Network Administration

User Accounts
Group Accounts
User Rights

Resource Permissions
Security
Data protection

Accounts
A user account is a collection of information known about an individual user, includies:

an account name,
associated password and
a set of rights to perform specific actions

Rights and Permissions

Rights deal with User functionality.
Permissions deal with resourcesaccess.
Can be granted to individual user accounts or to groups.
Are cumulative, in NT the widest-reaching permission normally has priority.

Account Management

Users should be able to access everything that they need but nothing else.

Create a new account with administrator privileges then disable the administrator account.

Use the 'User Manager for Domains' (UM Utility) to change user passwords.

Password Issues

Can the users change them?
How many characters should they be?
Should failed logon result in an account lockout.?
When should users be forced to change them?

Length?

Strong?

NT Account Security

NT passwords are case sensitive.
Logon days and hours can be restricted.
Certain actions, such as logons, and object access, can be audited .

Group Accounts

Groups can be local or global
Local Groups exist exclusively in the local domain.
Global Groups can access resources across domains.

Managing Group Accounts

Rights and users can be assigned to groups.
Global groups can include individual users.
Local groups can include individual users and global groups.

Trust Relationships

Construct used to facilitate cross domain resource allocation.
An arrangement in which one domain permits members of another domain to access its resources.
One way relationship.

Disabling and Deleting User Accounts

A disabled account retains its rights and permissions in an inactive manner.
A deleted account' rights and permissions are gone.

For a new user, you can copy or rename an existing account.

Maintaining Network Performance

Parameters that require monitoring include
Server data read and written
Queued commands.
On Ethernet, the number of collisions per second.
Security errors.
Connections maintained to other devices.
Network performance.
System Management
Hard Drive Performance
Bytes read from and written to the server.
Space available.
Memory Use
Hard Page Faults

Maintain a Network History

Establish a performance baseline
Tension between too much and too little data

Managing Network Security
Three elements.

One, keeping data safe
including being able to replace data if its lost.

Two, maintaining data integrity

Three, mainting appropriate data access

Threat identification. Questions include:

What am I trying to protect?
Whom or what do I need to protect data from?
How likely is it that this threat will manifest itself?
What is the cost of breached security?

Security Models

Two basic security models
Share oriented security
The security information is attached to the object itself.
User oriented security

Every object has an Access Control List (ACL) attached which represents Access Control Entries (ACE) that determine which accounts can access the object.

NT security is user orientated.

Tape Backup

Backups are the most obvious form of data security and tape backups are a favorite method of creating them.

Five types of backups.

Full (All files.)
Incremental (All files changed since last full or incremental backup)
Differential (All files changed since last full backup.)
Copy (Selected files with resetting archive bit.)
Daily (All files changed that day.)

A UPS has a built in battery, power conditioning and surge protection
Devices, such as laser printers, can overload a UPS.
An overload UPS may shut down without a power surge.

Fault Tolerance

Defined as the ability to continue to function after a failure.

Disk Mirroring

Disk mirroring involves setting up a second disk drive on the same controller.
The second drive contains the same information as the original.
If a second controller is installed along with the second drive, it is called disk duplexing.
Represent degrees of fault tolerance.

Disk Striping with Parity

In this fault tolerant configuration, a disk array (minimum three physical drives) is treated as a single logical drive.
Also known as RAID Level 5.
Creates the highest level of fault tolerance.