation I can get the best of both worlds I can make sure that it always gets the same IP address but everything else is still dynamic so if the DNS servers IP address changes it's ok I can update it my DNS us on my DNS servers options and the next time that device renews or gets a new IP address or request a new lease it'll still get the same IP address because it's a reservation but it will get the updated I forgot what I said now DNS server address right or the updated default gateway options that all of the other option that's perfect way of foot and Ronnie and that's the idea that's what makes reservations so powerful and so useful is that I can now kind of combine I can get the best of both worlds I get that static IP address so that I can map those printers right you know when we look at adding printers if the IP address of the printer sir print server changes that can mess up a lot of people's day now I've got to go find that printer again that kiosk machine you know I remote into it all the time to remotely administer it I do it by IP address or I've got a list of the IP addresses of all the conference room machines right and I remote into those using their IP address and I don't want those IP addresses to ever change I've got certain things mapped to that IP address whatever the case may be but I want the rest of the stuff to be dynamic and and that's the advantage there because if the kiosk machine IP address changes now I've got to try to figure out what its new IP address is update any mappings if print service print servers are probably the biggest one I can think yeah I can think of two yeah because if those IP address change it breaks things across my network and you'll know really quickly that something has changed because the phone will start lighting up hey I can't print yeah it's printers and email those two things right there when they go down everything's down it's about 45 seconds yeah for the IT department knows that those systems are down so anything I can do to lessen that right is going to be a good thing reservations are one of those things that I can eliminate the IP address issue right there's still other things that make my print servers go down and I hate print servers I always call this guy right here when I need to work on a print server but at least by giving it a reservation I can eliminate that I know that part hasn't broken anything because it's always going to get that same and just to make sure we're all clear if you're newer to this these reservations are done via MAC address right because you might be wondering well how does it identify that machine when it calls up DHCP doesn't have any information yet how does it identify the device and know you're supposed to get this it's the MAC address off that network adapter when you create a new reservation within the DHCP console on a server you right-click new reservation and the first thing it wants is the MAC address right and a friendly name whatever you want to call it and that's how identifies it because in that DHCP request the first part of that four-step process that Dora process that discover packet includes the MAC address of the device that's sending out that discover so when DHCP receives that request it sees that MAC address and goes oh wait I've got a reservation for you here's the IP address I'm gonna offer you and then sends back the offer and the rest of the process goes just as always right discover offer request acknowledgement nothing else changes and again that's the cool thing about reservations everything else is still dynamic everything else works the same way I'm just guarantee in the same IP address every time all right Mike let me ask a follow-up to this since you mentioned the the virtues of doing a DHCP reservation for things so if I have all that you're talking about why would I actually choose to do something like my DNS servers or let's just even let's go to the full degree here my domain controller why not make that a reservation instead of static Mike you know honestly I don't know if there's a reason I don't think there's anything wrong I know that one of the things like when you install Active Directory it will typically balk at you right if you have a dynamic address because they understand the importance of that IP address never changing I I can't tell you how many and I know Microsoft has made changes and they'll tell you you can update your domain controllers IP address and it won't break anything I'll tell you I will personally never do that myself I've had too many bad experiences my past with SRV it's little things in the background time synchronization starts to fail because a particular SRV record didn't get updated so ihe i would never change the IP address of a domain controller so I honestly think and there might be other reasons but for me personally the reason I wouldn't use a reservation for domaine controller for DNS server is peace of mind because I know reservations are going to work but those guys are so important that I'd rather just statically mapped them and be done with it and not have to worry about it and it seems like a good idea right that there are some things that we definitely need to make sure that always have that same address and even though the DHCP reservation gives us that ability what happens if the DHCP server goes down you know as you were saying and I was just thinking what if I go to renew that address and the DHCP server is unavailable for some reason now I've got a domain controller that has to throw away his lease and it's no longer available on the network and that would not be a good thing so any reliance on a service like that I think it's probably not a good idea no any drawback that you can think of on using a reservation my chance no I mean it is a little bit manual the process right so if you have a lot of devices that you want to create reservations for you do have to go retrieve those MAC addresses you have to create those reservations in the console you know so so that could be a little bit of an administrative overhead added to the process but other than that I don't think so yeah the only other time that I've ever had an issue with it is I was updating what I thought was a DHCP reservation that we needed to update when I did it apparently re-released everybody don't at one time and came back in and I thought like that's kind of unusual but I asked somebody else Palace said no that can happen so I have seen that happen where it actually did cause a little bit of problem but once it kind of figured itself out it was fine good one you can also run into some issues with some duplicate IPS and when you create a reservation it needs to be an address from your available pool when you create a scope of addresses on DHCP and then you create a reservation it's gonna pull one of the addresses from that scope there's a chance I guess but honestly whether it's any greater because it's a reservation or a normal DHCP assignment and then somebody else statically mapping that same address yeah you know probably about the same so maybe no greater risk you're using reservations alright Mike well once again thank you for helping us to answer that question as well each one seems to actually have gotten more and more surrounding of course those server concepts which is great because that was in your wheelhouse of what we wanted to make sure that we could do as well don't forget that you can also of course continue to submit questions tweet for us here and tagging wood asked me anything and we'll go ahead and put that into a list and make sure that whoever's coming up next or if it happens to be Mike start again he'll get those questions once again so we'll answer them here of course live but also you can check out our Q&A forums for those of you that are part of the IT Pro TV membership and we also answer questions there as well so don't just stop submitting questions just because we are now very close to being out of time for ask me anything here so Mike thank you for joining us for this time that's been very valuable I've actually kind of been reminded of a lot of different things now this one I do appreciate your effort in being here too and also thank you for joining us for ask me anything but make sure you stay tuned there's gonna be more of course these streaming episodes that we'll be doing so you want to check that out next time that they actually appear but thank you for now we're glad that you've been with us signing off for Mike Roger and myself check us out next time thank you for being here [Music] you