Thanks for buying the Windows Server 2008 Portable Command Guide: MCTS 70-640,
70-642, 70-643, and MCITP 70-646, 70-647 . I’d love to say that this book was my idea,
but the real credit goes to Scott Empson who originally developed the vision of this
book with Cisco certifications. I’ve worked with Scott and Pearson Education to help
bring the same type of books he created for Cisco products to professionals working on
Microsoft products. Scott’s vision started with the idea that many IT professionals who
have already learned the theory still sometimes need help remembering how to imple-
ment it.
The book doesn’t go into depth teaching these concepts. The idea is that you already
understand them. Instead, the goal is to provide enough information to help you remem-
ber what you can do and how to do it. The book is purposely written to be a small, por-
table, and useful journal, not an encyclopedic-sized volume. However, even if a concept
is new to you, there’s enough information for you to start typing at the command prompt
to gain a better understanding.
As an example, you probably know that you can force the registration of SRV records
in DNS by stopping and restarting a specific service. However, you might not remem-
ber the specific commands are net stop netlogon and net start netlogon . You might
remember that you have to join a Server Core computer to a domain using the netdom
command, but you might not remember the full syntax off the top of your head. In other
words, you know the theory behind why you’d stop and restart the netlogon service and
why you have to join a Server Core computer to a domain from the command prompt,
but you might not always remember the syntax. This book is a ready reference of useful
commands and procedures with clear-cut examples. It shows the exact syntax of many of
the commands needed for administrative tasks performed regularly by Windows Server
2008 (and Windows Server 2008 R2) administrators.
I started the outline of this book by ensuring that command prompt commands covered
by the Microsoft Certified Information Technology Professional (MCITP) certifications
on Windows Server 2008 were included. This includes the 70-640, 70-642, 70-643,
70-646, and 70-647 exams for the MCITP Server Administrator and MCITP: Enterprise
Administrator certifications. I then added the commands I’ve found valuable in my day-
to-day work on networks and from classroom teaching.
Many IT professionals use an engineering journal to help them remember key informa-
tion needed on the job. It might include specific commands that they sometimes forget,
IP addressing schemes used on their networks, steps for important maintenance tasks
that are performed infrequently, or anything else they want to easily recall by looking at
the journal. If you already have an engineering journal of your own, you can add this as
a Windows Server 2008 addendum. If you don’t have one, you can start with this book.
It includes the same “Create Your Own Journal Here” appendix that Scott uses in the
Cisco series. There are blank pages you can use to add your own notes and make this
your journal, not mine.
