Monitoring and backing up servers are usually mundane tasks that are easily overlooked or forgotten. When everything is running smoothly, you may not even think about whether or not your servers have backed up properly, maybe for weeks at a time. Except in the largest of companies, there usually aren't dedicated backup admins or performance monitoring gurus. In IT, we all wear many different hats, and they don't always fit on top of each other.
The key phrase above is when everything is running smoothly. Unfortunately, this state of bliss cannot continue indefinitely. Hardware fails, malware happens, files are accidentally deleted. Suddenly, those dull chores of due diligence, such as monitoring the health of your servers and making sure you have solid backups, jumps from backburner to mission-critical on the importance scale.
The good news is that monitoring and backups have never been easier than they are in Windows Server 2016. Let's explore together some of the tools that exist to make these areas of your infrastructure efficient and automatic:
- Using Server Manager as a quick monitoring tool
- Using the new Task Manager to its full potential
- Evaluating system performance with Windows Performance Monitor
- Using Format-List to modify PowerShell data output
- Configuring a full system backup using Windows Server Backup
- Recovering data from a Windows backup file
- Using IP Address Management to keep track of your used IP addresses
- Checking for viruses in Windows Server 2016
There are many third-party tools available for performing functions such as data backups and performance monitoring, and because these tools exist, it is easy to automatically assume that they will do a better job than anything that comes with the operating system. Given that, we often categorize backups and monitoring into areas where we will have to spend extra money. I'm not trying to argue that every add-on tool for these functions is unnecessary because they do certainly benefit the right kinds of company. But anyone willing to dig into Server 2016 and discover what it can accomplish on its own accord, without extra add-ons, I think you will find that it meets the needs of many businesses.