Planning for Windows 2000 succeeds on several levels. First, it provides an excellent tour of the most important new capabilities of Windows 2000 (such as Active Directory, Dynamic DNS and TCP/IP, and IntelliMirror) and what they mean for the administrator. More importantly, this book provides a guide to defining strategies and in-house policies that will benefit an organization as it transitions to Windows 2000. Included here are mini-tutorials on taking inventory of hardware and software in your shop, developing a security plan, and planning for new Windows 2000 organizational units (OUs) used to model your business systems.
This book also includes a number of step-by-step guides to carrying out important tasks within Windows 2000, such as safely reorganizing domains. There are no screen shots in this book (probably because the OS interface was still under development at the time of writing), but these checklists are still valuable guides to carrying out important administrative tasks and decisions.
Armed with Planning for Windows 2000, any administrator or IS manager can more accurately gauge the impact of Windows 2000 for their organizations, reduce the costs associated with this transition, and take full advantage of this new operating system when it arrives. --Richard Dragan
Topics covered: Windows 2000 overview, Active Directory basics, restructuring network domains, software and hardware inventories and in-house standards, Dynamic DNS (DDNS), DHCP, TCP/IP, developing security plans, group policies, organizational units (OUs), IntelliMirror, upgrading to Windows 2000.