Pinging and the Windows Server 2008

The day started with rebooting our switches. *Whew* ours was working! 

[NOTE: we did experience some rough times early in the day. First we did not have all of the cables connected, then we did not have the proper IP addressing on our computers as we forgot to undo yesterday's work, finally we actually have to turn the switch on in order for it to function.]

As a recap of yesterday's work that did not work, we reviewed the various IP addresses and subnet masks to discuss whether or not they would work and most importantly WHY!

Here is a break down of what should have happened:

It turns out that the computers will not respond to each other (with the occasional exception of a Mac) if the subnet masks are different or they reveal the networks are not the same. Same network and same subnet masks are needed for successful communication.

However, if this was true, wouldn't that mean a computer with a class A IP address would not be able to ping a computer with a Class C or B IP address ... this will have to be clarified in the morning!

The morning continued with some more configuring of our switch. We need the switch to recognize one of the ports as the route to the internet through a hop. To do this, we had to type in a series of prompts:

• vlan 2 
• ip interface vlan-2 address 192.168.16.254 mask 255.255.0.0 vlan 2
• ip static-route 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 gateway 10.0.1.254    
• vlan 2 port default 8/1

Now, before we started, we were told that we should make sure we had configured correctly from the day before. We were to enter this command: 'aaa authentication default local'. But we had concerns about not accessing the internet, so after typing the above commands, we re-authenticated.  "default local" and "http local" ... and ... and ... what would it hurt to enter 'aaa authentication default local' one more time after we start? Well apparently there is an issue if you enter some commands out of order. Good to know. 

Reload the switch.  Re-type all commands - IN ORDER. Remember to 'write memory' and 'copy working certified'. Those you can do any time! :)

The next thing we were supposed to do was to make sure our clients were able to connect to the layer three switch - the next hop we configured. However, some error occurred and we were not able to successfully ping either switch. But never fear! There is always something else to be done!

We were given a task to take inventory of the computer we were going to use as a server, which will be the next step in this process. The inventory is as follows:

Total amount of RAM:  2 x 512 + 2 x 1GB [total 3 GB] DDR2

Hard Drive Capacity: 2 x 160 GB

Total number of USB ports:  8 [two front; six back]

Total number of Firewire ports: 2 FW0A823019M MIC E-G900-04-0123(B)

Type of DVD drive: Sony NIC Optiarc Inc   AD-7200S DVD/CD RW serial ATA

Type of Video port(s):  S-Video and DVI

Network Interface Card type: MIC 00-10-18-34-8688 E-G021-04-2613 (B)

                                                      PCI Express BCM5721 gigabit ethernet

NIC Maximum Speed: 1000 Mb/s

Video Interface Card type: ATI Radeon 102 B27602 (B) B276

Motherboard manufacturer: Dell

Computer manufacturer: Dell

Computer: DCSM serial # 73HYLG1   

Monitor manufacturer: Dell

Monitor: 1704FPTt

We also had to check the minimum requirements for running Windows Server 2008 to ensure computer So, do we meet the minimum requirements? According to this table, it appears so:

This information was taken from: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/WS08-system-requirements.aspx
 

The last thing of the day was to install the server software. This was a little time consuming, but not too bad in the way of problem solving. Many more references online were needed to get through the process, but it really was straightforward! Mostly it was waiting for the program to run its course and selecting the right choices as we went along. 

So except for some difficulty with connecting with the layer three switch of our network, we had a very successful day.