Windows Server 2008 Standard Maintenance

Part of administering a server is performing maintenance on it. Of course, maintenance can mean many different things. Some people view it as performing the upkeep tasks needed to keep the server running. However, sometimes maintenance means looking around to see what's happening with your server. Sometimes you just need to observe it to ensure that everything is working as you anticipated it would. Otherwise, an emergency unfolds before you have any idea that it will occur. In some cases, you have to measure system status to ensure that you're viewing the system state accurately.

This tutorial discusses all of these kinds of maintenance. You won't find every maintenance task discussed in this tutorial. The sections in this tutorial focus on common maintenance tasks, such as performing a system backup, creating a recovery disc, or monitoring system performance. You also discover a way to become more productive using Task Scheduler so that performing maintenance doesn't have to become a chore. In some cases, you may actually begin to look forward to some maintenance checks to determine. The best part is that users complain less about performance when they know you're already on top of things.

Remember: One of the things that most developers should discover early is that learning how to perform new tasks on a production system almost certainly causes problems at some point. Savvy administrators use a test server to practice new skills and discover any potential problems before moving on to the production server. To use this tutorial most effectively, try out the various skills on a test server - really work with these new techniques to ensure that you understand them.