Server 2k8 with IIS, SMTP and FTP Windows 2008 comes with IIS 7 which is a pretty powerful if somewhat complex in my experience. For FTP service you'll want to download the update from MS if you're not on R2 or better, but for the rest of us, you need to know that you'll need to enable the IIS Manager for 7 even if you had the manager for 6 automatically installed for other purposes. In my case, I added IIS for the feature of making it an SMTP relay host for itself using it as a smarthost to point to our regular SMTP server. I needed to do that so that I could take advantage of the File Server reporting that it comes with. You should note that SMTP relay is dangerous so I recommend limiting access to 127.0.0.1 (the local computer) unless you are specifically intending to allow other uses and if you are, then to restrict it and read up on SMTP Relay carefully. Once I had SMTP, I also got IIS and FTP with it, but I couldn't manage FTP with the manager it installed. For that I had to add a different feature, the IIS7 manager separately. With that I was able to create a new site and set up the user/authentication/path that I needed for that separately. I also had some trouble getting our Data Protection Manager server to recognize the system, so I had to install the agent manually and then attach it manually at the DPM server shell. It is obvious and well documented by MS if you know that is what you need to do, but learning that part took me a while. Other Services you might appreciate from Server 2k8
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Oh, I'd like to document something about NTP (Network Time Protocol) but Windows AD (Active Directory) has the redundant time services thing covered without necessarily working as you'd expect. I got an error about a Domain Controller (DC) not offering NTP. When I checked, it was running W32tm - the Windows Time daemon and I queried it with ntpdate from a linux machine to ensure NTP was working and confirmed it was. When I rebooted the server that had returned the error, it had blacklisted that DC and was instead using our primary NTP server (as I believe I'd set it to do in the past?!)
So, I'm not sure what it takes to get Win2k8 to work as an NTP server nor am I sure how to test.
I did read the instructions on this page:
http://bchavez.bitarmory.com/archive/2009/12/21/how-to-setup-a-windows-2008-r2-sntp-ntp-server.aspx
But they reference the AnnounceFlags and that isn't a key that is present. I could create it, but the setting is indicated when I request the config from w32tm, so I'm not sure it isn't being set somewhere else.
I ran into instances where I couldn't get remote information from a Win2k8 server despite using an admin account. Using MS's uptime.exe failed, but so does psexec.exe from sysinternals, yet I can connect with RDP.
I checked the Network and Sharing settings and enabled Network discovery. When prompted to choose between private and public, I turned to Private. When that didn't work, I also turned on File Sharing. That didn't work either. So I tried enabling Public folder sharing, even though that didn't sound like what I wanted, so that "anyone with network access can open files" and it still didn't work.
Okay, so I tested and couldn't add printer sharing, and I have no sharable printers. So I tried to add a printer, but I couldn't do that either.
I checked the network connection settings and found that File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks was not enabled. I checked the box and that worked!
So I turned off Public folder sharing and File sharing in the Network and sharing center. I checked and I was indeed still able to browse to the machine.